Mike Harrelson - A Heart for the City | Acts 17:16-34

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Almighty God, you welcome you. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Hey, there. If you're new to Restored Church, we want to welcome you and thank you for tuning in. You're listening to a portion of our Sunday worship gathering. We believe the church is not an event, but a family you belong to, so we would love the opportunity to connect with you. If you want to learn more about our church or if we can help you in any way, please Visit our website, www.restoredtemecula.church, and click on Contact. With all that said, we, we hope you enjoy the message. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah, my name is Mike. I'm an elder here at the church. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm an elder here at the church, and I get the privilege of sharing God's word with you this morning. The beginning before the summer started, Marla, who was up doing kids moment earlier, and I. My. She's my wife. We got to go to Greece and Turkey for two weeks. It's something that we planned, like, a year and a half before, which doesn't really happen for us to plan that far in advance, but we did, and I was pretty stoked because it was an amazing time. During that time, we spent the first couple days in Athens, Greece, and, man, that place is crazy. I mean, it just. It's so much history and all that stuff. It was wild. But one of the things we love doing when we go to a city is we love going on food tours. We've done it here in the States and we've done it overseas. Man, when you go on a food tour, it shows you so much about the culture. Like, what they're eating says so much about who they are and all that kind of stuff. And so we got to go on this food tour on our second morning in Athens, and it was with a group of, like, 10 people, and our tour guide made 11. A couple of ladies were wearing crosses on their necklaces, and our tour guide was like, hey, there's this little church around the way. Would you guys like. It's not a part of the tour, but would you like to go see it? And when I say little, it was little. It was all made of stone. Apparently, this building had been there for over 1000 years. It's been around. I mean, you think about that in light of we just celebrated 250 years. That building had been there for 1,000 years. And so we went in there, and quite honestly, I was a little claustrophobic, and I don't get claustrophobic. But this space was small. It was interesting. When we were in there, there's things that we're probably not used to as Western Protestants and all that kind of stuff. But one of the things that our tour guide told me and told us sort of struck both Marla and I as we listened to her. We're like, oh. Struck our hearts in a way that I was like, I have sort of a burden for her. She's a Christian. But she said that many of us, speaking of the young Greeks that are there, they said, many of us, we light a candle, we say a prayer, and we go on with our day. That's it. We don't stay for a message. They don't stay for the community. They just come to do this sort of ritual, and they move on their way. And I thought, oh, man, you're missing out. You're missing out on something far more beautiful, a relationship with others, but also, it sounds like, in a lot of ways, a relationship that's deeper with God. And this morning, we're gonna be jumping into Acts 17, looking at the life of just a day, a couple days in the life of the apostle Paul in a moment where he was provoked in his spirit as he walked around the city of Athens as well. So if you guys could open up your bibles to Acts 17 for me, I'm going to pray and we'll get started. Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you for this morning. Thank you that we get to gather together to give you praise. The one that is due. All praise, all worship is due, all honor and glory. We thank you for Jesus, that he's the one that we're here for and because of. And so this morning, I pray as we go into your word that you'd speak to us. I thank you that your Word does not return void. It does speak. And I ask that it would penetrate our hearts in ways that we couldn't only imagine that you would meet us and you'd minister to us. Yeah, we thank you. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen. All right, so Acts 17 starting in verse 16. So this morning, you're going to probably. We're going to have the words up on the screen. If you have a Bible, just keep it open because we're going to be hanging out here all morning. I'm just going to work through the text instead of reading it all at once. It says in verse 16, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed when he saw that the city was full of idols. It says, who was he waiting for? I guess is the first question. Paul, if you look at the beginning of Acts 17, Paul started out in Thessalonica, which is to the northeast of Athens. And he made some friends, but he also made some enemies there. And so he sort of got pushed out of that place into Berea, which is a city that would have been to the west. And that crowd actually followed him and pushed him out of there. And during that time, he left a couple of his disciples behind. Silas and Timothy. They got left behind to minister to those that had become Christians in those other areas. And some other guys went with him to Athens. But when he got there, he said, hey, go back and get those guys and send them over here. And so that's what it's talking about. When they said he was waiting for them. You know, Athens is a pretty wild place at that time. It was no longer the political power of the world. That was Rome at that point. But it was still the cultural epicenter of, like, intellectuals of arts and also of sport. Because, you know, as we all know, the Olympics came from there. And so it's super diverse. You could think of, like, New York City and Oxford and someplace where there's a whole bunch of sport that was going on. It's pretty wild. But as a whole, we see that Paul comes in the city. Actually, could you put the first picture up here for me? The Acropolis. This is a picture that I took when we were in Athens. This is the skyline of Athens. I was up on a building taking this picture. But if you're down below on the street, pretty much the whole skyline in front of you is going to be the Acropolis. And the Acropolis is this massive rock mountain, I guess, that is flat on top, and it has temples to Artemis and to Poseidon and to Nike. And this is where the people of Athens would go and worship their gods. It was the skyline of the city. It sort of set a precedent for it. And when we walked around, Marla and I, when we walked around Athens, it was wild. Like, you take. I walk from here to Mike, and there's a ruin that's over there, and there's some kind of God that it's dedicated to. There's temples and statues, and there's monuments to all these different deities and all these different leaders and all that kind of stuff. The city was full of worship. And in Paul's day, I can only imagine it was probably even more overwhelming because we're looking at ruins. He was looking at it in its heyday. And so something to notice here is Paul wasn't really impressed with the architecture. He actually had a burden. He Wasn't fascinated with the history. He saw these people and that they were their hearts, what was going on with their hearts. And it burned in him. So my first point for you this morning is Paul's heart was provoked. Paul's heart was provoked. See, he didn't walk through the city of Athens as a tourist. He walked through it as a missionary. One pastor I heard one time talked about how as you walk through a city, you can see the theological land skyline of the city. And when we look at the Acropolis, it is literally the skyline. You can see whatever captures the hearts and attentions of the people, what their devotion is to. And honestly, you can sort of ask the question, what receives the glory that's due to God and belongs to God? What is this city doing with it? See, he wasn't impressed. He wasn't impressed with what he saw there. His heart broke for the people. And everywhere he looked, he saw men and women that were made in God's image. They were actually looking for lesser things and gods that could never serve them and lifeless gods, they're looking for hope and lifeless things. And honestly, I think when we look at that, we see that this actually reflects the heart of God, our Father. He desires that all should come to repentance and faith in Christ. And so Paul moved towards them in response to this. He moved towards them with deep compassion. And the reason why he did this is because he realized that people aren't the enemy. Paul writes some years later in Ephesians 6:12. He says, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of. Of this darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens. He realized that people weren't the enemy, that they're actually just sitting in a battlefield that they were unaware of. He had compassion on them. He didn't condemn them for the things that they believed, the things that they were putting their hearts towards, things that they're giving their resources towards. He didn't. He had compassion. Cause he truly loved the people. I mean, when I was thinking about this, I'm like, doesn't that sound so much like Jesus? Doesn't sound like Jesus. Like Jesus saw the people as sheep without a shepherd. He actually entered into this world. He went and sat with people at their tables to listen to them, to hear them, to love them. He moved towards people that were lesser than in the community, people that were outside the community. He moved towards them. He saw compassion on the people and the same thing that Paul did. So let me ask you, when you look at our city, what do you see? What do you feel about what you see in our city? Are you frustrated with the culture of our city, maybe our state? Are you frustrated with the culture? Or is God giving you a burden for the people of that place that are just misled? They're in the middle of a battle and they don't know any better, and they've been held captive by an enemy that doesn't want to let them go. See, compassion always moves towards people. Condemnation tends to move people away. And so we see this next in the next verses, in verse 17 through 18, it says that Paul, so he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with those who worshiped God, as well as in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicureans and the Stoic philosophers also debated with him. Some said, what is this ignorant show off trying to say? Others replied, he seems to be preaching of foreign deities because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. See, having a burden for the city is the first step. But compassion isn't meant to just stay in our hearts. It's actually meant to move in our feet. We actually move towards people and compassion. And Paul did this in Athens. My second point for you this morning is Paul engaged with relationship. So there's. It lists off quite a few people here. You have the Jews that he met in the synagogue with. He has other people that believed, and then he met in the marketplace with the Epicureans and the Stoics. Could we bring up the picture of the agora? So agora is another word that they use for marketplace. This is where, like, commerce happened, where people met and they conversed and all that kind of stuff. This is. So this is the Roman agora. There was another ancient agora that was a little bit further away. But most historians believe that this is the spot. In this little courtyard right here is where Paul conversed with these different groups. And just to put it in context, that other picture I took would have been probably like 5 or 600 yards that way. And behind me would have been where the Acropolis is up on the hill above. So if I turned around, I could see the Acropolis way up there. And so he had these two dominant sort of mindsets of people that he was talking with in the. In the Agora or the marketplace. He had the Epicureans. And so you could think of the Epicureans as being those that, like, live for pleasure. They don't believe in the afterlife or anything. Sort of not really concerning themselves with the religious affairs or whatnot. They just lived for, like, what was going on right now and just pleasure, like anything that's pleasurable. Give yourself over to the Stoics, on the other hand, they were sort of like, they're like, looking at life. Mastery in a lot of ways would probably be easy way of putting it. They were looking to master life, to move themselves away from the emotion of an event, to think rationally about things. And so one of them worshiped comfort. The other one sort of worshiped. And I think when we look at that, it sounds familiar to sort of the way that things happen today, even at times like we worship different things and the way that we go about our lives. We see people in our lives that probably fit into some of those categories there. But Paul moved towards them, and the reason why is because he wanted to have a better understanding of what they believe. He reasoned with them. He asked them questions. He shared truth with them. Now, I imagine that there was probably some arguments in there, but I don't think it's the arguments that we see a lot of times today. These kind of arguments would be like understanding and sharing and trying to get to know each other, even though some of them said some not so nice things about him at the same time. And here's the thing is, he did it daily. He did it every day. He showed up on a regular basis. He didn't just go to the agora and just hang out there. All right, yep, I'm here. I'm doing my thing. No, he actually had a. A desire to engage with the people and hear what they believed and be a part of their lives. See, I've told my kids this multiple times. I heard it when I was growing up is people don't care what you know until they know how much you care. And that's so true. Like, we can impress people with our words and all that stuff, but no one's gonna let you into their heart until you actually. Until they know how much you care about them. You know, one of the things that Paul wrote to the Thessalonian Church in 1 Thessalonians 2, 8 was, we cared so much for you that we were pleased to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our lives because you have become dear to us. Paul led relationally, it's through relationship. He let people know who he was. And that's exactly what Jesus did, too. He entered their lives. And so Paul is actually just following a pattern of our Savior. It's not a strategy or anything like that. He's actually modeling what Jesus does. It's beautiful. And so, yeah, he met with people, he struck up conversations, he asked questions. He found common ground with people. It's so funny. My kids, like, we'll be out someplace and I'll just start talking to some stranger. And they're like, dad, who was that? Especially my youngest, Levi. He's like, dad, you know that guy? And I'm like, no, buddy, I don't know him. I just met him right now. And he's like, why are you talking to him? Why are you talking to him? I'm like, well, because he's a person. Like, I want to get to know people and see what they're doing. We were actually on a trip not too long ago, and I was out fishing and I came back and we. One of our friends was like, so what's his name? Where's he from? But here's the thing is, you'd be surprised on how much you get to learn about someone just by engaging with them. What they might say to you, what they might share. You never know what's going to happen there. You might be surprised. And so, yeah, when you think of people in your life, how do you engage with them? People that maybe are on the fringe, you see them on a regular basis, but you don't really know them. How do you engage with them? I think what I see here in the scriptures, I see it from the life of Jesus, but I also see it from the life of Paul. As I see he starts with honesty. There's an honesty there. So when someone asks you, you get back to work on Monday, how was your weekend? How do you answer that one? How do you answer that one? It was good. Yeah, exactly. It was good. I had a good time. I did this and that. Do you ever, like, I know I haven't always done this, but do you share, like, especially if it's a weekend that God met you, in a way, he spoke to you, do you share that with them? You know, this last year, coming on staff with the church, I spent 20 years in the marketplace before. So I got to have a lot of those conversations. Now, the interesting one for me is when someone asks me what I do. This is like a loaded question for me, at least. It's like, okay, I'm a pastor. And they're like, oh. I get one of three of these responses, oh, that's nice. And they walk away almost like that Homer Simpson one when he fades into the bush, like. Or I get the, oh, that's awesome. Like, how did you come into that? Have you always done that? And then I get to tell them a little story. I get to share about, like, how I came to, like, be in the spot where I left a career in one area to go into ministry full time, or I get this other one. This is the last one I get usually is I used to go to church back in the day when I was growing up, and then I get to engage them with, hey, what happened? What's going on in your life during that time? What changed? How do you feel about Jesus? And so regardless, there's this opportunity to engage a little bit deeper than the surface, to find out, to hear someone's story, and also to share a story at the same time. You know, this last season in the spring, we had our first alpha that we did, and, man, it was amazing. It wasn't a big group, sort of a smaller group, but absolutely amazing. What I loved about it most was story. I got to hear people's stories. The guests, I got to hear their stories, also got to hear the stories of the people that were on the team as well. And when you hear someone's story, you hear about the things that they care about, the things that they love, the things that. The pains of their life. It's really a privilege to. To be. To hear someone's story because you're getting led into what's going on in their hearts. And, you know, I just think about what Herrick said last week. He said, story is often where you see Jesus as personally involved in people's lives. I'll tell you, when the team shared in the groups and they shared from their stories, the honesty and the authenticity of our crew was absolutely amazing. It was like, here's my doubts as Christians, I have doubts. We have doubts at times. Here's my struggles. Here's where I've been wrestling with God. Here's my joys. Here's the things that I love about life and I love about God. And I mean, it set a tone for that time to where people felt like they could be heard and could be seen and loved, and it was all right to come with those things. But what we also found is we had common ground. A lot of us have a lot of common ground. You know, at our core, we are all worshipers. We're made to worship. We're made to worship God, but we tend to worship other things. We talked about this about a month ago. We'll worship other things. And honestly, they disappoint us. They will over and over again. They're never made to be worshiped. They might be made to be able to be enjoyed, to have fun, all that kind of stuff, but not to be worshiped. And also what they do is they keep us away from our Savior, the giver of life, our Creator. And so when worship goes astray, though, I think you can still see glimpses of truth that fall in there. So I had a co worker about 16 years ago. This dude was hard. Like, I mean, he was just. He's like one of those guys. You're like, I don't know if I'm ever gonna get through him. He was crude. He could be sort of mean at times. He'd lash out in anger at times. And I was like, oh, my gosh, how am I gonna get through this dude? And what I found was, as soon as I started talking to him about his family and he started talking about his kids and his grandkids, guess what happened to this guy? It's like the shield came off, the armor came off. He turned into the biggest teddy bear. How much he loves his kids, how much he desires for them to, like, excel in life, how proud of them he is, how much he loves his grandkids. It's like this guy became like this soft teddy bear in that moment, and his life opened up, and I could see these glimpses of goodness that reflected the father's heart that was happening. There was ways in the. To being able to share and to be able to relate to this guy and to be able to speak to him in a way that the armor came down and I could actually see the real person that was underneath. See, in these relational spaces where we get beyond the front, we see that we honestly, we desire similar things. We're just going about it in different ways, guys. So Paul asked questions, and he also answered questions in a respectful way. He had a dialogue. They discussed things. Colossians 4, 5, 6 says, act wisely towards outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person. What I've been learning about questions is that they're often a gateway to faith and not an obstacle to overcome. Questions are how you actually enter in. So often, though, we're afraid of the questions because we see them as obstacles. I might not know how to answer that thing, but when you ask questions, and that's a way in to people's hearts, you can engage in things that are much deeper. You know, I'd rather, much rather Be a part of someone's journey and not have all the answers than, you know, try to win an argument and shut someone down and never have a chance to speak into their life. One of my favorite quotes by a gentleman named David Osberger. Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable. That's how powerful it is when we listen to someone, when we engage with them, not just hear them, but actually like we're listening, we're taking in what they're saying, we're having a conversation, we're engaging with their hearts. That's how people feel loved. And so we see Paul had a burden for people to know the truth, but he also shared, he listened and shared before he proclaimed anything. And he received an invitation is what happened. We see in verse 19 of Acts 17 they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and said, may we learn about these new teachings you are presenting because what you say sounds strange to us. We want to know what these things mean. Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new. Could you put the first picture up of the Areopagus from up above at the Acropolis? Okay, so you see that big pillar on the right? Just to the left of it, there's like a rubble mound. That's what the Areopagus, some of you may have heard of, called Mars Hill. This is the space. You can go to the next picture. Now this is us standing on it. It's just a rubble mound now. It's just a rock. But what it was was in its day, it was an outdoor courtroom essentially where it was underneath the stars. So they thought that, so the gods could see what they were doing there. And they would try all kinds of trials, civic trials, religious matters. They'd look at all different kinds of stuff. And it was made up of like 100 to 150 men that were statesmen, scholars, aristocrats. And this is the space where Paul was invited to go speak about these matters that were like, we don't quite understand what you're saying. Come and tell us. And. And so he got invited from the marketplace up to this other place. Now, marketplace would be down low, this place would be a little bit higher. And the Acropolis, where all their temples were, were up higher. This still sat, if you were to look off to Marlene and I's right hand side, you'd still see the city below us at that point. So it was a high place. He got lifted to a place of sort of prominence to be able to share these things. And so the invitation wasn't for them. They weren't looking for an invitation to find a savior. They were just looking. They were chasing the latest intellectual ideas and potential gods that they could add to their pantheon. Like maybe this Jesus is one that we could put a statue up in our pantheon of multiple gods to worship. But see, here's the thing is Paul didn't come with an opinion or some. Some idea. He'd built trust with them, and now he's being invited to lay out the truth of who God actually is. And so my third point for us this morning is Paul proclaimed Jesus, right? Could you put the picture of the bronze plaque up there for me? So this bronze plaque right here, this is actually at the base of Mars Hill off to the left. You'd go and walk some stairs to get up on top of the hill. And that plaque has the inscription of the verses we're about to read right now. It's memorialized there as being an event that happened that Paul spoke to the people of Athens. It speaks of verses 22 through 31. And what you're going to see is in this sermon that he gives not very long, but he's building a bridge to meet these people where they're at. And that bridge ultimately leads to Jesus. And see, you know, Paul doesn't simply affirm their spirituality. He lovingly confronts them with who Jesus is. And so as he was walking around the city, he says, hey, I spotted this altar to this unknown God. And so he's using their own cultural things to be able to have a starting point to speak in to who Jesus is. And he met them right where they were at. So Paul confronts them with four different truths. So the first one, we're going to sort of go fast through this. But the first one is the greatness of God. Verse 22. Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said, people of Athens, I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. For as passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was ascribed to the unknown God. Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, This I proclaim to you. Catch this. The God who made the world and everything in it. He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by hands. Paul starts by acknowledging the unknown God, but he doesn't stop there. He says, this God, he's glorious, he's great. He's made everything, everything that we see around us the very breath that we have in our lungs, it's from Him. He's also saying, this great God, this Creator of all things, he's way bigger. And your idols are so small. These idols that they worship, they're so small. He's trying to give them a picture. He's correcting these theological ideas they have in saying, don't sell yourselves short, guys. These things are too small. He is great. He is mighty. He is glorious. There is no one like Him. I want you to see who he is. Then he goes on. And the second thing he brings up is he says, he speaks of the goodness of God, verse 25. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since He Himself gives everyone life and breath in all things. See, idols always take away, but God provides. He's a provider. Like I said, the very breath we have in our lungs, the life that we live, these are all gifts from Him. Everything we have is a gift from Him. And he doesn't just have it and hold onto it. He shares it all with us. Think of within this room. Think of all that you guys have, the relationships, the life, the families, all that kind of stuff. It's all he goes on. He speaks of God's kingdom. That's the third thing. Verse 26. For from one man, he has made every nation and every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed time and the boundaries of where they live. See, idols, they rule us. But Jesus reigns over us, guys. He reigns over us. Like, do you realize that there is a throne in heaven right now that nothing will take out of its place. It will never be overthrown. He rules and reigns and will always rule and reign. There will never be a coup that comes in and takes him out. Won't happen. His throne will reign forever. This is what Paul's talking about. This government, the kingdom that is coming, it will rule forever. And there's an opportunity to be a part of that. He hits on next on some cultural things. So he's a student, like I was talking about. He was a student of what they were all about as well. And he says in verse 27 through 28, he did this so that they might seek God and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. And so this actually, this next part sounds sort of like it could be in the Bible. For in him we live and move and have our being. As for even some of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring, that first one for we live and move and have our being. That was actually written by a poet in 600 BC about Zeus. And the next one, where it talks about we are all his offspring. That was another poet, 300 BC that spoke of their gods. And so Paul's using their own literature to show them their deepest longing. It's already there. The longing's already there. See? But he's also showing them the true God and what he's like. And the fourth thing that Paul points out about God here is he brings them to the grace and to the judgment of God. Verse 29. Since then, we are God's offspring. We shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination. Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. Who's that? Yeah, that's right. He's provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. He's saying, your idols, guess what? They can't save you. They can't save you. Your gods made by hand. They're not big enough. They're not good enough. They're not strong enough. They will never save you. It's not going to happen. You know, any God that's made by hand ultimately is just a reflection of us and it's going to fail us. And Paul puts it right in front of him. You got a choice to make here. Got a choice. God tolerated your ignorance for long enough. Now I'm telling you who he is. And he showed who he is by Jesus raising from the dead and ascending to the right hand of the Father on the third day. See, Jesus, God stepped into history in the person of Jesus. He lived the life that we never could. He died the death that we deserve. And then he rose to prove that he is who he says he is to save us. Why? Why, guys? Cause he loves us. He loves us. He came to save us so that we can be with him, the family of God, we with him forever. That we can reflect the perfect relationships that happen in the Godhead with one another. We do it imperfectly here. Absolutely. There's all kinds of stuff we deal with, but we're striving. We're giving our hearts over to the one that is perfect and is transforming us more into the image of Jesus. See this, what he says changes everything for them. And I think it changes everything, actually. I know it changes everything for Us too. Because everyone here and there at that time, 2,000 years ago, had a choice to make. All right, do you want to be judged by your own works and your track record, or do you want to be judged by the perfect work of Jesus on, on the cross, his life, his death, his resurrection? Who do you want to be judged by in the ultimate judgment that is coming? We have a choice. And the beauty of it is he came and gave it over. Here we're trying to earn it. We don't have to earn anything. We just have to receive it. This is the Gospel. But here's the thing is not everyone received his message, just like they're not going to receive our message either. Not everyone. Verse 32. When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him. But others said, we'd like to hear from you again about this. So Paul left their presence. However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysus the Areopagite. So one of the people that was part of that council and a woman named Damarius and the others with them. There's this reality like rejection. If we're a Christian, rejection's come into the message. It's part of it. We can't avoid it. If we're sharing it, there's gonna be rejection. And you see three different people here. You see some that just rejected it outright. And what's beauty about what I take comfort in with this is that Jesus was rejected, so I should expect to be rejected. Paul was rejected. All the apostles were rejected. We can expect to be rejected, but what are they really rejecting? What are they really rejecting? They're rejecting the greatest message that has ever been came to this earth and been said that Jesus rose from the dead. He died for our sins. He rose from the dead so that we have the hope of life with him. So some ridiculed him, they rejected it. Others they said, hey, I'm curious, I'd like to know more about that. So they paused on it for a little bit and others received was interesting. When we were up on Mars Hill, we could hear a guy giving a sermon to a tour group that they're with and all that stuff. And I was like, hey, let's just go over and listen to this real quick. And the thing that he said was, he's like, you know what? We don't know what's gonna happen. Paul came and gave a message. He spread seed. He put the seeds out there. He trusted the Holy Spirit would do the work and God is trustworthy. He is great. He is good. He is. King Paul just went through that. And so we can trust. We can trust that God's gonna do something with those people that we are in our life that we're sharing with. I. When I was in the marketplace, I had a co worker, and when I first started working with him, it was pretty rough, man. I'll be honest. Like, I was like, oh, my gosh. I just came up against. I'm like a couple years a Christian at that point, and I'm coming up against a dude that was like vehemently against Christianity. And he ridiculed me, he put me down. He put down Jesus. And I think a lot of it was to see how I'd respond to him. That was a big part of it. How am I going to respond to this dude? And over time, I just continued to engage with him lovingly and to the point where we had a relationship, to where there was things that were going on in his life and the way he was treating people around him, including myself. And I was able to go to him and confront about it lovingly. And the dude broke down in tears. He was like, I hate myself and I do these things to other people. Like, we don't know what's gonna happen. I got to pray for him. I got to share the gospel with him. Crazy thing is, is 16 years later, I still text message with him every once in a while. We still are in each other's lives a little bit. And we actually, after that point, we had an amazing relationship where he softened. We don't know what God's gonna do, but we can still pray for these people that are in our lives, we can trust that when we share good news and we live out these lives of relationship and we are honest with people about who we are and what we're all about, that God's gonna use that thing. He's gonna use those things. See, our job isn't to force some kind of outcome. Our job is to share good news, to build relations with people with loving them really well. So what does our Mars Hill look like today? You know, I don't think any of us are going to be standing in front of a group of philosophers anytime soon. I mean, if you are, I'd love to know. Please tell me, but I don't think that's going to happen. Our Mars Hill is more like a. It's our kids practice. We're hanging out with people that we don't usually interact with all the time. It's the new season. We got Sports. Starting up here in the fall, we're going to have a whole bunch of people that we don't know that we get to hang out with at that point. It might be your break room at work. It might be a dinner table with your family or extended family. It could be a coffee shop that you go to on a regular basis. We have all these spaces. It doesn't have to be Mars Hill, it doesn't have to be the Agora. Our marketplace is the places that we are in as individuals and that we're going to on a regular basis. So one of the ways our church creates these conversations is through a program that I mentioned earlier called Alpha and Alpha. We started this last spring. It is a think of it as a nine week long dinner party. You come, we eat a meal together. We have some content, we have some content that we go through. There's a video, it's well produced at. It brings up big ideas of like, what is this life all about? Who is God? Who is Jesus? Why did he have to die? Talk about faith and the Bible and evil. And we talk about the church as well. That's a hot topic for people that maybe have been a part of the church and are not a part of the church anymore. We talk about all these different things and the beauty of it is it's a space. We're going to ask questions that are led, it's a conversation that's led. But there's other questions that come up along the way as well. And we like this last season we did our darndest to answer all those questions by the end of the time, the best we could. But here's the thing is there's no preaching, there's no judgment, just people coming as they are, right where they're at and being honest about it. And so September 24th, we're actually going to be launching a new Alpha. It's going to be nine weeks long. And also for you students in the room, this next year you're going to have a youth Alpha as well. So we heard that you guys wanted to be able to do an Alpha. So you guys are going to get to host an Alpha. So we're going to have a couple of them this year. I'm really excited about it. And one of the things, after we finished the season of Alpha, we asked, we sent out an anonymous survey asking about what were your highlights of the Alpha experience. And besides the food, which was really high ranked, the food was good. There was also the discussions. The discussions. Actually I got the most Comments about the discussions and what was said in multiple different spots was I felt completely safe here. I didn't feel judged. One of the things that kept on coming up during our conversations during Alpha afterwards was like, man, there's no place else in our society where you can have a conversation like this and be so free to share what you think and to hear other people's perspective. And what blew them away is, you know, they're in a group where there's Christians in there and the Christians are not judging them or condemning them. And this is the mindset that people sometimes walk around with, that Christians are judgmental and they're gonna condemn them. And it was counter. It was, for them, it was sort of counterintuitive. Wait, these people actually love us and it's a safe space. So it was beautiful. I mean, honestly, like going back to what I said before, that questions aren't obstacles to overcome, they're gateways to faith. That's what we saw. I've even got a text message the other day from someone that was an Alpha and I was so encouraged by what they had to share. One of the guests. So I wanna be up front though, like this is in no means is this something that I'm like, we need to fill as many seats as possible. No, that's not what it is. The people that are gonna be there are the people that I pray that the Lord brings. People that are part of your guys lives. Part of my life. People in our community. There's a reason why we call it Alpha Temecula. It's not Alpha restored. It's because we want to serve our community as a whole. It's not about adding numbers everywhere. It's about people. Yeah, it is, actually, it is. It's about people coming to know who Jesus is and coming into the kingdom of God to become the people they're actually made to be. Not the distortion of what the world is saying they need to be. That's what it's about. And the reason why we're doing it is because honestly, guys, there's no one like Jesus. If you're in this room right now, someone shared the gospel with you, but they also shared their life with you. You became part of someone's life and they shared what was dearest and nearest to them. And you were like, you know, actually, I want that thing too. I want that person. I want Jesus. Jesus changed my life radically. And I know many people in this room. He's changed your lives as well. And he's continuing to do that. So we do it because he commands us to do it. But also that command is actually a loving command because he desires for people to be who they are created to be. So let me ask you this. Who in your life is God putting on your heart right now? I know we all have someone probably in our life. Who is it? Think about it for a minute. I'll come back to that. You know, I want to be clear. Alpha isn't the only way that we engage people. What I outlined here before was it's actually each one of you, if you're a Christian, you get this part to be able to do that. Everyone gets to play. It's about engaging in relationship with people. And so this last season, though, people ask me, how could I help? And I got four different things. How could you help with Alpha? You can invite someone to Alpha. It's great. Maybe you're not ready to invite someone to Alpha because you're too early in that relationship and you're like, this feels a little bit premature. I need to spend some time with them. That's fine. I'd say I encourage you to do that. You could bring someone to Alpha. There's some people that are like, ah, I don't know if my friend would come unless I'm going to come. That's cool. Bring them to Alpha. That's awesome. We'd love to have them there. We'd love to have you there. We can talk about what your role would look like if you're bringing someone to Alpha. You could cook a meal for Alpha Night. Man. The meals that we had that people from this church cooked for that night, they were the. They were our favorite meals of the whole time. They're the best meals in the amount of love and how tasty they were that were put into it. And I think it said something beyond just the meal that was provided. It said that there's people in this church that care deeply for these people that are guests here and they want to serve them. And the last thing is you can pray and say pray and pray, because none of this happens without prayer. None of it happens. You know, Paul showed up and lived a life on mission. We can do the same thing. Guys, I'm gonna call up the band real quick. One of the things it doesn't say exclusively in Acts 17 or explicitly in Acts 17, but we know that Paul was doing it. He was praying. He was praying. You know, you read the rest of the letters from Paul was he's always praying for people, always praying, always interceding. And we see. I imagine before Paul stepped up on Mars Hill, before he went down into the Agora, he was. I mean, it says that he was his heart, he was distressed. So apparently he was connected to the Father in some way on that. He was praying, he was interceding for the community, for his city, just like we get this opportunity to pray for our city. But then he got invited up into these other spaces. Luke 12, 11, 12. This is Jesus words here. When they bring you before the synagogue and the rulers and authorities, don't worry about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at the very hour what must be said. See, Jesus promised that when we step out, the Holy Spirit's gonna give us exactly what we need in that hour. And I know I can look at faces in this room right now and know that you've experienced this very thing. You didn't know what to say, but you put yourself out there and you asked God for help, and he helped you in that moment. See, church, Jesus has done this for us. He saw us. He moved towards us. He entered the world. He gave his life for us, guys. Now he's calling us to step out in faith as well, to share with other people. So the band's gonna play over us for a minute. Some of you are taking notes. Others, if you don't have something you're taking notes on, pull out your phone, pull up a note on there. We're gonna take one minute, and I want you to ask the Lord, who in your life would he have you engaged with in the next week for a conversation that's maybe deeper than the surface, to ask questions of, to see what's making someone tick. You might not share Jesus right away, but you're engaging with people, getting to know them and hearing what's on their hearts. Maybe it's a friend or a neighbor. Someone once told me, think of your non. Your favorite non Christian person and write it down. And then next to it, how are you going to engage them? Maybe it's a line. I don't know yet. Maybe you know exactly how you're going to engage them. All right, we're going to take a minute while they play over us. Just quietly ask the Lord and then I will. After that minute, I will pray for us. [00:52:41] Speaker B: Sa. [00:53:20] Speaker A: Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for this church. I want to thank you that you've already, like, just thinking of how relational this church is. You've already given us, like, Like a desire for relationship and how we can move into our city to build even more relationships, to love people because they are worthy of being loved. They're made in your image. I want to pray for our city and ask God that you would, in our city and the city's surrounding, that you'd pour out your spirit on our city. That you'd provoke people's hearts for something more than what this life has to offer. That you'd show the emptiness of what the pursuit of lesser things looks like. And it would be completely. They'd be completely aware of what that looks like. I pray for each name that was written down on a piece of paper and a phone. I ask God that you would meet that person, that you'd already start preparing their heart for a conversation about you. God, I ask that you'd break our hearts for what breaks yours. You give us a heart that burns for the loss in our community, in our lives. You would convict us of moments where we run from that. And give us courage to move forward in faith, trusting you what you want to do. Give us boldness like Jesus. Humility like Jesus. Yeah. And Holy Spirit, that you would help us in those moments, that you'd give us wisdom and the words to be able to speak into people's lives. Jesus, there's no one like you. You're amazing. We love you. We pray this in your name. Amen. I ask the prayer team to come up for some of you in this room. We're gonna move into a time of response. For some of you, this might look like God put someone on your heart. You're like, I don't know how to engage them. I'd say, come up and ask for prayer for some of you. You might be like, I don't want to engage them. I'm afraid. I have fear. I feel like I'm not competent enough to do that. Come up and ask for prayer for others of you. I get the sense that, like, there might be some people in the room. I say this in the most loving way, guys, that your burden for the lost has diminished. It happens. But we can't sit in that place. Come and ask for prayer. That God would reignite your desire to love the lost and to share Jesus with them. And for the rest of you, I'd say, delight in him. He's amazing. All right, I'm gonna let the band take over, and Harriet will be up in a few minutes. Love you guys.