May 29, 2011
Dear friends in Christ.
Have you ever wondered why we take time out of each service to confess our Christian faith with the words of either the Apostles’ or the Nicene Creed? Well, if you ever have wondered why we do this the answer I’m about to give you might surprise you just a little, because the reason we confess our faith in our God is not because our God needs to be reassured that we do truly trust in him. It’s not because our God needs to be encouraged by our faith or have his ego built up by knowing that his followers do truly trust in him and believe in him. Instead, the reason we confess our faith each and every week is so that we might build each other up in our faith and our trust in our God. It is so that we can build each other up in our confidence that we do indeed believe in the all-powerful Lord our God who cares for us and watches over us. It is so that we might assure each other in our belief that the Lord is our God. Well this is exactly what the Apostle Paul is doing in our lesson today; he is confessing his faith in the Lord in front of, essentially, all the world. He is confessing the Lord as his God before the people of Athens who have gathered to hear the “new teaching” that Paul was brining to the people. In short, Paul is confessing the Lord as the God of all and the Savior of all people as he stood before the people of Athens in the Areopagus. Just as Luke records Paul speaking in our lesson today; Paul says, “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.” (Acts 17:22-24).
Now, for the Athenians, to hear that the God who had made the world and everything it was the Lord of all, would have been a bit of a surprise to them. After all the people of Athens, indeed all the people of the Greek Islands had an entire Pantheon of gods who were responsible for any number of the aspects of their lives. In fact, according to the Greek Myths, the gods that they were currently worshiping were not the gods who had made the world. Rather they were the gods who had taken over from the previous godly government of the Titans. So hearing Paul confess that the Lord God was indeed the Lord of all would have been a surprise to them. After all, the Athenians were indeed a very religious people. They were a people who lived in a city filled with shrines, and temples, and statues dedicated to all sorts of gods and goddesses. They lived in a city where every square had its own little shrine and every gate had its own protecting gods. They were a community where every house had its own shrine and each person who lived there in worshiped their own personal protecting god or goddess. But the most remarkable part of the city was the statue of the goddess Athena which had been built in the Acropolis, a hill towering 150 feet over the city. This was a 75 foot tall statue, with face, and hands, and feet carved from the purest ivory. This was a statue that was draped in coverings of glittering gold. This was a statue which the sailors used as a land mark as they sailed near the city. This was a statue that the people of Athens worshipped as one of their many gods and goddesses.
Just imagine the scene as Paul confessed the Lord before the people of Athens. There he was, standing before a group of maybe 500 men who had gathered to hear him. Maybe 50 feet to the South East of where he was stood the Acropolisthe impressive temple and fortress designed to protect the citywhere the great statue of Athena stood. Then, below the Acropolis, the city with all its temples, and shrines, and household gods, and here was Paul making his confession before the people that God is the Lord of all. Here was Paul saying, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ ” (Acts 17:24-28).
In the same way that Paul confessed the Lord before the people of Athens in our lesson today, he is confessing the Lord before you and me today. He is reminding us that the Lord our God is indeed the Lord of all, and he is encouraging us to make the same bold confession before the world today, because we too, are living in a world that is also filled with all sorts of religious ideas. We are living in a world where the teachings of reincarnation are becoming widely accepted. Though this was once an Eastern philosophy, there are many people in America who not only believe that they have lived previous lives, but they also believe that when they do die they will be reincarnated and return to the world in some other form. We are living in a world where more and more people are putting their faith and their hope in angels, rather than in the Lord their God. We are living in a world where people are more worried about being spiritual than they are worried about being religious. We are living in a world where more and more people are turning from the worship of the true God to the worship of false gods like Buddha, Confucius, the Dalai Lamma, Allah (the god of Islam), their own ancestors, the saints in heaven, and yes, there are even some who have such regard for the pope that they essentially worship him as a god on earth. Not only that, but we are living in a day and age where people are looking for guidance from spirits, spirits who they believe come to them and guide them in their lives.
It is because of all of this that the Apostle Paul is calling on us to confess our faith in the Lord our God and confess it to the world. He is calling on us to confess our God to the world lest we be deceived by any of these false teachings. He is calling on us to confess our faith to the world so that we might not be taken in by the generic ideas of God that are so pervasive in our society today! He is calling on us to make a clear confession of the Lord our God and our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, because there is so much false teaching in the world that wants to group all Christians into one big category, even though there are very clear differences between churches of different denominations. This is why Paul is calling on us to confess the Lord our God before the World, so that all the world might know that Jesus is the Lord our Savior who has freed us from our sins. This, in fact, is the very clear confession that Paul made as he stood before the members of the Areopagus and said: “Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:29-31).
Though in what Luke records for us, Paul never had the opportunity to specifically mention Jesus Christ as their Savior, he gave a clear confession when he called them to repent. He gave a clear confession when he told them that the Lord has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he appointed. He gave them a clear confession when he stated that God had raised this man from the dead. If Paul had not been interrupted by some of the members of the Areopagus at that moment, you can sure that Paul’s next sentence would have been, “And that man is Jesus Christ, the Savior of us all!” But even though he was never able to say those words, there were many people who repented of their sins that day. Even though he was not able to say those words, there were a number of people who came to faith in Jesus Christ that day. Even though he was not able to mention Jesus as the Son of God, there were many who came to realize that the Lord Jesus was their one and only Savior that day, through Paul’s clear confession.
This is the same confession that Paul is making to us today when he calls on us to repent! For he is calling on us to repent of our many sins! He is calling on us to repent of the times that we have not made a clear confession of God as Lord. He is calling on us to repent of the sins we have committed in being lax in our gathering for worship. He is calling on us to repent of our stubborn refusal to study his Word. In short he is calling on us to make confession of every sin and iniquity we have committed before our God. Then, as we stand before the Lord exposed and naked, Paul reminds us that the Lord our Savior has removed our sins. Though he may have never spoken those words in our text, he clearly brought them to memory when he spoke about the man whom God raised from the dead. For in raising Jesus from the dead, he assured us that all our sins have been forgiven. Every sin we’ve ever committed! Our laxity in attending worship for the strengthening of our faith; it has been forgiven. Our stubborn refusal to study his Word; it has been forgiven. Even our failure to utter a clear confession, it has been forgiven. All our sins have been forgiven by the Lord Jesus who is our Savior. This, then, becomes our confession which we want to bring to the world. Not merely that our sins have been forgiven. Rather, the confession that all sins have been forgiven by the Lord who is our Savior.
What better message could there be for us to carry to the world than the clear message of the Gospel. After all, our world today is not that different from Athens in Paul’s day. As a people we are very religious, or at least, very spiritual. There are many different people who believe many different things. Some people clearly believe and teach that we must live a good life in order to be saved. Others have clearly believe and teach that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere in your believe. Still others believe and teach that there are many roads that lead to eternal life. Clearly there are many people who need to know what we know. There are many people who need to hear the clear confession of the Lord our God and Jesus our Savior. There are many, many people in our world who are in serious need of the message that Jesus Christ, their Savior, is the only way to eternal life. There are many people who need us to bring this message to them. This is our mission, to spread the message that the Lord is the Savior of all. This is now our challenge, to confess our Lord before the world. So as you step out those doors today and enter the mission field before you, make the most of every opportunity that the Lord gives you to make your clear confession of Jesus as the Savior of all, by inviting someone to worship with us. Go out and make that clear confession, by talking to someone about their Savior. Go out and make that clear confession by talking about your faith when someone asks you about the hope you have. Only don’t be silent! For when we are silent, our confession is not heard. But when we active our confession about the Lord our Savior is heard loud and clear.
Though today we will not be confessing our Christian faith after the sermon, we were all built up when we confessed it together earlier. For it is through our confession of faith that we build each other up in faith in the Lord of God. But it is also through that same confession that we bring to the world that the world may come to know God who is the Lord and Savior of all.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
