This summer the Lord has allowed me to facilitate a most exciting study. God has given me a new friend who has a heart for the lost, and she invited many of her friends who have summer homes here. In the beginning  I heard so much skepticism, but that is changing. These are women that often have what  the world thinks we need to be happy: beauty, wealth, and prestige. Yet this summer they are realizing their need for Jesus and God is transforming hearts. My friend, like Paul, saw their real need and had compassion.

It’s so fun to witness heart transformations. This isn’t just for becoming a Christian, but growing in Him, something I see God doing in us here on this blog. 

This week Keller shows how to have the kind of heart Paul had, and the kind of heart Jesus has. For indeed, it’s all about the heart. Remember Paige’s series: It’s the Heart, Stupid!

Next week we will prepare for Paige, and the following week dive into Paige.

Sunday:

1. How have you experienced the goodness of God this week?

Monday: The Text

2. Review Acts 17:16-21 until you see something new!

3. Read the rest of Acts 17. Summarize it and share one thing that stands out to you and why.

Tuesday: Feeling what Paul Felt

Keller quotes John Stott today. Stott is often considered the founder of evangelicalism. I saw Christ in him — the love, the humility, the wisdom, and the passion.

Stott said:

“The reason we can’t speak the way Paul speaks is that we can’t see the way Paul sees , and the reason we can’t see the way Paul sees is we don’t feel the way Paul feels.” 

Begin listening and reading. Here is a link to the sermon. Start at 19 minutes:

A World of Idols

Now somebody’s going to say, “Okay, tell me. How do I do this?” There are three answers, but they’re mainly principles. Here’s what you get. First of all, look at what Paul felt. He was greatly distressed. The first thing I’m going to tell you by way of practical application is when you go to the Bible, some of us are so practical that we’re impractical, and we miss what the Bible says.

In general, when you ask the Bible for guidance, when you say, “I need guidance. I need to make this and that decision. I need to know whether I should go to school or not go to school. I need to know whether I should marry this person or not marry this person. I need to know this. I need guidance. How do I do it?” In general, the Bible does not tell you how to get God’s guidance; it tells you the kind of person who discerns the will of God.

We don’t like this. We’re very Western. You say, “How can I face death? How can I face suffering? How can I have the wisdom? How can I understand these things?” The Bible continually says, “Here’s the kind of character, here’s the kind of heart, here’s the kind of person who works through these things.” You say, “But I need this tomorrow. Wait a minute, the kind of person, character … You’re talking about reflection, you’re talking about prayer, you’re talking about habits of heart, you’re talking about time. I need this tomorrow!”

How Western. How sad. So let’s get started. It probably means you won’t be ready for tomorrow, but if you don’t get started now, you won’t be ready for next year, or the year after that, or the year after that. Most of you are young. Now look. The first thing we learn here is Paul had deeply complex feelings.

John Stott, a commentator on the book of Acts and this passage, says something like, “The reason we can’t speak the way Paul speaks is that we can’t see the way Paul sees, and the reason we can’t see what Paul sees is we don’t feel what Paul feels.” The feelings … I know this is going to be incredible for some of you to hear a Presbyterian talk about feelings, but the first principle is you must have the feelings Paul had if you’re going to be effective in the marketplace.

Now the trouble with this word is it’s a word that is kind of hard to translate. Every translation will do it differently. If I give it to you in the Greek, the literal Greek doesn’t help much, because it’s the word paroxyno, from which we get our word paroxysm, which means a seizure. That tells us something about the depth of the feeling, but it doesn’t really tell us about the nature of the feeling.

A lot of people think it means he was just simply angry. That’s not what it means. You’ll find, if you do a careful study, that this word tends to be associated in the Greek Old Testament with places where it talks about how God feels when he sees people worshiping idols. But when God says, “This provokes me,” when he talks about his feelings, he says, “The reason I am so provoked, the reason I am so distressed, is that I am a jealous God.”

People really react to the places in the Bible where it says God is jealous, because when we think of jealousy, we think of the kind of selfish jealousy. We think of the proud jealousy that says, “I don’t like you because you have something I want.” But there’s a healthy jealousy, there’s a pure jealousy; there really is.

In fact, the biblical word for jealousy, the idea of a jealous God … I think we know it, but it is so profound because it shows us that love is not just sweet feelings but thunderous feelings. If you love somebody and you see them ruining their life, or if you love somebody and you see somebody wooing them in the wrong direction, you don’t just say, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Oh …” You get mad.

Listen, the opposite of love is not anger. The opposite of love is indifference. Anybody who has ever been deeply in love, just filled with love for somebody or something, knows that there’s a sweetness, you’re melted, you’re filled with compassion and you’re filled with indignation all the time. If you’ve loved children, if you’ve loved a spouse, if you’ve loved parents … It’s both.

You see, the reason God says, “I am continually provoked in my heart when I see you worshiping idols …” That’s the complexity of love. On the one hand, he’s outraged at the dishonor, but on the other hand, jealousy means, “I love you. I want you in my arms. I don’t want you in the arms of that.” When Paul was filled with great … This is all in this word greatly distressed. Paul has a deeply, deeply complex and very strong mixture of both indignation and compassion. It’s both, it’s both, it’s both. You have to have both.

1. What, according to Keller, is the opposite of love?
2. Paul was jealous for them, as God is jealous for us. How can jealousy be a good thing? Give an example of a good kind of jealousy.
3. Why can’t we be both in the arms of an idol and the arms of Jesus?
4. What else stands out and why?

Wednesday: TRUTH AND TEARS

See, on the one hand, you can see the compassion, because … What did he do out there in the marketplace? Did he get up? Did he say, “You dirty idolaters”? It says he reasoned; he dialogued. He did such a good job, actually, that he was invited in to talk to the Areopagus. These were the philosophers; these were the culture-brokers. If you go ahead, if you read, you’ll see that his speech starts out very civilly, very, very respectfully. So there was compassion; there was gentleness. But there’s also indignation.

Here’s why Paul was effective. If you’re not filled with indignation, you will not have the courage to do what he did. If you are only filled with indignation, you won’t have the gentleness; you won’t be able to give people the impression that you care about them. You won’t be able to get into their questions. You won’t be able to understand them. They won’t feel respected. They’ll turn you right off.

Do you remember the place in John 11, where Jesus comes to Mary and Martha, whose brother Lazarus just died? One of the most astounding insights I got when I listened to a tape on this once, was that Jesus walks up to Mary, and Mary says, “If you had been here, he’d be alive,” and he wept. That’s all Jesus did. He just wept. And Martha comes up to him and says the same thing: “If you had been here, my brother would be alive.” And Jesus says, “I am the life.”

In one case, he’s filled with tears. In the other case, he gives a stern lecture. Here’s why. Jesus Christ is a man just as much made of truth as of tears. That’s not true of the rest of us. We all have our temperaments. Some of us are full of sweetness, and some of us are full of thunder, but nobody does them both well. Some of us are great at the ministry of tears; some of us are great at the ministry of truth.

5. In John 11:17-35, how do you see that Jesus had both truth and tears?

Here’s what I want you to know. If you are only one or the other, if you are only indignant or compassionate, you won’t change anybody’s life. You’ll go out in the marketplace and you’ll be utterly ineffective. What’s the solution? Let me say something to both Christians and to people who are not sure where they stand.

First of all, Christians, I want you to know something. If you go by your natural proclivity, if you follow your natural temperament here, you will be ineffective, and you won’t make good choices in the marketplace. Ninety-eight percent of everything we say publicly … Ninety-eight percent of all our public expressions of Christianity in the public realm are either obnoxious or cowardly. Paul was neither, because he was filled with holy, loving jealousy. We’re not. We’re either too afraid to open our mouths, we’re too cowardly, or else when we do, we’re obnoxious. We’re filled with either indignation or compassion.

6. If you do not have both of these for the lost, ask God to give you both so you will have boldness and tenderness.

You say, “How in the world do we overcome that?” The answer is this. This is how Paul must have done it. Paul said to the Corinthians, “When I first came to you I was filled with fear and trembling [which is, by the way, the first right thing], and I resolved to know nothing but Christ and him crucified when I was among you.” Paul looked at the cross. He burned it into his heart.

Somebody says, “Why? What does that mean?” I’ll tell you why. The cross is the only spot in any religion that shows us a God who is so utterly, completely, relentlessly, absolutely, and infallibly holy that he has to pour out wrath and divine justice on evil and sin, and at the very same time the cross shows us a God who is so absolutely, completely, utterly, relentlessly, perfectly, and infallibly loving that he’d do it on his own Son rather than lose us.

7. Explain how the cross demonstrates both truth and tears.

Thursday: ONLY CHRISTIANITY HAS TRUTH AND TEARS

If you don’t have a cross in your understanding, if you say, “I don’t understand the cross” or “I don’t believe in the cross …” If you don’t have a cross in your religion, you will either have a moralistic religion or a relativistic religion. You will either have a God who is very demanding, and that’s it, “Live up or else,” or you’ll have a God who is so completely accepting but whose love for us cost him not a thing.

8. Explain why Christianity alone has both truth and tears.

A moralistic or relativistic view of God, a thunder religion or sweetheart religion, never has changed anybody. Never. Only the cross. Only the gospel, that Jesus Christ had to die (God is that holy), and Jesus Christ had to die (he’s that loving). When that is burned into Paul’s heart, it turns him into the thing that basically we’re not.

Now you say, “I thought you were going to tell me how.” No. I said sometimes we’re so practical that we’re impractical. The Bible says this is the kind of person who will make smart decisions out there: a person filled with holy jealousy, loving zeal, somebody who thinks so highly of God and so highly of people that he wants them in each other’s arms, and he’s outraged and he’s broken-hearted until he sees it. That’s what you have to do.

I said I want to say something here to people who aren’t sure they believe. Do you know fanatics? I guess you do. I understand the latest polls show that 75 percent of Americans would not like to have a fundamentalist living as their next-door neighbor. Considering what I think most people think of when they think of the word fundamentalist, I probably would say the same thing.

9. Do you think your neighbors are glad to have you as a neighbor? Why or why not?

But here’s what I want you to think of. Surely you’ve been turned off by Christians who were clumsy in their expression, who were harsh, who sounded condemning, and so forth. You see people who say, “I’m a Christian,” and they do things like that. What do you think the solution is? You’re absolutely right to be turned off; you’re absolutely right to be upset. What do you think the solution is?

The reason I’m bringing this up is I’m using this as a little learning tool for you. I think what’s very typical is people say, “Yeah, the gospel. Yes, Jesus Christ. That’s fine. But don’t go overboard. That’s fine, the gospel, cross, Jesus, fine. But be more moderate. Don’t go overboard. Fanatics are people who go too far.” No. See, this shows that you don’t understand Christianity.

I’m not saying you have to accept it here today. I wish you would, but I do insist you understand it. Anybody who says they’re a Christian and is harsh or condemning … Their problem is not that they’re too fanatically devoted to the gospel but that they’re not fanatically devoted enough, because the real gospel I just gave you is the only place, the only religion, the only spot where we see a God who is not more fundamentally holy than fundamentally loving.

If you understand the real gospel, that turns you into somebody who is both thundering and sweet, somebody who is absolutely gentle, because look at Jesus. Somebody who is a fanatic in the sense of being harsh, you know, the person you’re worried about … that person isn’t too much like Jesus; they’re not enough like Jesus. They see the Jesus who says, “I’m Lord of heaven and earth,” but they don’t see the Jesus who says, “A bruised reed I will not break. A low-burning candle I will not snuff out in my ministry to you.” They see a moralistic or a relativistic … They don’t see the whole picture.

Martin Luther King Jr. understood this. Martin Luther King Jr. stood up against racism, and how did he do it? Every New Yorker loves Martin Luther King Jr. I wish they would listen to him. What did Martin Luther King Jr. say? Did he get up and say, “Do you know the trouble with racism? Do you know how we can deal with racism? People are too religious. You’re overly religious; you’re overly into this Christianity. We need to get rid of that. That will get rid of bigotry”?

Absolutely not. What did he say? He said racism is not in line with the gospel. He said to the churches of the South, “You’re not being true to the gospel. Get more gospel-oriented. Go to Jesus more. Be more fanatically like Jesus Christ.” Do you see? He understood. Anybody who looks harsh (and probably they are) and condemning, and you say, “They need less of religion …” Maybe they need less of various religions, but not of Christianity. They need more.

If you think a person who is absolutely sold out for the gospel … if you think a person who is in a sense obsessed with what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross is a boring person, if you think that person is insensitive, is harsh, is going to always make you feel small, you haven’t met one who really has. It’s not that they’re too fanatical; they’re not fanatical enough. Those are the people who are effective in the marketplace.

10. Are you fanatical enough to lay down your lives for others by being brave, loving, and sensitive?

Friday: What Paul saw and did

What did he see? He saw idols under everything. You say, “Of course he saw idols.” He was distressed because he saw idols. Heck, you go to Athens today, you’ll see idols everywhere. There’s Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. There’s Ares, the god of power and war. There’s Apollo, the god of music and art. There’s Bacchus, the god of fraternities. You can go to all of these and say, “Of course, they were out there. They were statues. You know, everybody can see them. They were statues. They were all there.”

But that’s not what the word see is. The text could easily have used a simple Greek word for see, blepo or something, just “take a look.” But the word Luke uses to describe what Paul was doing there is the word theoreo, the word “to theorize” or “to get underneath.” What the gospel will do, and this is actually the key to working out how to be a Christian in the public world …

Paul saw that underneath all the art, underneath all the business, underneath all the government, underneath all the philosophy, were idols, that the real problem with the world is not the bad things but the good things that have become the best things. He saw what we should see, and this is how it changes the way we do things, that under every personality are idols, under all psychological problems are idols, under every culture are idols, under all moral problems are idols, under all social problems are idols, under all intellectual problems are idols.

I’m going to do a Q and A afterwards, and if somebody really wants to press me on this I’ll spell it out. First of all, theoreo means he saw underneath everything. This is how a Christian does it. When Naaman went back and said, “I’m going to go into the temple of Rimmon, but I’m not going to sacrifice to Rimmon,” somebody says, “That’s awful,” but you see, boy, he was smart.

What was the god Rimmon? It was the god of Syria. What are we talking about here? Here’s what’s going on. They were worshiping their country. Rimmon was the god of Syria. They were worshiping Syria. The reason there was so much bloodthirstiness in the old days was that everybody had their own god, and therefore, they saw themselves as superior to other people.

Here’s what Naaman said: “What I’m going to do is go back and be the prime minister and serve my country, but I will not worship my country.” It’s very typical for Christians to make a big mistake here. Some people know that they’ve made an idol out of their career. Apollo is the god of art, right? Is there anything wrong with art? No. Is there anything wrong with worshiping art? Yes. How do you worship art? When you say, “This is my whole meaning in life.” And artistic acclaim is, for me as an artist, what gives me an identity.

Is there anything wrong with business? Is there anything wrong with competition? Is there anything wrong with a party (Bacchus)? But when that’s where I get my integration point, when that’s where I get my meaning, when that is the thing I live for … My dear friends, the gospel shows us that everybody is worshiping something. You don’t use the word worship, but you’re living for something.

11. The sin beneath every sin is an idol — trusting something under the sun or man’s ways to solve a problem instead of turning to God. Give an example from your life.

Let me put it to you this way. Everybody has something that, if they lose it, means they won’t even want to live life anymore. Whatever that is, is the thing you’re worshiping. Now here’s what Paul did. Paul said, “I can get out now, and I can recognize and understand how everything changes.” You’re a Christian, and you suddenly realize now that you’re saved by grace and not through your being an artist. What are you going to do?

You can run away and say, “Oh my gosh, the art world! Oh my word, look at all these people … Look at that! Look at all the hubris! Look at the people who get their very definition from being artists! Look at how they look down their nose at everybody who’s not! Look at how they live and die by what the critics say! Look at all that! I want nothing to do with that!” So you pull on back.

Naaman didn’t do that. On the other hand, he didn’t just go back and say, “Now I have peace in my private life.” He says, “I will serve my country, but I will not worship my country. I will serve in my career, but I will not worship my career.” If you have to run away from something that used to be an idol, you’re actually still enslaved to it. You shouldn’t just be emancipated; you have to be even emancipated from your emancipation. It’s not enough just to say, “I’m free from that,” meaning, “I can’t even be involved in it anymore.”

You have to say, “Jesus Christ is my glory, is my beauty, is my goodness, is my righteousness, is my love, is my meaning.” Then what happens? You’re going to do things differently than other artists. You’re going to dance differently than other dancers. You’re going to do business differently than other businessmen and women, because like Naaman, you’re going back into the temple, but you’re letting people know, visibly and in your heart, everything you’re doing is for God. God comes first.

Do you think that Naaman was as bloodthirsty as he would have been before? Do you think he was the racist he was before? How could he be? Because now he had the God who is the God of all human beings. His live wasn’t broken into pieces the way paganism does it, but his life was united in a whole. Dear friends, Paul saw idols under everything. If you want to understand the intellectual trends in your field, see the idols. If you want to understand what’s going wrong with your field, see the idols. If you want to understand dysfunctional families, see the idols.

I watched Great Expectations the other day (the 1946 version, the good one). Here’s Miss Havisham, and she is miserable. Why? Because she has made an idol out of marriage. Here’s Pip, and he’s miserable. Why? Because he made an idol out of Estella. Estella is miserable. Why? Because she has made an idol out of her emotional independence. She will not give her heart to anybody.

And why does she have that as an idol? Because Miss Havisham raised her up that way, because she hates men, because of her idol of marriage, to wreak vengeance on the male gender with Estella, the beautiful Estella. That’s life. Idols beget idols beget idols, and Paul said, “With the gospel I could look underneath, and I could see everything. Suddenly I figured it out, and I knew how to go about everything differently. I listen to music differently. I respond to my neighbors differently. I do my job differently. Everything is new.”

12. Choose one of the above examples from Naaman or Great Expectations and explain the idol beneath the sin.

He preached Jesus and the resurrection. I guess this is just 60 seconds on this. What did Paul actually bring out in the marketplace? First of all, he brought out the objectivity of Christianity. He was willing to get up in the marketplace and say, “Resurrection.” He was willing, back then, to become utterly vulnerable. He based the truth of what he was teaching about Jesus Christ on a historical event.

There’s that great place where he’s talking to Festus and Agrippa. I love it. Paul says, “Jesus Christ was raised from the dead,” and they scoff, and he turns to Festus and says, “Ask Agrippa.” Agrippa, of course, was Jewish, and he was in Palestine, and he had been there for years. Festus was a pagan from elsewhere. Festus says, “Come on, resurrection from the dead?” What does he do? He turns to Festus and says, “Ask Agrippa. He knows about these things, for these things were not done in a corner.”

What he means is … Paul says, there is no religion that made itself so vulnerable, no religion that came up and said, “The reason you can know it’s true is that hundreds of people saw Jesus Christ physically raised from the dead after he had been crucified.” Paul was willing to get into the marketplace with that.

13. What evidence does Paul give for the truth of Christianity?

He was willing to come up and do apologetics (that’s the old term). He was willing to come out and say, “Christianity isn’t true because it’s relevant; it’s relevant because it’s true. Christianity isn’t true because it changes your life; it changes your life because it’s reality.” That’s what he said. He got out in the marketplace and was willing to say, “Come on, ask me why this is true.”

Other religions don’t want to do that. They say, “Well, you’ll find peace within.” Golly, a dirty sock will give you peace within if you smell it long enough and you think good thoughts. Peace within … people get peace within. He doesn’t do that. He lifts up the objectivity in the marketplace. But the other thing he does is lift up Jesus subjectively. I love the way he puts it, don’t you? He was preaching the good news of Jesus. Not Jesus Christ; Jesus. How personal! John Donne said:

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Paul was jealous. What Paul wanted was for you to be in love with Jesus and for you to know how much Jesus can be in love with you. Paul was willing to pick that up and pull it up, not just the objective but the subjective, and say, “The only way you’ll be free from idols in your life is if you’re ravished with him. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. You have to experience him.”

That’s what Christianity is. It’s not just an abstract truth or just a mystical experience. It’s an experience of truth, because the truth became a person, and now relationship is the way in which the truth comes in, and my whole life is changed and everything else is changed. Do you understand that? Are you the kind of person who feels the way Paul felt? Are you the kind of person who is able to see what Paul saw, able to do that kind of analysis, now seeing everybody trying to save themselves through idols?

See, the gospel gives you that kind of analysis. You’re no longer up there looking and saying, “There are the religious and the irreligious, the good and the bad.” No, no, no. There are the people who are trying to save themselves through idols and the people who have finally given themselves to Jesus. Those are the only two kinds of people in the world.

If you’re here and you’re not sure if you’re a Christian, you say, “I’m kind of neutral. You Christians have faith. I wish I had that kind of faith,” my dear friends, you already have incredible faith. You couldn’t be living without putting your faith in something. It’s not Jesus, that’s all. What is it?

It’s your career, or it’s your sexual attractiveness, or it’s partying, it’s Bacchus, it’s Ares, it’s Aphrodite, or it’s Apollo, or it’s something. All I can tell you is those gods, if you fail them, will never forgive you, and if you get them, they’ll never satisfy you. This is the only God who will. Jesus and the resurrection. Let’s pray.

14. How does Keller show everyone has faith in something?

Father, we ask you’d help us take these very, very difficult, (well, I shouldn’t say difficult), these wonderful principles and help us to work them out in our lives, work them out in the marketplace, work them out in the areas where right now we very often find it difficult to know how to express our Christian faith.

I know, Lord, everybody here has to figure out, “Where do I spread the dirt? How do I do what Naaman did? How do I do what Paul did?” And I ask you would give people some insight right now. As they meditate on these things during the offering, I pray they might see that their cowardice or their insensitivity, their lack of compassion, or their lack of indignation, their lack of courage or their lack of competence, can be healed with the gospel.

Saturday:

15. What’s your God Shot? Your take-a-way?