transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Bryce Crawford Podcast. I'm Bryce, and today, by the title of the episode, you can tell this is my biggest warning to the American Church. This is my biggest warning to you guys, and what I believe that in this passage of scripture that we're going to talk about is so important. And so if you have your Bibles, I want you to turn to Acts chapter 17. I pray that you are all doing well and feeling excited and feeling good. Now, I want to address Acts 17 because I believe that this passage is very applicable to the 21st century. And this is the beauty of scriptures. We have this transcendent piece of literature that has impacted generations before us, is impacting a generation now, and will continue to impact generations after us. So this thing doesn't have to change or adapt to society, rather, we should change and understand how God has originally designed us to be. Now, in this passage, we see what's going on in the chapter 17. Paul is going to Thessalonica, then he's going to Berea, then he's going to Athens, okay? So Paul is preaching in Athens to the Epicureans and the Stoic philosophers, and these guys are like, yo, you got to talk to the Aeropagus. Now, I think this is so important. So what's going on is Paul has now been to a city, which is Athens, who he saw a city full of idols. So he goes to Athens and there's a bunch of false gods there, and he's talking to the Epicureans and the Stoic philosophers. Now, the Epicureans and the Stoics were slightly different. You see, the Epicureans, they wanted to solely pursue pleasure. And we'll get back to that. The Epicureans were so focused on pleasure. Now the Stoics, on the other hand, they were deeply moral, sincere people. They had moral dignity. They wanted everyone to be a quote-unquote good moral person, but they believed that God was everything and God was in everything. And so it's so fascinating. And now we get to here where they tell them, they're like, well, you gotta go to the Aeropagus. And so Paul goes to the Aeropagus, and he begins to preach this message in verse 22. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Aeropagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. Let's stop right there. So Paul is acknowledging that these guys are quote unquote religious people. Let's stop right there. I think we got a lot of religious people in America, but we don't have lovers of Jesus. We got a lot of people that are worshiping a whole lot of other things that want to be a good moral person, or maybe they're pursuing pleasure like the Epicurean. We got a whole lot of religious people, but not enough laid down lovers for Jesus, people that want intimate relationship with Jesus. So is that fascinating? You know, so many times we hear, oh, I'm not religious, I'm not religious, I'm not this, and look again, like Christianity is a religion. Religion means to bind yourself with someone. So yes, I want to bind myself with Christ. Yes, I am a Christian by religion, but there is this aspect of relationship that comes with Jesus. And he says, look, like there's no, there's like, you guys are religious people, but you guys are following the wrong thing. You know, it's fascinating, because even when we read in Proverbs, I think it's chapter seven or eight, and it talks about the seductive woman, the adulteress, sexual immorality, that imagery. The lady was like, I went to the temple, and I did sacrifices today in that passage. And it's implying, hey, there's people that claim to be religious, but they're not following Jesus. And so that's important. But he says, look, I found an altar to this particular god that they named the unknown god that you guys are worshipping. And he said, what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. And this is what he says, The god who made the world and everything in it, being lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. So let's stop right there. So now Paul is saying, look, this god that you guys have as the unknown god as an option over here is an altar. This guy, let me put some definition to him. The reason why you guys have him labeled an unknown god is because what these guys would do, all the idols they were built, is they're trying to conceptualize and confine god into an image so that they tangibly go, oh, that's god, that's god, that's god. And Paul is like, no, no, no, god is far bigger than what you can creatively imagine god to be. And I think that sometimes unintentionally we put god in a box. We think, oh, god doesn't heal today, or oh, no, god wouldn't do that. Or we say, oh, that's not loving. How do we know what the definition of, you see what I'm saying? Like, it's god is love, god is truth, god has always existed. He has never been created. Rather, he has always existed, and all things created have come from him. And so, this god that we worship in Christianity is far bigger than we conceptualize. It's like, look, you guys are trying so hard to fit god into this box or into this idol, but you guys have an altar to an unknown god. Let me tell you who he is, and so that's what he's describing. He's saying, Yahweh, this god, or in their terms, the unknown god, which would be Yahweh, has created all things. And then he says, he doesn't live in temples made by man, meaning you can't conceptualize him, nor he is served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life, breath and everything. Meaning, not only is it that they are doing an injustice by trying to form god into some sort of image that they can worship, but rather they're saying, this unknown god that they so worship actually gives life to everything, breath to everything, purpose to everything. And then it says, and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek god and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. So he is now quoting, not scripture, he's quoting some of the philosophers at that time, because they would understand, because there was truth in these statements that he could use to compel in a way that they could understand. Verse 29, being then god's offspring, he ought not to think that the divine being is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. Again, he's saying, you can't form god into an image, you can't confine him to an image. The times of ignorance god overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed the day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. And then it says when they heard some of it said that they'll read about it, some of them gave their life to Jesus, and the others of them mocked them. What is the point I'm getting to on this? Athens was a very wealthy and flourishing city. Athens was a very successful city. Athens had a lot of intellectuals in there. But what is the common denominator in Athens at the time period? Is that it was a godless city. What do you mean? There were gods everywhere. They were worshiping things and they were religious people. No, no, no, no, no. The true god. They were a godless city. And my big warning to America is that we are living in a time where we're worshiping AI or celebrities or people or money or status or all of these things rather than Jesus. And we claim Christianity as a label or a tag, but we don't fully follow him. The Bible says in Revelation 3, Do not be lukewarm in your faith, neither cold nor hot, for I will vomit you out of my mouth. You know, we talk about lukewarmness as if it's a thing, but really what the Bible is saying is lukewarmness is a deception of the devil to make people think that they're right with God just by doing enough or thinking that they can get enough of Jesus where they're holy in his eyes and get enough of the world where they can feel fine. Lukewarmness really doesn't exist. Satan owns the fence of lukewarmness. So either you love Jesus or you don't. And if you're lukewarm, you're really of the devil. And so we live in America right now where a lot of people claim that they worship lukewarmness or they worship other things. And I think we're worshiping other things than this unknown God. And the unknown God would be Jesus Christ. We're not worshiping him. We're turning to other things rather than Jesus himself. Why is that? Why are we turning there? And to my Gen Z listeners out there, why are we turning to other things than Jesus when you know the things that you're turning to or letting you down? And the reason why I'm being so hard on that to my Gen Zers is because we have access to so many things so quickly in such a big amount because of the Internet, because of our phones, because of devices. And so we have known very quickly that our vices aren't filling us and our vices aren't helping us. So if we know that, why do we keep turning back to them rather than Jesus? Why do we keep worshipping the other idols rather than God himself? Because we think for some reason that we can find hope in them. Little side note according to Act 17, let's talk about the Stoics because everyone wants to be a good person. Everyone wants to be a moral good person. Again, he is fighting the current to the Stoics by saying you can't be a moral good person if you don't have a standard to get the morality from. And our standard is Yahweh himself. Therefore, if you have no standard and you want to be a quote unquote good person, then actually your life has no purpose and meaningless. And rather, there is no moral standard at all, but feelings and feelings fluctuate. So my question to you across the screen right now, or whether you're watching or listening, is what are you living for? What are you worshiping? Don't be like the Epicureans and the Stoics and the people in Athens who are distracted by wealth, who are distracted by things, who are distracted by materialistic idols and things like that. You know, like our idols today aren't necessarily, you know, like a statue that we image like a golden calf. You know, there are religions that still do that. But still, our version of idol worship in America is not bowing down to a golden calf. Our version of idol worship is bowing down to the media, bowing down to celebrities, bowing down to things, bowing down to money, bowing down to food, bowing down to sex, bowing down to all these things. And you know what I'm really scared of? You know what I'm really scared for Americans? It is so hard to hear God in America because we are distracted by a lullaby of entertainment. We're distracted by a lullaby of lies. I got so convicted by two things. There was a documentary on the underground church of Iran called Sheep Among Wolves. It's on YouTube. It's free. And this lady who could be beaten, raped, and murdered for her faith said that after a certain amount of time that they would move back to the States and retire in California. So they get done, her and her husband go back to the States, and in less than five years, they move back to Iran where she could be beaten, raped, and murdered for her faith because she said it was unbearable to live in America. And that makes me go, wow, that's interesting because we're we're a country of a freedom of religion, you know, so shouldn't it be easier to worship Jesus? And she said, no, it was harder because she said that phrase. America is being rocked to sleep by a lullaby of entertainment. And that shocked me to the core years ago. And then recently, I've become friends with a guy named Charles, who's from Nairobi, Kenya. And we were sitting down one night while we were on our tour bus doing our live podcast tour, and he said, you know, Bryce, it is so hard to hear God in America. And I was like, wow, that's interesting. And he said, yeah, there's so much noise here. So much noise. Everyone's so distracted. Whereas when I'm back in Africa, I can hear God so clearly. And I don't think that's a coincidence. If the devil can't make you sin, he'll make you busy. In Acts 17, he's making all the people of Athens, the Epicureans and the Stoics, busy with idols, busy with knowledge, busy being a good person, busy with things. Distraction. And that's my warning. We're being distracted. That Satan doesn't have to necessarily reveal himself all the time in these demonic manifestations to Americans. Rather, he's sly, he's cunning. He knows that the best way to get Americans to fall away from Christianity is to actually distract them, overwhelm them, give them too many vices, give them too many things, give them vices that aren't inherently bad. Like, I've had to come to know, and this is something that I'm having a hard time with, but I've had to come to do this. I don't have social media on my phone, because social media has just not been a good thing for my heart. Not even just from the heart thing, from a practical thing like being distracted by social media and wasting so much time scrolling, rather than being intentional with friends, my wife, loved ones, family, being intentional with Jesus, because we're distracted. And here's the nasty thing about deception, is you don't know you're being deceived when you're being deceived. So let me tell you something right now. If you're watching or listening to this, you are being deceived right now. If you think, you can find satisfaction in the phone, in the pills, in the sex, in the money, in the status, in the Instagram followers, you're being deceived. And that's the nastiest thing about deception, is deception is sly, deception is seduction, deception is attractive, deception. You don't know you're being deceived when you're being deceived. And so there may be many of you listening to this who are being deceived, and you have no idea, but there's hope. Look at the message that Paul listens, that it gives to them at the end of the passage. He says this, sorry, let me flip there. He says this, the times of ignorance got, verse 30, the times of ignorance got overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed the day on which he will judge the world and righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. Right now, we are living in a gracious time, because you may be, you may be deceived right now, and there is hope for you still, because we are living in a time of grace where God hasn't turned yet, and so you and I have the opportunity to repent for the ways that we've turned against him, repent for the ways that we have slapped him in the face, that we spit on him. We have time to repent and turn from our ways out of love, saying, no, God, I love you. Your way is better. I'm trusting that you have my intentions on your heart, that you are thinking of me in a high manner, that you want to take care of me. And so yes, I'm repenting out of love, turning away from the things that I've once done and running towards you. We have time to repent, because it says in verse 31, he is fixed today. There will be a day where you take your last breath. There will be a day where you stand before an all-knowing God, and you can't blame shift your mistakes, because your actions, words, and thoughts will testify against yourself. Therefore, you and I have the opportunity right now to acknowledge, maybe we are being deceived, maybe America is being distracted by the devil, we're being distracted by vices, and we need to repent, turn from that, follow Jesus, and say, God, I'm sorry, forgive me. I'm turning and leaving that behind, because if we do not, in this life of grace, in this breath of grace, then you and I will be held accountable for every word, action, and thought. Therefore, you and I can't run away anymore. Then what? What's that going to be like on Judgment Day, standing before God and then going, oh, now I want to get right with him, because I can tangibly see him? I mean, what do we see in the Gospel of Luke with the story of the rich man Lazarus, when Lazarus is like, go warn my family about this, and he says, no, no, no, for they have the prophets. God has made himself very clear to the globe. But let me tell you something, God has made himself very clear, especially through America from the beginning. We founded this country on Judeo-Christian values. God has made himself very clear through this country, and we have zero excuse, zero excuse. And so my hope and my prayer for whoever is watching and listening to this, is that if you are being deceived, that you can repent and turn and follow Jesus wholeheartedly. Let me pray for us. Lord Jesus, we thank you, God, we love you. We pray Psalm 139, Lord, would you search our hearts and reveal to us the areas of our life that are causing us to sin. God, would you give us the strength in Matthew chapter six for the strength of your spirit to cut it off. Lord Jesus, we want you, we repent from any ungodliness, any deception. God, would you root out things in our lives that are causing us to be distracted. And Lord, we rebuke the devil in Jesus name. Lord, we love you. We thank you. It's in your name we pray. Amen.