Acts 17: Truth in a City Full of Idols

In this episode of The Morning Charge, Joshua walks through Acts Chapter 17, where the gospel collides with culture, philosophy, and human reasoning.

Paul and Silas preach in Thessalonica, where some believe but others stir up riots fueled by jealousy. The mission continues to Berea, where the people search the Scriptures daily to verify the truth. Eventually Paul arrives in Athens — the intellectual capital of the ancient world — a city full of idols and philosophical debate.

Standing before the Areopagus on Mars Hill, Paul boldly declares the truth about the unknown God, explaining that the Creator of heaven and earth does not live in man-made temples and cannot be understood through human philosophy alone.

Some mock him.
Some walk away.
But others believe.

This chapter reminds us that the gospel is not intimidated by culture, education, or human intellect. Truth still stands when every other system fails.

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- Real Talk. Real Jesus. Real Life. -

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Morning Charge. This is your moment to slow down, breathe, and get your spirit aligned before stepping into the day ahead. Life moves fast, responsibilities pile up, voices compete for your attention. But before the noise of the world takes over, this is where we come back to what actually matters. This is a place for honest conversations about faith, life, purpose, and everyday battles we all face. No pretending, no religious performance, just the truth. Because following Jesus was never meant to be complicated. It was meant to be real. So whether you're driving to work, you're getting the kids ready, or simply taking a quiet moment for yourself, you're in the right place. This is Real Talk, Real Jesus, Real Life. This is the Morning Charge. You've got your sword with you today, the word, then uh let's go to that. So needed. Amen, Michelle. It is so needed here in our country. Amen. Bush, welcome in. Good morning, everyone. Trash man, thanks for those. Anything that I have missed on the screen, thank you for all of those things and stuff and for jumping in and haven't called you out by name. I apologize for that. Welcome into the morning charge. We're glad to have you here with us. All right, we're going to Acts chapter 17. We're going to start in verse one, and I have several things I'm going to break down for us. Different things that I think about along the way, different things that I look at and I go, hmm, I'm the guy that reads something, and I go, why? So, so let's see what kind of trouble Paul and Silas and Timothy and see what see what happens to them today. All right, Father, as we read this word, Lord, let these words be etched on our hearts. Lord, let them jump off the page to us today. Holy Spirit, come and move afresh in this new in this room today, Lord. Fresh eyes and fresh ears by way of the Holy Spirit. Let us pick this up and let us glean from your word right now in the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright. Here we go. Chapter 17, verse 1. After passing through the cities, and y'all know me in these names, I'm gonna do the best I can. Amphipolis, Amphipolis, oh my goodness, and Apollonia. Paul and Silas arrived at Thessalonica. Yay, one I can say. All right. This was this was the ancient capital of Macedonia, by well. So this was the capital of Macedonia, was Thessalonica. As they customarily did, they went to the synagogue to speak to Jews from the Torah scrolls. For three weeks, Paul challenged them by explaining the truth and proving to them the reality of the gospel, that the Messiah had to suffer and unalive, then rise again from among the unalive state. He made it clear to them, saying, I come to announce to you that Jesus is the anointed one, the Messiah. Now, we see, we see it says, and we're we're going through this, all right, but if you're new jumping in, or you just want to know, all right, as they customarily did, they went to the synagogue to speak to the Jews. That was the first folks that Paul went for, was the Jewish community. That's where he went first. All right, so how in the world did Paul and Silas, how did they get to speak in these synagogues? Did they get to, did they, I mean, do the synagogues just let anybody up there to speak? You know, they seem to be able to go in and say whatever that needs to be said. I mean, they are speaking from the Torah scrolls, but it was customary for them to be able to do this. All right, synagogues were local Jewish gathering places for reading the Torah. They gathered there for prayer, many discussions of the scripture. So all kinds of things happened there in the synagogues. Now, unlike the temple in Jerusalem, synagogues were decentralized and often allowed visiting Jewish teachers to speak. Okay? They came as Jewish teachers and they would allow them, visiting and passing through, to be able to speak. If a traveling rabbi or an educated Jewish man was present, leaders might invite him to give a word of exhortation. And we see that in Acts 13. All right, brothers, if you have a good word of encouragement, you know, stand up and give the word. That was Acts 13 and 15. All right, Paul, and we'll see later where it's explained, where he was trained under Gameleel. All right, so he was he was trained under a Jewish leader. He was a Pharisee, and he knew the scriptures deeply. So he wasn't just some guy off the street, okay? He was a trained Jewish scholar. So when he would walk into these places, that's where he would start. He would speak to the Jews from the Torah scrolls, and then he would speak to them for the next three weeks here, or three Sabbaths as it is in some of the other translations. And Paul began to challenge them, all right, explaining the truth. Amen. You're on chapter 13. Well, Sarah, right now we just pray, first and foremost, you got it those just right now, let the peace of the Lord settle upon you. Lord, I pray, Lord, you would bring the right open door in the name of Jesus that you would lead. You know, I saw I saw a video the other day of a gentleman that explained it like this. We get mad at the closed door. Sorry, y'all, we're gonna pause for just a moment and talk to Sarah. Sometimes when God closes a door, or when a door closes, no matter how bad the situation was, or how whatever the situation was, that must mean that God has something better for you. That means God wants you to go a certain direction. So I just pray right now, Sarah, get in his presence. Lord, I pray right now that you would just speak to Sarah right now where she's at. Even going through turmoil and these life events that you see right here, Lord, give her peace, give her love, give her strength. But Father, I store that you would speak clear direction. What do you have for her life that goes before beyond even just a job, but her purpose that's going to bring provision for her home? Right now we speak a blessing over her, Lord, and I pray, Lord, you would even surround people around her, Lord, to hold her up during this time as she goes through transition in the name of Jesus. Sarah, sometimes it's hard for us to see the forest from the trees. And actually, I got a post coming up on the book of Faces at some point. The Lord asked me to walk closer to the woods the other day and said, What do you see? And I'm, I mean, I'm like, ah, it's kind of hard to see in there. He said, Exactly. He said, But there's a way through this. He said, But most people are stuck at the entrance and they don't know how to navigate it because they can't see in there, and it's scary, and you don't know if you're going to be eaten or bitten by something, and you don't know what the other side may have on it, and it's very uncertain. But the Lord said, Move through, and then I will show you the way. So keep moving, Sarah. Don't you miss a beat. Okay? Don't you miss a beat. Well, we just pray the Lord bring you the support that is needed in the mighty name of Jesus. In the mighty name of Jesus. Right now, Lord. Amen. Y'all keep y'all keep praying for Sarah. All right. Y'all keep her on your on your heart as you pray this week, y'all. Thank you, Jesus. Paul began to challenge them, and he started explaining the truth and proving to them the reality of this gospel, that the Messiah had to suffer in unalive, right? He said, I come to announce to you that Jesus is the anointed one, the Messiah. He is the anointed one, the Messiah. Some of the Jews were convinced that their message was true. So they joined Paul and Silas, along with quite a few prominent women and a large number of Greeks who worshiped God. Alright, so there we we got a lot of we got a lot of people now that are listening to the good news. But there are some people that are listening and they they still don't get it. They still don't get it. Alright, verse 5 says, But many of the Jews were motivated by bitter jealousy, and they formed a large mob out of these troublemakers. Alright. Yeah, okay. These troublemakers, unsavory characters, and street gangs to incite a riot. So now the people who don't agree are pulling people together to cause some trouble, all right, and shake some things up. They sent out to attack Jason's house, well, this Jason guy. Well, who is Jason? Well, Jason appears here, and we see him very briefly, for now, in Thessalonica. All right, he's he's gonna host Paul and Silas, all right, and we're gonna see that when the mob couldn't find Paul, they're gonna go after Jason, okay? So, but but Jason, he was likely a Jewish believer. He was a he was he was a God fearer, he was one that feared the Lord. All right, he was he becomes a uh a house church host, but he was a respected resident here in this place. We see uh that officials take security money from him. So, I mean, if he's holding security money, then he must be a respected person in the land. So that's kind of who Jason was. And Jason, there's another Jason that's listed in Romans chapter 16, verse 21. Paul mentions a Jason there. It could have been the same man. We don't really know, but is it but is a possibility it could be this same guy? Because this guy's only mentioned here in this place. All right, so let's keep reading about Jason, though. I'm trying to give you a little backstory so we can see where we're at, okay? All right, so they set out to attack Jason's house, for he had welcomed the apostles into his home. The mob was after Paul and Silas and sought to take them by force and bring them out to the people. When they couldn't find them, they took Jason instead, along with some of the brothers in his house church. So they take in some of the members now, goodness gracious. And they dragged them before the city council. Along the way they screamed out, Those troublemakers who have turned the world upside down have come here to our city. And now Jason and these men have welcomed them as guests. They're traitors to Caesar, teaching them that there is another king named Jesus. So they're really just, I mean, and then verse nine, or verse eight, sorry, their angry shouts stirred up the crowds and troubled the city and all its officials. Now I want you to say, how important is your voice now? Because, see, the tone that is coming out from these troublemakers. I mean, because they were the true troublemakers, the ones trying to cause a riot, their tone and the way they're speaking and the language that they're using. Do you see how it began to stir up the atmosphere? Do you how speaking stirs up your atmosphere, either for good or for bad? There's no gray area when it comes to speech. So the angry shouts stirred up the crowds and troubled the city and all of its officials. So when Paul and Silas came before the leaders of the city, they refused to let them go until Jason and his men posted Jay uh posted bail. All right, so Jason and his men got to post bail. And that night, the believers sent Paul and Silas off to the city of Berea. All right, Berea was a city in Macedonia, about 45 miles from Thessalonic, so about a 45-mile journey. I mean, this is a long way to walk on foot, too, by the way. There was only so many modes of transportation. And we feel like they walked a good bit, okay? All right, this is where they once again went into the synagogue, because that's what they do. That's Paul's, that's Paul's jam. That's what he does. Verse 11, they found that the Jews of Berea were of more noble character and much more open-minded than those of Thessalonica. They were hungry to learn and eagerly received the word. Every day they opened the scrolls of Scripture to search and examine them, to verify that what Paul taught them was true. A large number of Jews became believers in Jesus, along with quite a few influential Greek women and men we see here. All right, the Greek word, and I'm gonna do my best. Ushman, E-U-S-C-H-E, M-O-N, Yushmon, also implies women of high standing, wealthy, honorable, elegant, and respected. All right, that that even that that even implies that comes from the strongest concordance, if you look that up. All right, so there were women of high standing here in this culture, and they also began to be believers in Jesus. When the news reached the Jews in Thessalonica, oh boy, that Paul was now in Berea preaching the word of God, the troublemakers went there. They went on this 45-mile journey because they got to stir people up again, and they agitated and stirred up the crowds against him. The fellow believers helped Paul slip away to the coast of the Aegean Sea, they believe, to the sea, while Silas and Timothy remained in Berea. Those who accompanied Paul sailed with him as far as Athens, and then Paul sent them back to Berea with instructions for Silas and Timothy to hurry and join him. So he sent instructions. Now, I want you guys to remember something because we can get caught up in we're going through chapter 17. So to us, this can feel like maybe just a couple of days. Okay, this could have been, this could have been weeks or months in certain cities that they stayed. Okay, this was this wasn't just like today we got up and tomorrow we, I mean, sometimes you'll see they had a vision and the next day they went, but how long they stay in these places, how long it takes them to travel places. I mean, traveling by foot, I mean, you could travel by foot, they say, all right, this is coming from history, what the historians have summarized. Traveling by foot, usually they went about 15 to 25 miles a day. That is a long walk, y'all. That's a long walk. And that would take a long time. All right, but they had sea voyages depending on weather. Remember that they they fled to the sea and they sailed to here or they they walked here. So they're walking and they're sailing. But this took weeks and months in certain cities between these trips. I mean, for example, in Thessalonica, Prahl, what, reasoned in the synagogue for three Sabbaths, right? It's what we read back in verse 2. All right, that's at least three weeks. So that's why it says three weeks. Acts doesn't mean everything is happening today and then tomorrow and we're done. We feel like all of this stuff has kind of compiled over our time span. I just want you to know in your mind, this this is this is a really long process. All right. And their forms of communication then were handwritten letters because what we just read here, Paul sent them back to Berea with instructions. All right, this translates out to be, or the Aramaic actually makes it clear that it was a written letter that was sent to them because that was, I mean, it's the only way that they could have done that. But they had handwritten letters, usually on on like some sort of parchment paper or paparaz paper, or however you say that. Curiers, trusted messengers would take these letters and deliver them. All right. Other forms of communication, all they had then was word of mouth. I mean, people speaking. They would uh they would post something in the middle of town saying there's a big announcement coming on this day at this time, and then they would have everybody come and they would shout to them, hear ye, hear ye. You see that on the old messages. Hear ye. That means listen up. I'm about to say something important. The king is requesting the that was their announcements. They didn't have TV, they didn't have radio, they didn't have the internet, they didn't have any of this. But one thing I want you to know the Roman road system was a huge major advancement for travel then, and it made it very easy for them to get back and forth, whether writing an animal of some sort or walking, all right, at least their infrastructure was pretty good. And so the, you know, that's why Christianity spreads so quickly there, according to historians. So I'm just giving you a little history lesson. All right, there's your history lesson for the day. That's likely 45,000 steps a day, trash man. Isn't that amazing? That's just craziness. Anyway, I just wanted to put that into perspective. This is the crazy things I think about when I look at this. I'm like, goodness gracious. They're sending letters, they're walking by foot, they're sailing in a boat using, you know, their compasses and things they had back then for like voyage travel. I was like, this is just amazing. All right, let's keep going. Verse 16. While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, probably for a little while, uh, his spirit was deeply troubled. It was deeply, or, or it could translate to be deeply pained. His spirit was very irritated when he realized that the entire city was full of idols. Athens, Greece. Think about Athens for a minute. Okay? Come on now. Now, obviously, this is going to be a place where there is going to be full of all kinds of idols and the Greek gods and all of these things. Okay, we're going. He argued the claim of the gospel with the Jews in their synagogue and with those who worshipped who were worshippers of God, and every day he preached in the public square to whomever would listen. Philosophers of the teachings of Epicurus and others called Stoics debated with Paul. Now, if you want to know a little bit about the Greek history, all right, Epicureans, found in Epicurus, they believed that gods were distant and uninvolved. The gods that they that they worshiped or they created as idols, they thought they were way off distant gods. Could can't speak to them, can't talk to them. They're there, we honor them, but they're there's no access. The goal of life to them was pleasure. Now, not just like wild indulgence in a bunch of whatever, but the goal of their life was pleasure. In other words, their their their definition of pleasure, excuse me, in this Greek culture was more so the absence of pain. Anything that brought pain, they stayed away from that. All right, that we're gonna live a life of pleasure. If it brings pain, oh nothing about it. All right. They avoid, they would avoid anxiety. They they would avoid the fear over unalivingness, anything that brought anything like that. So uh, but they but here's the deal. Paul's gonna begin to talk to them about the resurrection, and that's gonna spark something. I'm setting this up for you. All right, so they avoided this this fear, talking about you know, unaliving and all that. All right, the Stoics that we see here, they believed that God was an impersonable force, kind of the logos God. All right, they they lived by reason, they embraced fate. All right, so a little bit of the flip side of the coin here. They suppressed their emotions. They didn't really talk about their emotions, they would suppress them. They always had a real, you know, everything's good, everything's fine, we're good. And very, very, very staunch and very stiff. All right, but they did value virtue and self-control. So they had some good aspects to them, obviously just you know, worshiping false idols. All right. So Paul comes in, and now he's contradicting both systems because they both kind of see things a little differently. Let me find my place. Yeah, so philosophers of the teachings of the two, you know, Epicurus and others called the Stoics, they debated with Paul. Now remember, they're coming in debates with different viewpoints, too. So he's getting it from all different angles. When they heard him speak about Jesus and his resurrection, they said, What strange ideas is this babbler trying to present? Others said he's peddling some kind of foreign religion. So they brought him for a public dialogue before the leadership council of Athens, known as the Areopagus. Okay. I'm looking at my notes and looking at this too. I don't want to miss anything. Tell us, they said, about this new teaching that you're bringing to our city. All right now. Also, I want you to know the Areopagus, let's go back for a minute. It was a governing body of intellectuals who were the overseers of Athens. So this is the governmental body that oversees Athens. It was equivalent to the Board of Education, the City Council, the Ethics Committee, or the Council of Foreign Relations, and leaders of the religious and the philosophical communities all kind of rolled into one big thing. They controlled everything in the land, this government body. All right, the Areopegus, also known as Mars Heel, Mars or Ares was the Greek god of war. Remember, they had a lot of gods, y'all. A lot of a lot of idols. All right, it was it, but they were they were not simply, or this was not simply a location, but a gathering of a council of people overseeing the spiritual atmosphere of Athens. All right, it could be best described as the Greek temple of the people. Of human thought, if you will. Philosophers. We're very intellectual and we know what we're talking about because this has to make sense because this must be the way. But they they were the Greek temple of human thought. The Aramaic here actually says the house of religion, all right, when when it's referring to when it's referring to Athens, or the house of so the leadership council of Athens, the house of religion of Athens, the Ariel Pegus, all right, so they come out and they say, Tell us, they said, about this new teaching that you're bringing to our city. Paul always finds himself in front of the top of the top people in the places that he goes into. Usually starts off he's in trouble, but he stands up for the truth. And see, a lot of us can stand and say, I want to be influential to the political arena and to the, you know, to the, I want to speak to leaders. And I do you, okay, when you say, do you really want to be one that's like, I want to tell the truth to let's let's think about this for a minute. This was not a good position in the natural that you're looking at Paul. This is like, I mean, he could in any moment here. I mean, because they don't really like him. They want understanding, but they're but they're like, we've got to talk to this guy. So tell us about this new teaching that you're bringing to our city. You're presenting strange and astonishing things to our ears, and we want to know what it all means. Now, it was the favorite pastime of the Athens and visitors to Athens to discuss the newest ideas and philosophies. So this was sort of a pastime for them. Tell us. This is very interesting, this information that you bring to us. Once again, they're wanting to gain human knowledge, not knowing that this is something much deeper. All right. Everybody with me this morning, am I throwing too much at you? I'm trying not to. But we we have to understand the culture, and we have to understand why Paul had to do what he had to do and why he said what he said, and why they're saying what they're saying, and how does this make sense to me over here and doing what we're doing? How, how, how, how, how. All right. So Paul stood in the middle of the leadership council and said, Respected leaders of Athens, it is clear to me how extravagant you are in your worship of idols. For as I walked through your city, I was captivated by the many shrines and objects of your worship. I even found an instruction on one altar that read, To the unknown God. All right, well, that one, well, we don't really have a name for it, so well, well, we know it's there, so. Or to the hidden God is what it could be. That's just that's what I think about. I'm like, to the unknown, we don't know his name. I have come to introduce to you this God whom you worship without even knowing anything about him. The true God is the creator of all things. He is the owner and lord of the heavenly realm and the earthly realm. And he doesn't live in man-made temples. It is really raining outside here. You can probably hear that. Verse 25. He supplies life and breath and all things to every living being. He doesn't lack a thing that we mortals could supply for him, for he has all things and everything he needs. From one man Adam, he made every man and woman and every race of humanity, and he spread us all over the earth. He set the boundaries of people and nations, determining their appointed times in history. He has done this so that every person would long for God, feel their ways to him, and find him, for he is the God who is easy to discover. The Arameg says, investigating him and his creation, and the God who is not far from each one of us. He's here. He's here. It is through him that we live and function and have our identity, just as your own poets have said, our lineage comes from him. Just now he's it now notice he says he always tries to tie back in the land. Let me read that again. It is through him that we live and function, and we have our identity just as your own poets have said. Paul is quoting two very classical Greek writers here, all right, Aratus and Clinthes. Those are two that he's quoting here. All right, according to history, our lineage comes from him. So he's like, Your own poets have said, our lineage comes from him. So they've kind of picking up on a little bit of truth, but you guys are trying to make everything make sense. Once again, just like a separate sort of religious system, even though most of their gods were, you know, false gods, their gods were false gods, but they tried to come up with the human mind. This this goes beyond our human minds. Since our lineage can be traced back to God, how could we even think that the divine image could be compared to something made of gold or silver or stone sculpted by man's artwork and clever imaginations, all these things you keep creating here? We trace this all the way back to God. None of this is anything. In the past, God has tolerated or deliberately paid no attention to our ignorance of these things, but now the time of deception has passed away. He commands us all to repent and to return to God, that is, to turn away from idolatry and worship the true and living God. For the appointed day has risen in which he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has designated. And the proof given to the world that God has chosen this man is this He resurrected him from among the unalive state. Completely resurrected. The moment they heard Paul, this is 32, verse 32, all right, and we're and we're going to we're going to talk about this in a second. But the moment they heard Paul bring up the topic of resurrection, some of them ridiculed him, and then they got up and left. But others said, We want to hear you again later about these things. So Paul left the meeting. But there were some who believed the message and joined him from that day forward. Among them, all right, were D Dionysus, Dionysus, goodness help me, who was a judge on the leadership council, and a woman named Marius. All right, so we see, we see them here. Okay, so let's let's talk about something. That ends 17, but let's well, let me keep this open in case I need it. All right, let's dissect this for a minute and make sure we understand some things. Athens. Athens was the intellectual capital of the ancient world. All right, I just I want to make sure we get who we're talking to, who Paul is talking to, and what is going on, and what's this, this resurrection thing? They are just not about it. Well, we already heard this. They're they're kind of about it. But though they were politically diminished under Rome, all right, this was still the center of philosophy. Bunny, thanks for that cup of coffee this morning, friend. They were the center of philosophy. They were full of temples and a lot of false idols. All right, it was everywhere. It actually irritated Paul's spirit. We read that. All right, and this was the home of Mars Hill or Areopagus, as we see. Acts 17 and 16 says that Paul's spirit was provoked seeing all this. Athens was saturated with religion in its in its own sense of religion, but not the truth. This is another religious system we see, just like the Jewish religious system. This is another depiction of another religious system. All right. With all of this thinking, this is what the religious system, when we say we're done with religion, that means we're done with our human thinking. We're done with what us humans have put together to try to make things make sense. And we are now, we are now concentrating on the Holy Spirit that is within us, which begin to overthrow the religious systems. Hello. So when we say I want relationship, not religion, you know, a lot of people have been like, well, you got to keep your religion. No, no. This is goes beyond religion, okay? The religious systems have to be overthrown because it only goes as far as this. The Holy Spirit goes, oh, it takes you all the way and brings understanding to all of this and shows you how to live your life and walk when it doesn't make sense to this. Or is everybody picking up on what we're talking about as far as that goes? All right. I'm trying to make this, this is the ways I had to break it down so I could fully understand. I'm just a common dude that needs things are broken down on a level I can understand it and go, aha, this is what the word is saying. This is what Paul and all of these guys were trying to teach us all along, all about Jesus. All right. But Athens was saturated in its own religious system. No truth at all here. All right. At least the Jewish religious system had half the truth. They just didn't get the other half of where we were and how they were acting and what they were doing. All right, preaching here would be sort of like so. Paul going here would be like speaking at Harvard University, if you if you want to put it into, or going before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court at Harvard University and the UN all got together in one facility and pulled Paul in and said, Tell us more about what this is that you're that you're speaking about. Hmm. This is a little interesting. That would be like if all three of them came together now and you had to stand before them. If you had to stand before them and explain Jesus to them all the way to the resurrection, would you be able to? Would I be able to? This is interesting. All right. So then he begins to he begins to explain that everything goes back to God and how all these idols don't matter, and you know, God has tolerated things in the past, but now we're getting to a point now at which he is going to judge the world in righteousness based off of Jesus now and what Jesus has come to do, and this man that was resurrected, uh-oh. So why did resurrection really offend them? All right, the Greek word for resurrection is Anastasis. All right. Anastasis, I want you to know, was another God, by the way, to them. Anastasis. Resurrection in the Greek was Anastasis. Now they're confused. Okay, so some of them actually thought that Paul was preaching to gods now. So you're talking about Jesus and you're talking about Anastasis. Okay, but we don't. So I I'm almost thinking the ones that stayed were a little confused because I mean, this is just what scholars and people are. I'm I'm digging, I'm doing research here. So knowing that, those are the ones that, like, hey, can we talk about this at a later date is what they told him. This is interesting. All right, so let's, let's, let's, we want to hear you again later about these things. It's almost like we got to go talk about this. Like, what is he, you know, we want to hear more about this and we won't hear. But the ones that were completely offended and just got up and left, I mean, you got to remember there was a group of these that believed that the body was inferior. Like the sc the soul escaping the body was the most ideal thing. So now you're telling me this guy was like res like he's un like he's all re resurrected and now like flesh and and like I don't what are you talking about? Get out of here with your nonsense. All right, resurrection meant that the body, all right, was physically restored. Final judgment came. Okay. They were like, eh? And this began to offend both the Epicureans, all right. Remember, no afterlife, okay, and the Stoics, all right. They had their own outlooks on things. So this offended these groups. That's not how this works. I'm out of here. This is total, this is total hogwash. I'm sure they didn't say that. That's a Southeastern United States thing. They weren't buying it though. They weren't buying it. So, Paul left the meeting. Still lots of questions to be answered here. But there were a lot who believed the message. See, Paul was after the ones who would hear and who believe. He didn't care who he had to stand in front of, he didn't care what it was that he had to do. He knew that there would be some in that area that needed him. Amen. We see about yesterday, about the man in Macedonia. We saw that in chapter 16. He had the vision about the man that was crying out, We need you. He had that vision and he went. It wound up being the jailer. So he endured all that persecution, the beatings, the throwing in there, you know, getting thrown into prison just to have an encounter with God with the jailer. Are we willing to go through the sufferings and the things to have an encounter with Jesus with somebody? If God calls you to go, someone at all costs, are you willing to go? Are you willing to go? Sherry, have a good weekend, friend. We love you. Thanks for jumping in this morning. Are you willing? But there were some who believed this message. They joined him from that day forward. And among them, or Dionysus, all right, who is Dionysus? All right, Acts 17 and 34 says that Dionysus, the Areopagite, all right, once again, another member of this thing here. A member of the Areopagus Council, was now converted and knew Jesus. Brandy said, No, most want the oil without the journey. Most want the oil without the crushing. You realize if you don't crush olives, there is no oil. It's just an olive. If you want the oil, there has to be a crushing process. If you want the new wine, the grapes have to be crushed, and they have to go through the process to get there. Hello? There is a crushing that goes before something sweet. There is a crushing that comes before something pure. Are we willing to go through the crushing? Every time. No matter what. Yeah, we have to realize God God builds us through this journey. It has nothing to do with the destination. It has everything to do with the journey. These are the things we've got to be looking at. We've got to be looking at this, y'all. But Dionysus was high up in the Areopagus Council, now converted. I mean, this this person was a very intellectual authority figure in Athens. Alright, that's uh I mean he he lists these people out by name. I mean, these were these were high up two people that he that he began to mention, and then Demarius, all right, she was named, and she was most likely a prominent woman in Athian society. All right, possibly, possibly educated because I mean these these two were obviously educated, I mean, because of their position. I mean, women didn't just usually attend the Ariopagus debates like this. You had to be highly educated, philosophers, if you will. So this was a very highly educated lady, all right, and Luke puts them in the text here. So that means if they're coming alongside Paul, that means that the gospel is reaching political leaders in the land, influential women in the land, even everyday people in the land, all right. It didn't matter the social boundaries that were in place here. The gospel is reaching all people here. Not everybody's gonna pick up on it. Once again, everybody you minister to, not everyone's gonna pick up on it, but that's not your job. Your job's not to make sure everyone picks up on it, your job is to deliver the message because you're the messenger. And those that have eyes and ears of the Holy Spirit to listen and to glean from the words, those are the ones that will be changed. Those are the ones that will be changed. Amen. That's today's morning charge. Before you move on with your day, take a moment and let what you've heard settle into your heart. Faith isn't just something we talk about, it's something we live out in the ordinary moments of everyday life. Wherever today takes you, remember this. You don't walk into it alone. God is already ahead of you, working in ways you may not even see yet. Stand firm, walk in wisdom, lead with love, and don't forget who you belong to. Until next time, keep your heart anchored, keep your faith strong, and keep living out real talk, real Jesus, real life. We'll see you on the next morning charge.