Taking A Stand

"You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we would like to know what they mean."

- Greek philosophers to St. Paul, Acts 17:20

"Gravity may put planets into motion, but without divine power it could never put them in circulating motion around the sun. Therefore, I am compelled to believe in an Intelligent Agent behind it all."

- Issac Newton

When the Apostle Paul told the most famous philosophers in Athens, Greece about Jesus and the resurrection, some dismissed him as an airhead. But others said, "This is a new one on us. We've never heard anything quite like it. Where did you come up with this anyway? Explain it so we can understand" (Acts 17:19-20 The Message). So Paul, standing up against the Stephen Hawkings of the ancient world, in essence declared this...

"Man, you look at the heavens, at your own capacities to understand and to think and to love and to choose. So… as smart as you are… you think you are an accident? C'mon, man! You're smarter than that! It takes more faith to believe that the world came from nothing by nothing than it does to believe there is an Intelligent Designer behind it all.”

What requires more faith?... to take all the intricate parts and mechanisms and springs from a sophisticated Rolex watch… put all those pieces in a metal box… throw in a stick of dynamite… blow it up… A Big Bang… and as the smoke clears see a perfectly assembled Rolex watch operating flawlessly… Really?!... OR... to believe that there is an intelligent, compassionate Designer who created everyone and everything in a universe that can sustain life in such an amazing way?

Paul didn't talk about what he believed. He wasn't setting a system before his audience on Mars Hill. He wasn't even presenting a complicated grid for determining universal truth. Paul was simply telling them about a Jewish rabbi, named Jesus, who had died on a cross… a dead rabbi… who confronted him alive… personally and dramatically… on a road called Damascus, and revealed Himself as the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Paul was telling them that the Risen Christ Jesus who he personally encountered is the Truth they hunger for.

No bullet-proof theories, but a bullet-proof Savior, who existed before time… who created everything and everyone out of nothing… then entered into time. And, because of His love for us, rescued us from sin by dying on a cross, and then saved us from death by rising from the dead so we could live in a personal relationship with God the Father forever.

I know the truth today because a man named Paul took a stand yesterday. Who will know Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life tomorrow because you took a stand today? One time a young man came up to me after an Easter message in which I laid out all the benefits that are ours because Jesus is alive… and He said to me, "I don't believe in the Resurrection."

I looked at him and said, "Oh… but don't you wish you did?"

Pastor Harry

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