Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: Let's take our Bibles this evening and open them to the seventeenth chapter of the book of Acts. Jesus, speaking to the disciples in Acts 1:8, says you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem. That's the first seven chapters of the book of Acts. Then you'll be my witnesses in Judea and Samaria, which are chapters 8 through 12. Then to the remotest parts of the earth, which are chapters 13 through 28, the larger third part of the book that we're in.

This consists of Paul's first missionary journey into southern Galatia in Acts 13 and 14. Then there's the Jerusalem Council in chapter 15, asking, "What do we do with all these saved Gentiles? Do they have to go under the law to join the church?" The answer was no, and that's what was dealt with in chapter 15. Then Paul launches on his second missionary journey from chapter 15:36 through chapter 18:22. This is what the second missionary journey looks like, and that's what we're in the midst of studying.

It begins with an old-fashioned argument between Paul and Barnabas leading to a split. Paul and Silas, and then later Timothy, move into Southern Galatia, while Barnabas and John Mark head to the island of Cyprus. They kind of fall off the radar screen because Luke is tracing Paul. Do you mind if I tell your joke? It was so funny, and this schism brings it up.

There's a Baptist and he's stranded on a desert island for five years or something. He finally gets rescued and the guy pulls up to rescue the Baptist on this desert island, and he sees two Baptist churches. He says, "What are these two churches doing here?" He said, "I built the first one and then I split away and built the second one." I thought that was funny. That's the problem of telling a good joke right before Bible study. That schism between Paul and Barnabas is what reminded me of it. No picking on our Baptist friends; we love you guys. It was just part of a little sense of humor there.

Then he moves into Syria and Cilicia in chapter 16. Then there's the Macedonian call, "Come over to Europe and help us," which he does. The missionary team at this point is Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke. There's the Philippian ministry, Luke is left behind in Philippi, and the team moves into Thessalonica. There's the Thessalonian ministry in chapter 17:1-9, the Berean ministry in chapter 17:10-15, all of this we've studied, and now we're in the Athens ministry.

The Athens ministry has three parts to it. Number one, Paul's witness in Athens, which we studied last time in verses 16 through 21. This is where they accuse Paul of being a babbler and teaching some strange doctrines. They take him to the place called the Areopagus. I've actually been there and stood there. It's a place where itinerant speakers could come and get a hearing. It wasn't really a pulpit as much as it was a classroom where people would advance their ideas and people could refute, respond, etc.

This leads to an amazing speech that Paul gives there on Mars Hill in what is known as the Areopagus in Athens, Greece, in verses 22 through 31. The third part of the Athens ministry is the Athenians' response to Paul's message, as we'll see in verses 32 through 34. Tonight, we're just going to start his speech there on Mars Hill. What did he say?

Notice the location in chapter 17:22. It says, "So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus." This is a different evangelistic strategy than what Paul used in Thessalonica and Berea. When he was in Thessalonica and Berea, he went to the synagogue first. When he was in the synagogue, he opened what we call the Old Testament, better known as the Hebrew Bible, sometimes called Tanakh. He was with people in the synagogue, both in Berea in chapter 17:10 and then Thessalonica in chapter 17:1-2, who were either Jewish or they were what you would call proselytes, Gentiles that had converted to Judaism. These were people that respected the Old Testament and respected its authority, so he would try to show them that their own Hebrew Bible, the Scriptures, which were really the only Scriptures that existed up to this point in time, predicted Jesus.

You have to understand you don't have a New Testament yet. The only New Testament books that had been written thus far are Galatians, probably James, maybe Matthew, but other than that, you don't have a completed 27 New Testament book canon that we know. If he's going to preach from the Bible and preach from the Scripture, he's got to preach from what we call the Old Testament. He would use the Old Testament to show them that Jesus is predicted in the Hebrew Bible.

Acts 17:1-2 says, "Now they traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia and they came to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews and according to Paul's custom," meaning this is how he normally operated. This was standard operating procedure. My pen does not want to cooperate with me today. Let's try it again here. There we go. Except it's got the red color. I know there's a way to change the color on this. How do you change the color, Michael? Where it says ink color, let's try that. There we go. That doesn't look too bad. We do a lot of ad-libbing here in case you guys hadn't noticed. There we go.

According to Paul's custom, which means his habit, he would use the Hebrew Bible to show Jesus. If you look at verse 2, he's doing that, and then in Berea in verse 10, he's doing that. Here it's different; he does not use the Hebrew Bible to evangelize, which he will do in this speech he gives on Mars Hill. Why does he not use the Hebrew Bible here like he used it the prior two times in Acts 17? The answer is he's dealing with a different audience. He's dealing with people that are Gentile pagans. If you opened the Hebrew Bible to them, it proves nothing. He does not start with the Hebrew Bible; he has a different evangelistic strategy depending on who he's talking to. That's really important. How you evangelize, the message is the same obviously, but your starting point comes from who it is you're talking to and what kind of authority base they accept.

Instead of starting with the Hebrew Bible, he starts with something called General Revelation. There's a big difference between General Revelation and Special Revelation. God has spoken in two ways: Special Revelation, meaning His Word. What if people don't accept the Word of God? There's another way He's spoken; it's what we see all around us, it's creation itself. There's an obvious design in creation, so there must be a designer, and that's what we call General Revelation. That's why his starting point here at the Areopagus is General Revelation, not Special Revelation.

General Revelation examples of it would be things like nature, Romans 1, conscience, Romans 2:14-15. Everybody knows the Ten Commandments, whether they've ever read them on a wall, in a book, or in a Bible or not, because they're written on the hearts. That's called conscience. Everybody knows God exists because there's an obvious design in our universe. You can't have a hurricane going through a junkyard and assembling a 747. If you have a 747, somebody obviously put it together. We're living in this world that's fine-tuned and intricately designed.

David in Psalm 139 said, "I'm fearfully and wonderfully made." No two snowflakes are the same. Vocabulary is changing all the time. I say all the time, "let's go ahead and transition," and then I say, "oops, I wish I hadn't said that." I've got to use "segue" instead of "transition." No two snowflakes are the same; no two people's fingerprints are identical of the 8 billion-plus people on planet Earth. In fact, we're traveling around the sun at a huge velocity. We're not so close to the sun that we burn to death, and we're not so far from the sun that we freeze to death. We orbit around the sun at exactly the right distance to sustain life. Anybody that thinks this through can see somebody bigger than us put all of this together, and that's called General Revelation.

Special Revelation is something more specific, like the incarnation of Jesus, God becoming man, the 66 books of the Bible that we have called the Scripture, or a specific miracle that God might do. General Revelation is available to everybody; Special Revelation is available to some people. What does General Revelation do? It cannot save you. What it can do is it gives you the information necessary to search for God because it shows you that you're accountable to something bigger than you. If a person's heart is open, God will send him the Special Revelation that he or she needs to be saved. General Revelation by itself can't save anybody. You can't get saved by looking at rocks and trees and things like that because it doesn't have the specific information in there that we need for gospel salvation.

It can make you accountable to search for truth, like Cornelius was searching for truth and God sent him Peter, Acts 10. The Ethiopian eunuch was searching for truth and God sent him Philip, Acts chapter 8. It makes you accountable, and the problem with the natural man many times is he takes the obvious revelation of God in creation and he suppresses it. Once you start doing that, then you have problems because God isn't going to send you any more revelation. If you can't accept the General Revelation, what are you going to do with the message of the gospel? You would reject that as well.

The natural man's ambition is to suppress what God has created. The moment you believe there's something bigger than you out there is the moment you believe you're not God and you're accountable to something higher than yourself. You're accountable to search for truth, and the natural man doesn't want to do that. He wants to be on the throne of his own life, so he has this incredible Herculean task of explaining away creation without the Creator. Every generation has tried to do this; it's just in our time period the theory of evolution is the escape valve. It's not science; it's a suppression of truth.

They suppress the truth in unrighteousness because what is known about God is evident within them; that's conscience. That's Romans 2:14-15. There's a barometer inside everybody, a standard of right and wrong because God has taken His law and written it on people's hearts. That's why you listen to these psychologists and they say there's a big problem with people: people feel guilty. I'm thinking you know why they feel guilty? Because they are guilty. The reason they're guilty is because God put His law in their hearts and they either honor His law and conscience excuses, or they violate God's law and conscience accuses.

What's kind of scary about conscience is you can go so far in rejecting it and rebelling against it that it loses its power after a while. Paul in 1 Timothy 4:2 talks about people having their consciences seared as with a hot iron. You lose your feeling; you don't feel guilty anymore about stuff. We had a situation in California where a guy strangled two kids to death. His name was Robert Alton Harris. Then he sat down and finished their lunches, their McDonald's hamburgers, after he strangled the kids to death. That was a big deal in the 90s because California was bringing back the death penalty to put this guy to death, which I supported because I think the institution of capital punishment is biblical.

But what do you do with a guy like that? He's so depraved and he's violated his conscience so many times the concept of guilt isn't there anymore. You don't blush anymore. You're walking on the beach and you feel pain in your foot, and that's a good thing because the pain tells you that there's glass under the sand. If you keep walking on the beach, you're going to destroy your feet. The pain says, "put some shoes on" or "get off the sand." It's like having your hand on a hot stove and all of a sudden it hurts and you yank it off there. Your pain there is your best friend. If you didn't have that pain, you'd keep your hand there, you wouldn't know the difference, and your hand would be destroyed. That's how conscience functions. God has given humanity a conscience and you can sear it, which is what's troubling.

Men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, there's General Revelation in creation. His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made, so that men are without excuse. People have an obligation to search for God because God has already disclosed His existence. Whether they know anything about the Bible or ever heard a preacher or ever been to church, they instinctively know there's something higher than themselves out there, and that's the function of General Revelation.

When Paul is in front of a pagan audience, not in the synagogue, this is the Bible he appeals to: General Revelation, which is a Bible. It's just a different method that God has used to speak. You might remember when Paul was in Lystra, Acts 14:15-17, he tipped his hand as to what his strategy would be with unregenerate Gentiles. He would appeal to General Revelation as a starting point. It says in those verses, "Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to serve a living God."

He doesn't quote any Hebrew Bible directly, but he says things like, "who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In generations gone by, He permitted the nations to go their way. Yet He did not leave Himself without a witness in what He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." See how he's appealing to the weather and creation and things like that? He uses that as a springboard to preach Jesus. Very different than when he's in the synagogue; he uses Hebrew Bible to preach Jesus.

That's why Paul's doing what he's doing here at the Areopagus on Mars Hill. As he starts to give his speech, he gives their introduction there. He starts describing his audience. Verse 22, he says, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects." Very religious means he says, "Maybe you guys know nothing about Christianity and maybe you don't want anything to do with the synagogue, but you guys are very religious people. You're pious, you're religious, and you're superstitious." That's his springboard into truth.

He gives an evidence of why he described the audience this way in verse 23. "For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar to this description: To An Unknown God." "Hey, I was just passing through Athens before they brought me here to the Areopagus, and I saw a pagan altar, and it was addressed to the unknown God." The Greek there is *agnosto*, where we get the word agnostic, *theo*. The alpha prefix is like a negation, so an agnostic, *gnosis* meaning knowledge, an agnostic is someone that says "without knowledge." It's where we get the word agnostic from, it's where we get the word ignoramus from.

That's always an interesting thing to pull out of your toolbox when you're debating an agnostic because they come across very knowledgeable. "I'm an agnostic," and I'm like, "Well, do you know what you just said is you're an ignoramus?" Pray before you use that tactic. I use it because I've been dealing with the same people in my extended family that pride themselves on being agnostics.

Paul says, "I was traveling through, I saw this pagan altar, and you're worshipping some kind of God, but you have no idea who this God is." That's what the inscription "to an unknown God" on this pagan altar means. From that, Paul says, "I'm going to describe from unknown to known. I'm going to make you aware of who God actually is that you apparently are out there interested in or you wouldn't have this pagan altar dedicated to this unknown God."

He gives an introduction to this in verse 23. He says, "Therefore what you worship in ignorance," which is really what their inscription on their pagan altar was: to an unknown God. They're admitting their ignorance. Ignorance is different than stupidity. Ignorance is you don't have the information; stupidity is you can't understand the information even if you had it. He's not insulting these people at all; he's not questioning their intellect. He's just saying, "You don't know what you don't know, and you're searching for this God that you apparently think exists. You're admitting that you really don't know much about Him."

That becomes his springboard to saying, "Let me tell you about Him." Verse 23: "Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you." From there, he starts giving the characteristics of the true God. He gives here a wonderful theology lesson and he describes here five things about God. Number one, God is the Creator, verse 24. "The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not dwell in temples made with hands." "You are searching for a God that you're admitting you don't know much about. Let me tell you about the true God," and the first thing he mentions is the doctrine of creation.

When he mentions the doctrine of creation, he's aiming his theology at the misguided belief of the Stoics. If you go back to verse 18, it talks about how the Epicureans and the Stoics were conversing with him. We described who those groups were last time. You'll notice that Paul is bringing up things that their particular philosophers were wrestling with. Paul, as he's sharing, is very sensitive to what his audience thinks and believes philosophically.

The first characteristic of God is that God is the Creator and the source of life. When Paul stated that God made the world and all things therein, he used Stoic language because this argument was aimed towards the Stoics. He challenged certain Greek ideas such as the demiurge created the universe. Furthermore, the fact that the Creator brought all things into being proved that matter did not exist eternally as they believed. This is something that makes the Christian worldview different; we don't believe matter has always been. What we believe is *ex nihilo* understanding of creation. *Ex nihilo* means "something out of nothing." There was nothing, and then God spoke and something came into existence, Genesis chapter 1:1-3.

This is very different than what you get in other belief systems where there's always some kind of preexisting matter or preexisting system that just kind of got shaped and molded. That's not what the Christian worldview says. The Christian worldview is *ex nihilo*; there was nothing, and then God spoke it into existence. You can't worship matter, you can't be a materialist, because there was a time in which matter didn't even exist.

Furthermore, the fact that the Creator brought all things into being proved that matter did not exist eternally as the Stoics believed. Paul declared that one God made everything, which contradicted the idea of a pantheon with a god of this, a god for this, and a god for that. A god for the sun, a god for the stars, a god for the moon, a god for the grass, a god for the animals. Paul is contradicting all of that and saying one God brought everything into existence. Then Paul said that this God is not only the Creator of the universe but also the Lord of heaven and earth. God is the owner and the absolute possessor of both heaven and earth, not just parts of them. He does not dwell in temples made with hands like the Parthenon in Athens. Right next door, when you go to Athens, Greece, there's the Athenian Parthenon, which is a giant temple. What he's saying here is God is not living in that temple that you guys built over there, which is right next door. He doesn't dwell in temples; he supersedes these things. He's the Creator of the heavens and the earth.

Stephen, in his speech in Acts 7 as he was being stoned to death—he was the first deacon and he was stoned to death, so those of you that want to be deacons, you might want to think twice about that—Acts 7:48, this is what Stephen says as they're getting ready to throw rocks at him to the point of death. It says, "However," Stephen speaking, "the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands, as the prophet says: Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool of my feet. What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord, or what place is there for my repose? Was it not my hands which made all things?" So the first thing to understand about God as he's speaking to these pagans is he's the Creator.

The second thing to understand about God, number two, is He is sufficient, that's in verse 25. What does that mean? He does not need man for His own happiness. It's not like He created us because He was lonely, as I've heard some preachers say. "Poor God just wanted a pal." He was all by Himself for all those billions of eons of eternity and He just needed someone to hug and He needed a pal and He needed a friend. They kind of portray it like somehow God needs man, but that's not who God is. He is sufficient in the sense that He doesn't need anything. He doesn't need man at all.

Verse 25, Paul gets that out. He says, "nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things." It's not like He needs us, but we sure need Him. In fact, we are dependent upon Him, Paul seems to be indicating here, for our very next breath. The reason you woke up this morning and your heart was palpitating and your respiratory system was working is God allowed it. At any point in time, God can say that's enough and shut the whole thing down. This is the whole issue of Daniel confronting the last king of Neo-Babylonia, a guy named Belshazzar. The handwriting on the wall chapter. The guy who took the vessels from the temple, remember, and had a big alcoholic bash there in Babylonia.

When Daniel, around age 80, confronted him, he says this, Daniel 5:23: "but the God in whose hand are your life, breath, and all your ways, you have not glorified." Here you are partying on as if there's no tomorrow, doing sacrilegious things with the vessels of God, thinking you're invincible. Your very life and your very breath and your very ways are in His hands, and that God you won't glorify. That's why it appeared on the wall, *MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN*, which was a prophecy that tonight your kingdom is going to be divided and you'll be killed, which is exactly what happened to this descendant of Nebuchadnezzar, this ruler Belshazzar who should have known better because he had the record of his father or grandfather Nebuchadnezzar and how he was humbled and turned into an animal for seven times. Now he humbled himself. Belshazzar knew all that, but he wouldn't humble himself before God even though his life and his breath and his ways were in God's hands.

That's what Paul is getting at here. God is totally sufficient. We don't need Him—or I should say we do need Him, He doesn't need us. Then he communicates not just that God is the Creator, but He is the Creator of the human race. You see that in verse 26. "And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries," uh oh, "of their habitation."

Two things here in verse 26. He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, meaning all humanity owes its origin to the first man, Adam, the first couple, Mom and Dad so to speak, Adam and Eve. All of humanity, regardless of where they're living on planet Earth, can trace their lineage back to Adam and Eve. Paul later in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 says, "for since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive." Our heritage all goes back to the first man by way of creation and also by way of original sin. His sin, as our head, affected all of us.

Romans 5:12 says, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned." We are all one in Adam by way of creation; we are all one in Adam, the first Adam, by way of original sin. Which means what? The concept of race or races, people use that expression all the time. This race, that race. Biblically, there's no such thing. There's no such thing as different races. There's one race, right? The human race. We're all equal in the sense that we're all made in God's image as human beings, regardless of skin pigmentation or what part of the world we happen to live on or in.

We're all equal in that sense, we're all equal in the sense that we owe our heritage to Adam, and we're all equal in the sense that we're all guilty under original sin. The whole human race is connected to Adam in that sense. When you understand that, it gets rid of the concept of racism. You cannot be a racist as a biblicist; it's impossible. You can't look at another ethnicity as inferior and deserving to be subjugated because they're from the same Adam I'm from. Racism is dead.

Now, Charles Darwin wrote his book, *The Origin of Species*, 1859. This is the reprint; see, it says third edition at the top. It says, "Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection." Everybody reads that and says, "What a beautiful scientific tome." When the truth of the matter is what this guy said and did was racist to its core. Did you know that? How do I know that? Because here is the original edition of what was published in 1859. What I just read to you there was the third edition. Here's what the original edition said, 1859. Here's the full title, which was conveniently clipped out of the subsequent editions. Here's what the whole title says: *On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,* that's where the other one, the revised or subsequent edition stops. But there's more. *Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.*

Doesn't that seem mildly racist to you? Favoured races. Why is he saying favoured races? Well, because in evolution, we came from the goo to you by way of the zoo over billions of years. Some people are further evolved than others. See that? The white race is more sophisticated than the black race because the black race is not as highly evolved and is closer to the monkey than is the white race. If you want to attack racism, which we should, that's where you attack it. Biblically, you cannot be a racist; it's impossible. But you sure can be if you're an evolutionist.

Get the movie, the Ben Stein movie, called *Expelled*. Great subtitle: *No Intelligence Allowed*. It's a documentation of what happens to creationists in secular academia when everybody else gets wind that they're a creationist. Their grants disappear, their careers are destroyed, they don't get tenure, they don't get published. It's like professional suicide. There's a section at the end where they're talking about the Nazis and exposing what the Nazis did in the Holocaust. At the core of Nazi ideology was Darwinianism. The Nazis told everyone that the Jewish race needs to be subjugated and exterminated because they're lower on the evolutionary scale than is the Aryan race. See that?

Henry Morris, the progenitor of the young earth creationist movement, has a book out on this. It's not a science book, although he wrote a ton of science books, but it's dealing with these kind of sociological issues. It's called *The Long War Against God*. If you're looking for something to read, a great reading project to invest yourself in, *The Long War Against God* by Henry Morris will document this and show you how evolution is behind racism, evolution is behind Nazism, evolution is behind slavery in America, evolution is behind the Jim Crow South, and a host of other things that you may have not even thought about. Evolution is behind communism because Karl Marx dedicated one of his most popular or influential volumes called *Das Kapital*, he dedicated it, Karl Marx, the founder of communism, which has killed hundreds of millions of people.

If you don't think communism killed hundreds of millions of people, there's another book you need to read called *The Black Book of Communism*. It documents all of the total atrocities that were committed in the 20th century under the doctrine of communism. The communists killed way more people than the Nazis, but we know about the Nazis because we had the Nuremberg trials where the Nazis were put under a spotlight and were tried by international law. We never did that with the communists, so the communists kind of slip under the radar. People don't think communism is that bad; the youth of today are brainwashed to accept socialism and communism. A lot of them think it's cool and they have no understanding of the history of this in the 20th century because we never had a Nuremberg trial exposing communism. But evolution is behind communism. What I mean by that is it's the philosophical basis for communism, it's the philosophical basis for Nazism, and it's the philosophical basis for racism, as is evidenced by the full title of Charles Darwin's book, *The Origin of Species*, where the subtitle is clipped and no one even knows it's there anymore. But it's there in the original. This guy was racist absolutely to the core.

It's funny listening to people trying to blame racism on Christianity. What? Christianity, you can't be a racist because we all are equal because we all owe our heritage to Adam. But if you're tracing the origin of people back to animals, you could easily say "that group's closer to the animals than others, they're under-evolved," so what's the problem of putting them in chains? It's no different than putting an orangutan in a cage at the zoo. Chapter 17:26 is huge, what Paul is saying here. God is the Creator of the human race where our lineage all goes back to one man, Adam. Totally diametrically opposed to what the philosophies of the day are. You as a parent and a grandparent need to start talking to your kids and your grandkids about things like that because they're not going to hear it anywhere else unless they go to a church like this where we talk about stuff like that. Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa need to get off the couch, get equipped, get into the game, and get involved in the worldview wars.

Paul makes a radical statement here: He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth. Now watch this: "having determined the appointed times and the boundaries," uh oh, "of their habitation." Doesn't that sound like borders to you? Borders, boundaries, nations. You mean God created all of that? Of course He did. Goes back to the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11:1-9, where they were trying to build a stairway to heaven under Nimrod. They said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves." Sounds like a humble endeavor, right? "Otherwise, we will be scattered abroad over the face of the earth."

When you look at Josephus, a first-century historian, and his commentary on this, what he says is they were trying to build a tower so high into heaven that if God were to ever dare send a flood again, they would be impervious to the flood. What they were trying to do, if Josephus is right, is they were building a New World Order, which is a one-world system of government, religion, and politics which excludes God. We don't want anything to do with God. God, you know the historical account—when we say story, we make it sound like it's Jack and the Beanstalk or something. This is real history that happened.

The Lord said, "if they keep doing what they're doing, now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them." If there's only one government on the face of the earth and it falls into the wrong hands—and it was already in the wrong person's hands, a guy named Nimrod, whose name is mentioned in the Bible, Genesis 10:8-10. By the way, his name in Hebrew means revolt or rebellion. Think if there's one government on the face of the earth and it's controlled by somebody that hates God. Think of the evil that could be done, the totalitarianism that could be imposed, the enslavement that could be imposed.

God confused the language, scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore, the name is called Babel. *Bab* means gate in Hebrew, and you know what *El* means: it means God. They were trying to build a gateway to God, a stairway to heaven, they were trying to become a god themselves: heaven's gate. It's kind of a play on words because they couldn't cooperate with each other anymore because they're all speaking different languages. As they were trying to build, it looked like their co-laborers were babbling.

This is where the doctrine of individual nations came from. Each similar-speaking people group settled in their own region: different ethnicities, different nations. Not different races—don't say they're different races because there's one race, the human race—but different ethnicities, different nationalities, different nations. God wanted it this way because it decentralizes power. As long as they couldn't cooperate with each other, they couldn't build their New World Order, and if they couldn't build their New World Order, they couldn't bring in under Nimrod totalitarianism.

By the way, America's founding fathers did the exact same thing with the three branches of government that we have: the executive, the legislative, the judicial, which are the only three ways political power can be exercised. If you want to know where those came from, you'll see them mentioned in Isaiah 33:22: "the Lord God is our king" (executive power), "the Lord God is our lawgiver" (legislative power), "the Lord God is our judge" (judicial power). Legislator makes the law, executive enforces the law, judicial interprets the law. Our founding fathers said separate them, because if one person gets control of all three who happens to have a sin nature, then that person will lead the country into tyranny. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay wrote the *Federalist Papers*, which are explanations of the original intent of our Constitution trying to get the citizens of New York to ratify the Constitution. They said the moment you intermingle two of the three branches in any way is the moment you have tyranny. Our founding fathers set up everything so it would be inefficient and not one person could get control. When you're watching cable and you hear some announcer say, "Nothing's getting done in Washington," I say, "Praise God!" That's the way it's supposed to be. If you want to live in a country where everything gets done fast, I'd recommend Iran or somewhere like that; they get stuff done real fast there.

That's where nations came from. Genesis 10:32: "these are the families of the sons of Noah according to their genealogies by their nations, and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood." Deuteronomy 32:8: "when the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the people according to the numbers of Israel." God is the author of the individual nations.

What do you need for a nation? If you're going to say we're going to have a nation, what do you have to have? You've got to have four things. This is called the *sine qua non* (without which there is none) of a nation. You take away one of those things, you don't have a nation anymore. You've got to have a common currency, a common language, a common culture, and what else is being debated in our country all the time: enforceable national borders. If you take away one of those four, you don't have a country anymore. People that are saying let's keep the border open, you're denying America as being an independent nation. That's what Paul's talking about when he says the boundaries of their habitation. God created borders and nations.

Megan Basham says, "Scripture does not require us to sacrifice national sovereignty. In fact, Acts 17:26 tells us that God marked out our appointed times in history and the boundaries of our lands. The Lord is not opposed to borders; He invented them. Nor does this command require us to abandon good sense and prudence when setting limits for how many immigrants we admit and what qualifications we use for doing so." If you take that away, then you're saying we're not a country. God created countries and nations.

What was His purpose in this? Verse 27: why did God create the borders of their habitation? "that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us." God gave all of the nations the General Revelation that people would need to seek God, but God created these different nationalities and nations and didn't want the human race to be sucked into totalitarianism, which is what they were trying to do at Babel, so that people would have the freedom to seek God, follow the light of General Revelation, and thus be open to Special Revelation.

Notice that people have the ability to seek God. Does it say that? "that they would seek God." That means people can seek God. Amen? What do you do with this one? "There is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God." That's the Calvinist's favorite verse; this is on their Christmas cards. John MacArthur says because we are dead to God, we are dead to truth, righteousness, peace, happiness, and every other good thing, no more capable to respond to God than a cadaver, that's a corpse. We are spiritual zombies, death walkers, unable even to understand the gravity of their situation; we're lifeless. That's how the Calvinist looks at people: they're in inability. God regenerates the elect first and gives them the gift of faith, and everyone that's not of the elect are left in a lifeless state. You're just like a rock; you can't respond to God just like this desk right here. This desk is lifeless; it has no ability to respond to God unless God does a miracle on the front end. They get this by quoting Romans 3:11 over and over again.

Yet, I just read you a verse in the Bible where God set up nations that they would seek God. Why would Paul say that and then later in Romans say that no one seeks God? If we're left to our own devices, we wouldn't seek God, but we're not left to our own devices. God has given us light. He's given us the Holy Spirit's conviction which goes out into the whole world, John 16:7-11. He's given us His Word, He's given us the gospel, He's given us the light of creation (Romans 1), He's given us the light of conscience (Romans 2). People have the ability now, with these graces built into our universe, to seek God.

That's what Paul means in Acts 17:27. When he says in Romans 3:11 "no one seeks God," it's man in his natural state without all this stuff I have on the screen here. We do have people in the Bible that are seeking God. One of them is named Cornelius, Acts 10:2. Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a devout man and one who feared God with his whole household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually. That guy looks like a believer to me, but he wasn't. I know he wasn't because the next chapter gives us the chronology of his salvation. He didn't become a believer until Peter was sent to him with the gospel. Acts 11:14: "he, Peter, will speak the words to you by which you, Cornelius, will be saved," which means when he was doing all this other stuff—devout, feared God, giving alms, praying to God—he was unsaved. What was he doing? He was seeking God to the best knowledge he had, which is General Revelation. Because he wasn't suppressing the obvious, God sent him Special Revelation through Peter. That's why Peter in his epistle says God doesn't want anyone to perish but all to come to repentance, because he was like on the ground floor as this God-seeker, Cornelius, a Gentile, was unsaved yet seeking God.

That's why God set up these borders and these boundaries and these nations. Who is God? He's the Creator, He's sufficient, He's humanity's Creator. We owe all of our heritage back to Adam. God is the one that created the different nations and God had a purpose in it: that people might seek Him in their own nation under the non-tyrannical Tower of Babel atmosphere.

Father, we're grateful for Your truth, Your Word, and thank You for Paul and his address there on Mars Hill. Help us to grow in our understanding of these things. We'll be careful to give You all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name. God's people said, "Amen." If you got to pick up your kids, you're free to do so. If you've got questions or comments, we could take those.