One Sermon
I taught from Acts 17 this morning, and I noticed something I haven’t noticed before. Paul’s presentation of the Gospel in Athens follows a pretty neat theme of “one.”
- One God & Creator (vv. 24-25)
- One Man (v. 26)
- One People (v. 26)
- One Search (v. 27-28)
- One Message, “Repent” (vv. 29-30)
- One Judgment (v. 31)
- One Savior (v. 31)
Some scoffed, some were curious, and others believed (vv. 32-34).
This observation raises a few questions for me. Do we sometimes complicate the gospel unnecessarily to boost our own egos? Do we see scoffing and hesitancy to believe as evidence that people aren’t responding when those are, in fact, responses?
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Posted on 09/15/2009, in scripture and tagged acts 17, apostle paul. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
Great questions, Matt.
I wonder about this in the context of preaching. Is the drive to have something “different” to say – and not repeat ourselves – lead us to emphasize minor chords in Scripture? “I can’t say that again. I just preached about that last month. There has to be something new in here I can say.”
And do we avoid places or ways of speaking that might lead to scoffing and unbelieving?
Urgh. Please ignore the grammar errors. (Must remember to proof read.)
Ha, I’ll give your grammar a pass this time!
I think you’re right. It’s not wrong to preach minor chords, but it is sometimes more indicative of our boredom and familiarity than it is of faithfulness to Scripture.
Looks like a recurrence structural relationship.