Wait no longer! Then they asked him for his certificate, that they might go in and show it to the King; so he fumbled in his bosom for one, and found none.
Touch me, and see. Do not presume that your familiarity with religion or faithful service will save you. But this one summer we both went and did the whole trek. Verse 30 mentions “ignorance” explicitly, and it’s also how Paul starts his sermon. As Bunyan nears the end of his story, he turns from one of the most glorious scenes in the book (the final entranceof Christian and Hopeful into the Celestial City) to one of the most fearful.
The resurrection of Jesus changes everything.We can’t help ourselves from thinking it’s all about us. Back in 1835, some residents in South Carolina had this idea to build a new railroad that goes through the mountains of their state into Georgia and Tennessee. When those plans are made, the Berean brothers then leave. And I want to be clear here: I don’t think this is a positive thing.
There are only versions of ourselves, many of which we have not embraced.” Toni Morrison
We think this way. Because Jesus is real, Jesus is alive, Jesus has been raised from the dead.Ironically, there are some cultural situations so dark that the message of Jesus sounds foreign. He knocks, still assuming that he will quickly gain entrance. And then in verse 32, Jesus and the resurrection repels them.
You can’t get there by car. And when these guys bring Paul to Athens, they stay there with him until they figure out a plan for how to get Silas and Timothy to Athens. Every move you make is tainted with a kind of doubt and anxiety because you can’t see anything. The End of Ignorance. And you can walk in it. And like you could imagine, when you come to the tunnel it is just this big hole in the side of a mountain. It was a disorienting darkness. In fact, I think the note Luke makes in verse 21 is meant to keep us from doing just that. Editor: When the horrible truth of the Holocaust was revealed at the end of World War II, many Germans swore that they did not know the truth. It’s called Stumphouse Tunnel, and you can go there and visit it. And when you are in that kind of darkness, it affects the way you act. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:38–39)Notice the response after Paul said this, in verse 32, “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. The End of Ignorance conceives of a world in which no child is left behind – a world based on the assumption that each child has the potential to be successful in every subject. How do they make that someone out there, the divine, send this rain? We see that in Acts 17:13,“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, [31] because he has fixed a 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.”You take little, shuffle steps, and you just put yours hands up to the stuff around you, and if that’s how you live, sooner or later, you are going to think that rather than you and this stuff exist for God, you’ll think God exists for you and this stuff.So in verse 19 they bring Paul there.
Why? Notice verse 23, he says to the Athenians .
Then they took him up, and carried him through the air to the door that I saw in the side of the hill, and put him in there. All about “me.” That’s what it’s like when we’re in the dark. Look at verse 18,Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. To some people, gospel messengers can sound like babblers. Come to Christ and live!âI am the vine, you are the branches. These Epicurean and Stoic philosophers think that what Paul says is interesting and they want the others to hear him.So after Jesus died for us, and was raised from the dead, in Luke 24, he comes to his disciples. Silas and Timothy, who were with Paul, can stay there a little longer. But others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’”“But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.”And the reality is: that what will find increasing dissonance with our surrounding culture is actually the key to everything we think and say.
A revolutionary call for a new understanding of how people learn. Everything is just black. These guys from Berea are packed up, about to walk out the door, and they tell Paul to just hang out, to lay low, to wait for Silas and Timothy to get there. Now, God commands all people everywhere to turn from the darkness. And they were finished. It sounds like nonsense.