August 17, 2016. Devotions

Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? “For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. (Act 17:18-21 NKJ)

The Stoics were pantheistic meaning they believed that their god was in everything and everywhere, especially in nature.  The Epicureans, on the other hand, believed that god was distant, a higher power and impersonal.  These two groups were not friends, but they shared a passion for anything new, much like some Christians.  New methods, new revivals, new books or a new teaching.  In the end, they end up like that dog chasing it’s tail, going round and round in Circles. God said through the prophet Isaiah, “Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert.” (Isa 43:19 NKJ) God didn’t say throw everything old out.  He told Jeremiah to, “To root out and to pull down, To destroy and to throw down, To build and to plant.” (Jer 1:10 NKJ) It’s a balance of both, and so we need to understand what God is doing right now.  We know that whatever God is doing the foundational truth about Jesus Christ and the resurrection will always be foundational.