Objects of Worship

Texts: Acts 17:22-34

Proposition: Can we find God among the objects of worship in the United States?

Introduction

Paul was in Athens. He went through the Acropolis. This was the place of all the Greek deities. Their gods were numberless. “Petronius, who was contemporary with St. Paul, in his Satyr. cap. xvii., makes Quartilla say of Athens: Utique nostra regio tam Praesentibus Plena Est Numinibus, ut facilius possis Deum quam Hominem invenire: Our region is so full of deities that you may more frequently meet with a god than a man.” (Clarke, Adam, Acts 17:16, e-Sword)   He found an altar to an unknown God. He used this as his text to his sermon.  He preached on the Areopagus, a place next to the Acropolis where trials were held. It had a reputation for being the most just courts in the world. Paul used no scripture in this message. He used what the people were familiar with. These people were Greeks. They were very religious people and some of the best educated and the best thinkers of all time. Their writings are still studied today. They knew nothing of the scriptures. They didn’t recognize the authority of the scriptures. Paul even quoted some of their poets that they would be familiar with. Their poets said, “We are God’s offspring." They understood his message very well.   They didn’t like Paul’s brilliant sermon. They sneered at his sermon. Some did believe, among whom was Dionysius the Areopagite. Dionysius was probably a judge in the Areopagus. This was a very influential position. Adam Clarke says, “for no person was a judge in the Areopagus who had not borne the office of archon, or chief governor of the city; and none bore the office of judge in this court who was not of the highest reputation among the people for his intelligence and exemplary conduct.”   Paul’s sermon was effective because he used what was familiar to the people to preach his sermon.

We are going to look at some objects of worship in the United States and learn like the Greeks that God is not very far away from us if we want to find him. Man can try to get away from God, but God makes himself known to man even if they do not have the scriptures.

Many of our objects of worship -- to adore; to pay divine honors to; to reverence with supreme respect and veneration -- are influenced by the scriptures, but some want to try to erase God from our heritage. They have a lot of work ahead of them, and they will never erase the memory of God from man. He is not far from us.

I. In God we trust

II. The eye of Providence

III. All men are created equal

IV. The Statue of Liberty

V. Seven Day Week

I. In God we trust (Why do we trust in God?)

A. In God We Trust is our national motto. It officially became our motto on July 30, 1956. It has appeared on our money since 1864. The reason it is on our money was because of increased religious sentiment during the Civil War. The Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, received many appeals from devout people throughout the country. They urged that the United States recognize the Deity on the United States coins. Secretary Chase wrote to the mint director in Philadelphia on November 20, 1861.  

Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.

You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.

Secretary Chase did not have the authority to do this. It was found that the Act of Congress dated January 18, 1837, prescribed the mottoes and devised that should be placed upon the coins of the United States. The mint could make no changes except by an act of Congress.

Congress passed the Act of April 22, 1864. IN GOD WE TRUST first appeared on the 1864 two-cent piece.

(www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/currency/in-god-we-trust.shtml)

B. Trusting in riches will fail.  Riches will fail you

1. A man Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator, bought the office of emperor at a public auction. The Praetorian guards had killed the previous emperor, Pertinax. Pertinax was a good man who had been trying to bring discipline back into the military and remove corruption from the government. The Praetorian guards liked corruption so they killed him and put the emperorship up for auction to the highest bidder. Julian bought it. He was beheaded 66 days later. The Praetorian guards abandoned him when they heard the news that Septimus Severus, a general in the Roman army, was coming to Rome with his army to avenge the death of Pertinax and to punish those who supported Julian. (Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

2. Septimus Severus became emperor after conquering two other generals. After he attained his life-long goal of being first place among mankind, he said of himself, that “he had been all things, and all was of little value.” (Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 chap 4, pg. 141)

3. Even if you own a mine full of gold and silver trusting in riches will fail you.

a. The discoverers of the Comstock Lode, the richest silver mine in the United States, died poor men. The mine was in Nevada, where Virginia City is today. Patrick McLaughlin and Peter O’Riley first discovered gold in a little Creek, but a blue black mud kept clogging up their equipment and interfered with washing out the fine gold. The mud when assayed turned out to be pure sulphuret of silver. The evening of the discovery Henry Thomas Paige Comstock came across the two men at work. Comstock saw the gold and realized the men had found a great discovery. He told them he already had a claim on the ground where they were working. To avoid trouble they agreed to give Comstock a share of the claim. Comstock had no claim; he was a liar.

b. Comstock sold his shares in the mine for $20,000. He lost all his property and possessions. He committed suicide while prospecting for gold near Bozeman, Montana.

c. McLaughlin sold his interest for $3,500, which he soon lost. He died working at odd jobs.

d. O’Riley sold out for about $50,000.   He lost everything trying to find a richer strike than the Comstock Lode. He went insane and died in a private asylum in Woodbridge, CA.

(The above information from Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Lode)

C. When you spend your dollars remember it is IN GOD WE TRUST, not our money. When our savings account grows and our investments make us rich, and we are tempted to trust in what we have, we need to remember what is written all over our money:  in GOD we trust.

II. The Eye of Providence (Why Remember the eye of Providence?)

A. The Eye of Providence or the All Seeing Eye is on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States. The Eye of Providence was adopted as part of the Great Seal in 1782. The Great Seal of the United States is on the dollar bill and is used to endorse official documents of the United States. The seal is on the reverse side of the dollar bill. It is in the triangle, signifying the trinity in reference to the God of Christianity, that is the capstone of the unfinished pyramid. It is surrounded by the words Annuit Coeptis. It means “He [God] is favorable to our undertakings.” The combined implication is that God favors the prosperity of the United States.   (The All Seeing Eye can be traced back to Egyptian mythology and the Eye of Horus.) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence)

B. Man knows that God is watching everything we do. He will favor our undertaking if we fear him and obey what he says. If we reject him his eye will be watching us. We will answer to Him for everything that he has seen us do.

1. Man is afraid to have his fellowman find out the evil things he has done.

• Men will lie to keep other men from finding out what they have done.
• Men will spend millions of dollars to keep others from finding out what they have done.
• Men will kill to keep people from finding out they had an affair with a woman. I saw a bumper sticker a few years ago that said, “I would rather go hunting with Cheney than swimming with Kennedy.” If you remember the news media made a big deal about Dick Cheney shooting a man accidentally while quail hunting. Several years ago Ted Kennedy, a United States Senator from Massachusetts, was with a woman in his car. He had been drinking.  The car went off of a bridge and into the water below. Ted made it out of the car somehow, but the woman drowned. He didn’t report what had happened for quite a while. He wanted to cover it up. I don’t know exactly what happened, but God knows. He saw everything.
• God knows what Michael Jackson did with the young boys he shared his bed with.
• God knows if O. J. Simpson killed his wife or not. He sees everything.
• God sees everything we do!  We must remember this and live like he is watching everything we do.

III. All Men are created equal (Why remember all men are created equal?)

A. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Declaration of Independence)

1. We have the Bill of Rights that guarantees our rights as citizens.

2. We are created by God. It is very evident in the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson and the signers of the Declaration believed in the Creator. They didn’t believe we have rights because we are descendants of the ape!

• If there is no God, the rule of evolution applies, Survival of the Fittest.  Man knows this is wrong.    
  • Man knows tyranny is wrong.
  • Man knows the slaughter of his fellow man, simply because he is weaker, is wrong.
  • Man knows trampling on the rights of his fellow man is wrong even though he is wrong.
  • If I am the descendant of an ape, the only rights I care about are my own and those who I think will support my cause.
  • The Doctrine of Evolution cares nothing for the rights of man. Hitler and those who supported him based their doctrines on evolution. They thought they were the greatest human beings on the face of the earth. The rest were human cattle to be used and disposed of however they pleased. The United States is not founded on Darwin’s Doctrine of Evolution. It is founded on all men are created equal and In God WeTrust.
  • Our children are taught in school we are descendants of apes and then we wonder why they worship Hitler and slaughter their fellow students. (Dylan and Kleibold the boys at Columbine High School liked Hitler.)
  • When man ceases to acknowledge God you can say goodbye to the rights of man.

B. We need to remember all men are created equal.

1. Associate with the lowly.

2. All men are of one blood. My body, as long as we are of compatible blood type, will accept a black man’s blood, and his will accept mine.

3. We like to think of our race or our nation or our family as superior to all others, but God is no respecter of persons. His judgment will not be decided on who your father was or what race you are or how important other men considered you.  It will be whether or not you obeyed him.

IV. The Statue of Liberty (What can we learn from the Statue of Liberty?)

A. France gave the Statue to the United States in 1884.

1. On the concrete pedestal on which the statue stands, this sonnet by Emma Lazarus is inscribed:  

             The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride form land to land;

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame.

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient land, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

These wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

2. This is what the most powerful country in the world is made up of:  the poor, the tired, the wretched refuse that their mother country doesn’t want. We see this in Lexington. The people coming here for the most part are not educated people of noble blood. This has been the history of immigrants to the United States; we are people that didn’t have a chance of life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness in the country our ancestors were in. We were peasants doomed for a life of servitude under the control of those who were born into nobility. You will find no kings, no princes, no dukes, no queens, no princesses, no duchesses or other royalty in our land.

B. Most Christians are not mighty people of noble birth.

1. I Corinthians 1:25-29

2. Christianity is not a country club that requires great wealth and influence to be a part of. It is made up of anyone who chooses to serve and obey God.

3. I Peter 2:9-10, We have been made royalty.

C. We have been given a lighter yoke.

1. We have been freed from Satan and his yoke of slavery.

2. Matthew 11:28-30

D. We were poor, but we have been made rich in Christ.

V. Seven Day Week (What does the Seven Day week have to do with God?)

A. How do we determine:

• The length of a day? The time it takes for the earth to spin a complete revolution
• The length of a month? It is determined approximately by the moon and more accurately by dividing the solar year by 12.
• The length of a year? Is determined by the amount of time it takes for the earth to travel around the sun.
• The length of a week? There is nothing in nature that determines the length of a week. God gave us the length of the week in Genesis chapter one. The lengths of months and years have changed through out history, but the seven day week has never been interrupted at least from the time of Moses; but my opinion is it has never been interrupted since creation.
• Some people have tried to get away from the seven day week because they knew it was from God.
• During the French Revolution men tried to change it.
• The Soviet Union tried a 5 and 6 day week, but they have returned to seven days a week.
• So dear is this succession of 7 days that when the calendar changed from Julian to Gregorian the week was preserved, though not the days of the month: in 1752, in England, Sept. 14 followed Sept. 2 -- but Thursday followed Wednesday, as always. Eleven days did disappear from the calendar at that time -- but none from the week! (Vincent Mallette:  vmallette@inwit.com)· Anywhere you go in the world a seven day week is observed.

Conclusion

Acts 17:30-34

God will not accept ignorance for an excuse. We must repent. He is going to judge the world through Jesus Christ who has resurrected from the dead. We need to repent while we have the opportunity. When we die our opportunity is over.

Don’t waste time. God is near us. He has given you a reminder that you should put your trust in him. You carry this reminder around in your pocket or your purse everyday. Your money says IN GOD WE TRUST. The dollar is the currency of the world. Foreign countries who don’t recognize God hold billions of our dollars that say IN GOD WE TRUST.

We have been given a reminder that God is watching us. The Eye of Providence is on our dollar bill and on the Great Seal. God is watching everything we do. He will favor our undertaking if we are pleasing to Him.

We are all created equal. We have been created in the image of God, not of the ape. If I am a descendant of the ape then the Bible is the biggest lie man has ever believed. If I am created in the image of God then evolution is the biggest lie man has ever believed. You can’t have it both ways! Those who try to believe both are double minded men unstable in all their ways.

Like the people of the United States we are not people with the blood of royalty in our veins or even nobility. We are not mighty influential rulers. We are middle and lower class people, but God has taken people who were not a people and made them a royal priesthood.

Even in the length of our week we are reminded that God is not far off if we would only grope for him we will find him. Don’t be like the majority of the people who heard Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill and sneered at his message, but be like those few who believed Paul’s message and repented and gave their life to Jesus Christ.