595. ACT 17:16. CONTEMPLATION OF HEATHEN IDOLATRY AN EXCITEMENT TO MISSIONARY ZEAL
Act_17:16. Contemplation of Heathen Idolatry an Excitement to Missionary Zeal
By Rev. Ralph Wardlaw, D. D.
"Now when Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry."’97Act_17:16.
Athens stood preeminent, indeed, for the multitude of its deities; but, alas! it stood not alone. It was not a city merely that Paul had to contemplate as given to idolatry; but, with the exception of one little spot favored of heaven as "the place which Jehovah had chosen, to put his name there," it was a whole world. And now, when eighteen centuries have passed away, does not the same heart-moving spectacle still, to a vast extent, present itself to the view? How very few, comparatively, of the tribes of our fallen and revolted race, have as yet "turned from their idols to serve the living and true God!" How immense the proportion of them that are still going astray after their dumb idols, even as they are led! It is true,’97and let us record it with the liveliest feelings of delight and adoration,’97the proportion is lessening. The true God is making his name glorious among the heathen. The idols he. is abolishing. "The gods that made not the heavens and the earth, are perishing from off the earth, and from under these heavens." The object of these annual meetings is to keep alive a missionary spirit, and to rouse it to still warmer and more active energy. It will not be found, I trust, unsuitable to this design, if we endeavor to show, with humble dependence upon the Divine blessing, how the survey of these idolatries is calculated to produce indignant grief for the dishonor done by them to God; amazement at human weakness and folly; abhorrence of human impiety; and compassion for human wretchedness.
I. The contemplation of heathen idolatries should excite indignant grief for the dishonor done to God.
This, I have no doubt, was the feeling which first stirred the spirit of the devout, apostle of the Gentiles, when, looking around him, he contemplated the endless multiplicity of false deities, "the gods many, and lords many" of the Athenians, and, as he himself afterwards expresses it, "beheld their devotions."’97In the altar inscribed "To the Unknown God," Act_17:23, he had seen a melancholy acknowledgment of their ignorance. The only true God was the only God unknown. All the fabled deities were there, of heaven, and earth, and hell; but the one living God, whose peculiar honors were thus usurped and alienated and abused, was not to be found. Not that Paul could have been gratified in his having a place amidst such a collection of falsehood, impurity, and folly. It would have been a vile affront to his infinite Majesty, to have been so associated, even if he had been placed at the head of their pantheon, and made their Jupiter Olympius. For, indeed, this Olympian Jove, the "mighty thunderer," the "father of gods and men," the "best and the greatest," was, in the actions ascribed to him by his deluded worshippers, the foulest and most infamous of the whole fabled fraternity.
Paul could not contemplate the prostrate honors of the infinite God with an unmoved and tranquil heart. He could not behold this world, which ought to have been one great temple to the exclusive worship of Jehovah, "whose he was, and whom he served," crowded with rival deities, the offspring of the depraved fancy of apostate creatures, with which the very thought of bringing Him, even for an instant, into comparison, makes the heart thrill and shudder with detestation.
II. The contemplation of heathen idolatry may well fill us with amazement at the weakness and folly of the human mind.
Search the annals of our world, in every age and in every country, I question if you will find a more affecting and humbling exemplification of human imbecility, than that which is afforded by the history of idolatry. It is such, indeed, as we hardly know how to believe,’97to be set down amidst the likenesses "to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things," Rom_1:23, which form the immense museum of heathen mythology, one might be tempted to fancy, that some satirical defamer of our nature had been exhausting an inventive imagination to slander and to vilify it.
When Paul saw the wonderful results of human wisdom, and power, and skill, in the arts and sciences, in philosophy and literature, which existed in Athens in such profusion and splendor; when he beheld a people raised to the very pinnacle of eminence for all that was great and excellent in human attainments; and then viewed the same people, sunk in the abyss of ignorance and stupidity as to all that related to the higher concerns of God and of eternity, how striking, how affecting the contrast! Can we wonder that his "spirit was stirred in him?"
III. Paul’s spirit was stirred in him, and the contemplation of heathen idolatry should stir ours, with abhorrence of human impiety.
Idolatry, like infidelity, has not been so much an error of the head as of the heart. Here it had its origin; here it still has "its power, and its seat, and its great authority." The head has been the dupe of the heart: the folly has sprung from the corruption; the infatuation of the judgment, from the depravation of the affections. The veil has not been upon the evidences themselves of the existence and perfections of God, but upon the hearts of his fallen creatures. The wretched votaries of idolatry are described as "walking in the vanity of their minds; having their understandings darkened; being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness (or, rather, because of the hardness, or callousness*) of their hearts," Eph_4:17, Eph_4:18. To this source, even to the "carnal mind," which "is enmity against God," the philosophy of the Bible teaches us to trace the whole system, in all its varieties, of pagan idolatry: "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge," Rom_1:28.
The origin of idolatry, then, is to be found in the alienation of the heart from God; the unsuitableness of his character, to the depraved propensities of his fallen creatures, and the consequent desire to have a god "such a one as themselves, who will approve their sins." This view of the matter accords well with the characters of their "gods many, and lords many," 1Co_8:5, and with the nature of the worship with which they honored them. The worship of their gods is such as might have been expected from their characters. Well are their superstitions denominated "abominable idolatries," 1Pe_4:3. They consist, not merely of the most senseless fooleries and the wildest extravagancies, but of the most disgusting impurities; the most licentious acts of intemperance, and the most iron-hearted cruelties.
IV. The contemplation of heathen idolatry ought to inspire compassion for human wretchedness.
I speak not at all, at present, of the wants and miseries of a savage life, destitute of the arts and sciences, and of the comforts and refinements of civilized society; because such miseries, and such wants, were evils unfelt at Athens. The mere man of the world would have looked on that far-famed city, as the emporium of all that was fitted to give dignity and happiness to men. But, in the midst of all this, the eye of the Christian philanthropist could not fail to discern a most melancholy want’97a want, sufficient to throw a darkening shade over all the splendors of Athenian glory. The inhabitants of Athens, like those of Ephesus, were, in the eye of the "ambassador of Christ," without God, and having no hope in the world.
Do not your hearts bleed for them? When you think of the depth of their ignorance, and the enormity of their guilt; of their vain sacrifices, and their fruitless ablutions; their painful penances, their self-inflicted tortures and death; when you behold them with suppliant earnestness, crying for protection and deliverance to a thing which cannot help’97falling down to the stock of a tree; when you see them with an importunity worthy of a more rational service, repeating their cry from morning till noon, and from noon till evening; and, in the bitterness and frenzy of disappointed eagerness, "cutting themselves with lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them,"’97and "there is neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regardeth," see 1Ki_18:26-29; when you see them steeling their hearts against the meltings of nature, stopping their ears to the pleadings of parental love, and "giving their first-born for their transgression, the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul" (Mic_6:1); when you see them the wretched victims of a delusive hope, the dupes of a merciless and degrading superstition, devoting themselves to voluntary destruction;’97crushed beneath the ponderous wheel, of "sinking in the devouring flood, or more devouring flame"’97oh! does not a pang of pity go through your very souls for them? Are not your spirits stirred within you? Do not your bowels yearn over your kindred’97over those, who are "bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh,"’97for "God hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth," Act_17:26.
And, finally, without dwelling on the many particulars of wretchedness, which are suggested to our minds by such a description of personal and social character as we read in the beginning of the Epistle to the Romans, I think, my brethren, of your miserable fellowmen in reference to an eternal world! I must now hasten to a close, by drawing from the subject some further practical improvement.
1. All the sentiments and feelings which have been illustrated, ought to be principles of active and zealous exertion.
2. Let me, from this subject, endeavor to impress your minds with the necessity and value of Divine revelation.
3. The feelings expressed in the text, imply the opposite emotions of delight, in witnessing the contrary scene.
If the spirit be "stirred" with indignant grief for the affront put upon the true God by the "abominable idolatries" of the heathen, it cannot fail to be stirred with exulting joy, when his alienated honors are restored; when the apostate sons of men "turn to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven," 1Th_1:10.
4. The guilt of idolatry, it is to be feared, attaches to many who little imagine that they are at all chargeable with any thing of the kind. Yes; there are many who may even, in contemplating the idolatries of the heathen, condemn, and wonder, and pity, without at all reflecting on the possibility of their being themselves in the same condemnation. You are not worshipping the host of heaven; you are not adoring deified men; you are not falling down to stocks and stones; you are not making to yourselves graven images, likenesses of things in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth; and you conclude you are not idolaters. But what is the spirit of idolatry? Is it not the alienation of the heart from God? Is it not the withholding from him, and the giving to other objects, whatever they may be, that homage, and those affections, to which he alone is entitled? Every man’s idol is that on which his heart is supremely set; and every heart in which Jehovah is not enthroned, is an idol’s temple.
Autor: JABEZ BURNS