In his sermon 'Why Pursue a Classical Education?', Peter Allison examines the Apostle Paul's experience in Athens as depicted in Acts 17. Paul, disturbed by the city's devotion to idols, engages with the locals to preach about Jesus and the resurrection. The speaker draws parallels between historical attempts to rewrite history, as seen in Athens, and modern efforts to alter historical narratives. Allison argues that Greek mythology, particularly as represented by the Parthenon, sought to retell the story of creation without God, replacing divine truths with human-centered myths. He critiques the resurgence of classical education, viewing it as an attempt to revive pagan ideologies that exclude biblical truths. The sermon underscores that Western civilization's roots are in biblical principles rather than Greek culture. Allison emphasizes the enduring truth of the Scriptures and the importance of resisting the allure of pagan philosophies, urging a return to the foundational wisdom found in Christ and the Bible.

Our scripture reading for the message this morning is Acts chapter 17. I'd like to begin reading at verse 13. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds. Then immediately the brethren sent Paul away to go to the sea, but both Silas and Timothy remained there. So those who conducted Paul brought him to Athens, and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, they departed.

Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the Gentile worshippers and in the marketplace daily with those who happen to be there. 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. May our lips utter praise as He teaches us His statutes.

Almighty Heavenly Father, Your Word is pure, it is true, it is refined as it were seven times. We ask that You would sanctify us by Your Word this morning, that You would teach us out of it. We ask, Lord, that we might be filled with wisdom the wisdom of your word I Pray that you would sanctify my sinful lips To proclaim the wonders of your grace in Christ in Jesus name Amen. I'm sure you all remember the story in the Old Testament of the division of the kingdom between north and south, the ten tribes that revolted against the David line and the two tribes of Judah that stayed loyal to David and his line. And the king in the north was a man by the name of Jeroboam.

And he reasoned that if the people continued to go up to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to the Lord there at the temple, then the heart of the people in his country might be turned back to their Lord, to Rehoboam, Solomon's son who was king of Judah. And he thought that if that happened, then they might kill him and go back to Rehoboam in Judah. Of course, if their hearts were turned back to the Lord, they wouldn't be committing murder, but he doesn't realize that. And so on the advice you remember in this account given in the Scriptures, on the advice of his counselors, he made up two oxen of gold. And he said to the people, you know, it's really too hard for you to go up to Jerusalem all the time to do your sacrifices.

Here are your gods, O Israel, these golden calves that He had made and put one in Dan and one in Bethel." He said, these are the calves that brought you up from the land of Egypt. Worship these. See, Jeroboam and his golden calves revised history, tried to rewrite history to make it fit his purposes. In this case, to come up with the reason why they shouldn't have to go to Jerusalem anymore. We have watched in our day something astoundingly similar as statutes were torn down, roads renamed, military bases renamed, videos and various narratives are banned from various online sites.

All in a vain attempt to rewrite our history and reinterpret our history. And what Paul encounters in Athens is something similar. It's astoundingly similar. An attempt to rewrite history, to write God out of their history. And that's what we want to look at in a little detail this morning.

But before we get to Paul in Athens, Luke records a series of events leading up to Athens. That though it might appear to be setbacks in Paul's missionary labors, These events that Luke records actually work out to protect him from injury and to set him up for further fruitful ministry. So what looks to be on the outside like a set back is really a set up. Remember Paul preaching in Thessalonica stirs up the envy of the Jews who run to the government to get help. They stir up a mob, which means that they control the media of their day to be able to incite a crowd to believe something that they want them to believe.

They incite this mob, And they storm the house where they think Paul and his team are staying. But of course they don't find Paul there, in God's providence, and so they grab Jason, the owner of the house, and they drag him in front of the authorities, where they attempt to indict him with this laundry list of charges, chief of which is that they are traitors to Caesar. That's always a reliable charge, The government hates any competition to their evil. And so, as Luke records it, Paul and Silas are immediately whisked away by the brethren in the church and they're sent to Berea where they pick right up, where they left off as it were and continued preaching and teaching in the synagogues. But we read that as soon as the Jews that oppose Paul's preaching in Thessalonica, as soon as they learn that Paul is preaching in Berea, they go down to Berea.

And they repeat the same Antifa tactics, type tactics, down in Berea that they used in Thessalonica. And in his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul identifies these Jews as agents of stinting to stir up the crowds and to hinder their work. These people had a personal vendetta against Paul and against his message. But he is, notice, not deterred by this personal rejection, by his rejection of his person. This is what they did at Philippi, this is what they did at Thessalonica, this is what they do at Borea.

He doesn't become angry, he doesn't become even discouraged at this opposition that he faces. That would simply be a waste of energy. And so again, when these tactics are now used by the Jews from Thessalonica when they are used in Berea, just as in Thessalonica, Paul is immediately whisked away. They act first to get Paul to safety. And any praying that they do is done in the midst of the action.

Because being a man of action is not inconsistent with being a man of prayer. And Paul was both. He was a man of action. And so Paul is whisked out of Berea so quickly that there wasn't time to get Silas or Timothy. There wasn't even time for Paul to notify them to come as quickly as they could.

It's hard to comprehend in our day of cell phones. But, you know, even if they had cell phones, they might not have used them in order not to compromise this escape. Paul is whisked out of the city by these unnamed handlers who escort him probably somewhat covertly down to Athens, which is by boat probably over 300 miles away. It's not a trivial boat ride. We aren't told why they chose Athens, but maybe because that's the next main city, there's mostly a lot of mountains in the area between them.

But maybe it was because it was a large city where he could be easily hid, and less likely to be found by these people who seem bent on destroying Him. But whatever the case, Paul is not deterred by these repeated, seeming repeated failures from preaching the gospel. There's no questioning of his calling. There's no questioning of his tactics. He simply regroups his mission team and prepares to press on.

He simply left directions for Timothy and Silas to come meet him in Athens as soon as they can. And we learn later from his letter to the Thessalonians that apparently after Timothy came to him in Athens, He sent him back because he was concerned how they were doing. But while he is waiting here this first time in Athens, he starts looking around at this city. At the height of classical Greek civilization, Athens was the cultural center and its leading city. It's the leading city of this classical Greek culture.

Even after it lost its dominant military status, it still remained the center of classical Greek culture. Some of the most well-known philosophers and poets and playwrights in Western civilization are connected with Athens, the philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the historian Herodotus, Thucydides, whose history of the Peloponnesian wars is still widely read today. Xenophon, the playwrights, Aeschylus, the father of tragedy, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, the father of comedy. The physician, Hippocrates, as well as great orators such as I Socrates and Demosthenes these are all just a few of the many examples of the great artisans that populated Greece and particularly Athens. Athens was in the language of today the Big Apple in Greek culture.

It was home to many famous schools. In its agora, in its agora, the marketplace, Socrates walked with his students. You have the Academy of Plato there, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the porch of Zeno, the garden of Epicurus, where they're all part of Athens' glory and Athens' history. Will Durant said in his Life of Greece, Greek civilization at last almost welcomed those conquering Romans through whom dying Greece would bequeath to Europe her sciences, her philosophies, her letters, and her arts as the living cultural basis of our modern world. Peter Connolly in his book The Ancient City said, quote, Athens was the shining star of the ancient world, dominating almost every field of human endeavor." Pericles, the architect of the rebuilding of the Acropolis, and in general, and the Parthenon in particular, said, quote, our city is an education to Greece.

Future ages will wonder at us as the present age wonders at us now. He said that about 400 years before Paul walked the city. You see the city attracted the best artisans of all types, musicians, sculptors, artists, philosophers, mathematicians, were all attracted to Athens. And the Parthenon, with its opposing view atop this Athenian Acropolis, and an Acropolis is just a, like what we might call a butte, like six or seven acres, flat on top. It's about 500 feet above the surrounding parts of the city, so you can see it.

It stands out. You can look at a picture of modern Greece, Athens today, and see this Acropolis with the remains of the Parthenon on top of it. This Parthenon is one of the greatest structures in ancient Athens. And it's an enduring symbol of ancient Greece, of democracy, and of some would say even of Western civilization. Eugene P.

Andrews In his 1896 book, The Parthenon, wrote, All the old world's culture culminated in Greece. All Greece in Athens. All Athens in its Acropolis. And all the Acropolis in the Parthenon. Charles Freeman in his book The Greek Achievement wrote, The Greeks provided the chromosomes of Western civilization, and the Parthenon stood at the center of that classical Greek civilization.

And like all the other buildings throughout Athens, the Parthenon was a temple adorned with art. But it's not just art for art's sake. No. The art that decorates all the temples of Athens, including the Parthenon, tell a story in pictures. And the key to understanding the story told in the extensive sculptures and art of the Parthenon and in their pottery and all the other numerous temples that fill Athens and the Acropolis, The key to understanding that story is the history of the world as Moses recorded it in the book of Genesis.

But it's not to record the history as Moses recorded it, but it's to record the history of the world as Jeroboam would have recorded it. The entire Greek body, the entire body of Greek mythology as it's recorded in the sculptures of the Parthenon and other temples, is to retell the story of history without the Creator God. It's to suppress the truth and replace it with a demonic lie, just like Jeroboam tried to do. The Greeks worshiped their ancestors, and with a few exceptions, their gods are the deification of their ancestors, of historical people. Their gods are always represented, you notice, in human form.

Zeus is Adam. Hera is Eve. Hephaestus is the line of Cain. Ares is the line of Seth. Nereus is Noah.

Athena is Naamah, the sister of two Balkanes and the likely wife of Ham. Hercules is Nimrod. Hermes is Cush. And so on. The ancient gods of Greek mythology are their attempt to retell the story of creation without God.

In the Greek version of history, The truth is inverted just like in Jeroboam's version of history, as it always is. In the Greek version of history, the serpent freed mankind from bondage to sin and to an oppressive God, and was therefore the Savior and the illuminator of the human race. Jane Ellen Harrison, an atheist scholar and a valid atheist scholar, wrote after studying some of the art, quote, We are brought face to face with the astounding fact that Zeus, the father of gods and men, is figured by his worshippers as a snake." Carl Karenyi in his book, Zeus and Hera says, the actual content of the word Zeus is the moment of quote lighting up unquote By the content of his name lighting up Zeus was connected for the Greeks not with the beginning of the world But with the time which they themselves but with the time of which they themselves had a historical consciousness, a new time contrasted with the old time which was not yet ruled by Zeus. You see in the Greek rewriting of history, the old time was before Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. The new time begins when at the instigation of the serpent, Eve eats the forbidden fruit and was enlightened, and the serpent begins his rule over his stolen kingdom." See, in the Greek version of history, this is the moment of enlightenment.

The moment that civilization can begin, freed from an oppressive God. You've probably heard the fruit that Eve ate called an apple. It's not. The Bible doesn't say she ate an apple. It's a generic word for fruit.

Where did this idea come from? It came from the Greeks. They're the ones that introduced the idea that she ate an apple. It's just one of the many lies that Greek history has sought to rewrite history with. Robert Johnson in his book The Parthenon Code says quote the transformation of the serpent into Zeus as a messenger of light may be the central architectural message of the Parthenon.

The Greeks' first view of the temple as you entered through the gateway to the Acropolis is the west facade. Athena and Poseidon face each other in the center of the pediment, and between them was a tree with a serpent coiled around it. And as you follow the roof line on the Parthenon from the west pediment to the East pediment, you see Zeus standing in the center in the form of a human, the father of gods and men. He's been transformed from a serpent. And this is what Paul would have seen as he's looking around Athens.

Did the Bible identify the serpent as Satan in Revelation 12.9? So the great dragon was cast out, the serpent of old, called the devil and Satan. He's not called Satan. He's not called the deceiver in Genesis. He's called the serpent.

But Revelation says that this serpent is Satan. Revelation says the great dragon was cast out that serpent of all called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world He was cast to earth and his angels were cast out with him and in 2nd Corinthians 11 Paul condemned false apostles as deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore, Paul said it's no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works. You see, Zeus, the god of thunder and lightning, ruled the sky according to the Greeks.

Scripture says something very similar of Satan in Ephesians 2. You once walked, Paul said to the Ephesians, according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. In St. John's last temptation of Christ in Matthew 8, It records that the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory. And he said to Jesus, all these things I will give you if you just bow down and worship me.

Now Jesus did not counter his claim. Jesus simply reminded him who only we are to worship. In Pergamon. There is a 30 or 40 foot altar of Zeus. And in the letter to the church at Pergamos in Revelation 2, Christ said, I know your works and where you dwell, where Satan's throne is.

This altar of Zeus, this serpent man, God says is the throne of Satan. See what the scriptures say of Satan, the Greeks said of Zeus. The Greeks worshiped Zeus as the Savior and Illuminator, as the Father of Gods and Men. Socrates considered the gods his lords and ancestors. He called them that.

The gods were his ancestors. They were the historical figures in the world. They wanted to rewrite the story. The rest of the history told in the art and the sculptures of the Parthenon tell how the line of Cain overcame the line of Seth through taking power from Noah and destroying the godly line. Athena being Naamah, the wife of Ham, who emerges as the new Eve.

And like Eve, she comes from Zeus. In the Bible, Eve came from the rib, Adam's rib, and Athena comes out of Zeus' head. Interestingly, John Gill takes this view as well, saying in his commentary on Genesis 4, but our Bishop Cumberland conjectures that Naamah was the wife of Ham, was with him in the ark, and after the flood was the means of leading him into idolatry. See, Athena is really not her name. It's her title.

In the Most ancient Greek writing referred to as Linear B, her title first appears as Athana. And the word Thanatos in Greek means death. So Athana means no death, the immortal one. Athena is a shortened form of anathantos, a thanatos, meaning the immortal one. You see Greek art boasts of the triumph of the way of Cain after the flood, inspired by Naama or Athena, and carried out by her son, Cush, Hermes, and her grandson, Hercules or Nimrod.

The Parthenon was built to honor Athena. It has 92 metopes on which this false view of history is graphically portrayed for anyone to see. It covers the flood. Nearly every key account of history in the first 11 chapters of Genesis is rewritten to push God out of the story. Even Atlas is pushing God away from the earth.

Many pagan writers have commented on the abundance of gods in Athens. Petronius said that in Athens it was easier to find a god than a man. Xenophon called Athens one great altar, one great offering to the gods. Livy, a Roman historian writing a few decades before Paul's day, noted that Athens had the statutes of gods and men alike, remarkable for the variety of materials and the ingenuity of the artists." One ancient writer estimated that there were 30, 000 statutes of idols in Athens. Every public building was dedicated to some idol.

Some attempt to retell a lie in place of the truth of the Word of God. This rewriting of history describing to idols and to the serpent what belongs to God alone was everywhere that Paul looked. On every building was it recorded of this twisting of the truth and the rewriting of the history that's every bit as bad as Jeroboam's rewrite of history. And this is what so provoked Paul's spirit. Provoked him to anger, vexation.

Paul was not impressed with Athenian glory. His assessment was very different. His assessment was that this was a city given over to idols, to demons. Athens and Greek civilization is not the foundation of American government or Western civilization. That was founded on biblical principles.

It's the foundation of the Renaissance, the re-emergence of paganism in the western world. It's the foundation of the attempt to remove the Bible as the source and foundation of knowledge and replace it with the created order, with science so-called. That's what it's the foundation of. The Republican form of government didn't come out of Greece. It was revealed in the Scriptures in Exodus long before it was known in Greece.

And it was practiced for over 400 years by the Israelites long before Greece said anything like it. Moses told Israel in Deuteronomy 4, verse 5, he said, Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore, be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the people who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us for whatever reason we may call upon him? And then he said, and what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in this law, which I set before you today.

There wasn't another nation that had the principles of Republican government, of biblical government, of freedom like Israel had. This didn't come from Greece. It came from the Scriptures. Everything good about our culture has come from the Scriptures. It has recovered in the Reformation.

It was taught by men who refuted the lies of Greek culture. The original constitutions of our nation were founded on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. They're right there in our documents. You go back and look at them in the constitutions of 1639 and 1640. They say it's nothing about pagan Greek culture.

Their ideas, their idea of law came from the Scriptures. Their idea of capital crimes came right out of the Scriptures and even put the Scripture verses in the Constitution itself. Our principles of republic and government were founded on the Presbyterian form of government found in the Scriptures. It wasn't until the late 1700s that our scriptural constitutions were replaced with one influenced by pagan Greek culture and the ideas of apostates such as John Locke. There are really very few achievements of Greek culture that have any lasting value or truth.

Their cosmology was largely way off. And it didn't compare to Job's knowledge. Aristotle's ideas on physics are mostly wrong. It was men operating from biblical principles that have done much more to advance science. Sometimes even through apostates operating from biblical principles.

And yet today, there's a fascination with classical education. And studying this pagan attempt to rewrite history. And there felt science as if it was some great civilization worthy of emulation. It's not. Paul said this is a city overrun by idols, overcome with idolatry and demons.

Terence Moore wrote A classical education for modern times. Classical in this classical education. He says classical education has a history over 2500 years in the West. It began in ancient Greece. It was adopted wholesale by the Romans.

Fultered after The fall of Rome made a slow but steady recovery during the Middle Ages. Why do you suppose it faltered after the fall of Rome? Because the Gospel of Jesus Christ had conquered those kingdoms. That's why it faltered. It's a pagan lie.

He said it made slow but steady recovery during the Middle Ages and was once again brought to perfection in the Italian Renaissance. Well, he's right about that. The Italian Renaissance was an attempt to reassert the lies of Greek history. The classical inheritance passed to England and from the mother country to America through colonial settlement. At the time of this nation's founding, classical education was still thriving.

Well, no, it wasn't. He's talking about 1787, which is 150 years after the first constitutions of this country. He says, Jefferson heartily recommended Greek and Latin as the languages of study for early adolescence. Well, that's not a problem there because Greek is the language of the New Testament. We Christians should know it.

And Latin was the language of many of the church fathers, so it's worth knowing that as well. He says, "...one of the founding fathers' favorite books was Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Eighteenth century Americans venerated and trusted George Washington in large part because he reminded them of the Roman patriot Lucian Cyncinatus. A writer on the Gospel Coalition website said that classical and Christian schools are almost always committed to recovering the great books of the Western intellectual transition tradition and attending to the past more generally. To be educated is to be grounded in the text of one's own traditions.

And for those of us in the United States, this means the central text and ideas of the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and of course the development of the Western intellectual tradition from the first century to the present. What a bunch of hogwash. Paul said Athens was a city overcome by idols. Why do we want to study it? He said it passed away because the gospel conquered it, just like God told Daniel in Nebuchadnezzar that the gospel, the kingdom of heaven was the stone cut without hands that smashed those pagan civilizations of Greek and Rome and Persia and Babylon.

With all their idolatry, with all their lying history, their attempt to push God out of their life. Another Christian writer said, The beauty of Homer's epic poems had the power to shape students' souls and affections in such a way as to make them better human beings. Paul's assessment of Athenians was not that it was a city that could shape our affections in such a way as to make them better human beings, but that it was a city given over to idols and demonology. It was a city to destroy your soul and bring you into bondage and into darkness and ignorance. And His spirit was provoked at the idolatry.

Why do we want to go back to bathe our children in the pagan classics as they attempt to rewrite history and eliminate God and put man on the throne instead. You see, this is not just an ancient issue. You realize that a full-scale replica of the Parthenon was built in Nashville, Tennessee. It's still standing today. Wikipedia tells us that the Parthenon in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee, United States is a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens, Greece.

It was built in 1897 as a part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Today it goes on to say the Parthenon stands as a centerpiece of Centennial Park, a large public park just west of downtown Nashville. Allen LeQueer's 1990s recreation of the Athena Parthenon Statute in the Naos, the East Room of the main hall, is the focus of the Parthenon just as it was in ancient Greece. The Parthenon had this 40 foot statue of Athena. And we won't go into all the imagery that was in that statue, but every bit of it was a vexation to Paul's soul because it attempted to rewrite history, to push God out of the story, to glorify the line of Cain as the bearer of light.

This Wikipedia goes on to say, it's the focus of the Parthenon, this statue, just as it was in ancient Greece. And since the building is complete and its decorations were polychromed, as close to the presumed original as possible, this replica of the original Parthenon in Athens serves as a monument to what is considered the pinnacle of classical architecture. The plaster replicas of the Parthenon marbles found in the Treasury Room, the West Room of the Main Hall, are direct casts of the original sculptures which adorn the pediments of the Athenian Parthenon dating to 438 BC. Why? Why do we want to glorify a culture that Paul said was overrun with idols?

Why do we want to bring classical education back to our children and call it Christian. Paul's answer to the classical culture of Athens was to preach Jesus Christ and the resurrection because all wisdom and knowledge is hidden Jesus Christ by whom all things were made Jesus Christ is the light of the world he is the savior who has crushed the head of the serpent. He was the god man who was slain for our transgressions and defeating death. He rose from the dead for our justification. That's the truth of history.

That's the message that Paul preached in response to the idolatry of Athens. Paul was concerned that the Colossian church not be deceived by the pagan ideas of classical Greece. And he wrote to them in Colossians 2, "'For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea. For as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love and obtaining to all the riches and the full assurance of understanding to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ. In Christ.

In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." And then he says this, now I say this, lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. He knew the persuasive power of the Greek version of history. He knew the appeal of the persuasive rhetoricians and orators of classic Greek culture. And he didn't want this church to be deceived by anyone bringing that pagan culture to them. Our heritage is a Christian heritage, founded upon the scriptures, not upon Greek, pagan Greek classics.

We learn, What do we learn? We learn one that, you see, Paul acted. He didn't look at this city of Athens that's overrun by idols and say, what can one person do against such overwhelming odds? He simply got out there, one man that he was, and started preaching Christ in the resurrection. He didn't think they don't believe the Bible, they won't listen, they think it's foolishness.

He knew they considered it foolishness. But that didn't stop him from proclaiming the power of God into salvation. He was not ashamed of Jesus and this message of the resurrection. They thought he was a babbler, a fool, an idiot, believing Crazy things. He didn't care.

He wasn't ashamed of the cross, even if it made him look foolish to the wisdom of the Athenians. And secondly, he didn't compromise the Scriptures to make them more acceptable. Paul proclaimed that Christ rose from the dead. He didn't seek to reconcile biblical truths with their pagan philosophies and histories and mistaken science. All too often today, people want to fit the Bible into science.

They want to reconcile the biblical chronologies of the Scriptures with the pagan dates of Greek culture. But in the end, they modify the Word of God to make it fit the changing words of men. Follow the science was the mantra of Athens, a city overrun with idols. And it's the mantra of Aquinas, who tried to find science or knowledge outside of the Scriptures. And say that while there's really two sources of knowledge, no, there's only one.

All knowledge and wisdom is hidden in Jesus Christ. Don't compromise the Scriptures. They are the truth. He was willing to stand alone. He was willing to take on Athens best armed, their brightest minds, with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.

He didn't need anything else. Jesus and the resurrection. The greatest fact in all of history. You see, truth is not determined by counting noses. When we have the truth of the Word of God, It stands against the combined weight of every other person.

Let God be true and every man a liar. You know, Greek culture gave us the Olympics. It's a thoroughly pagan celebration dedicated to demons and fornication. It's interesting that the resurgence of the modern Olympics in 1896 exactly coincides with the reconstruction of the Parthenon in Nashville in 1897. If we look around us and we see all of the same characteristics of this pagan Greek culture, all of the sodomy, the homosexual fornication, the idolatry, We don't have to look far.

It's because we've gone back and tried to resurrect a pagan culture of lies and pushed aside the infallible, inerrant Word of God. May the Lord give us wisdom. Wisdom from His Word. To recognize the idolatry in our culture as Paul recognized that Athens is not a great city of great science and learning, but a city overrun with idols. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word, which has endured the ages, though many have tried to rewrite it, to distort it, to corrupt it, to destroy it, to hide it, to burn it.

Yet they have all failed. And they will fail, for you have promised that your word will endure to all generations. Your Word will stand forever. These temples may come and go. Men may come and go, but Your Word endures unchanged.

For You, Lord, are the rightful sovereign over all the kingdoms of the earth. And it is in you and you alone that all knowledge and wisdom is hid. And we ask your forgiveness Lord where we have doubted this. We have been enamored or deceived by the wisdom of pagans. Lord help us to recognize these lives as they are all around us, and to resist them, and to speak against them with the pure milk of your word the gospel of Jesus Christ who rose again from the dead We've asked this in Jesus name.

Amen