A LEGACY THAT OUTLASTS YOU by Dr. Shah, Clearview Church, Henderson, NC

Introduction: Last week, about 24 of us were in Greece for a tour of Paul’s missionary journey after the Macedonian call in Acts 16. Not only that, but ancient Greece is very important to understand the roots of Western Civilization. We all learned a lot and had a really great time! Of course, I have been there before, but I learn more each time. Then, on Wednesday, September 10, it was about 11pm in Greece, I was packing up for our last day of tour and my phone began going off – “Did you hear that Charlie Kirk got shot?” Of course, I went to check on the internet and saw the horrific video. At first, I thought that it was AI generated, but, unfortunately, I was wrong. It was very real. Lots of voices began shouting on social media. I tossed and turned all night. The next day we were back in Athens, packing up to head home. I thought to myself, “how ironic that I am in the cradle of Western Civilization and that act of violence represented an assault on the very foundation of our culture, especially America.” So, God laid on my heart to preach a message titled “A Legacy That Outlasts You.” My prayer is that this message will educate you, challenge you, and even encourage you to leave a legacy that will outlast you.

Acts 17 (page #1710) 16 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. 17 Therefore he reasoned (from dialegomai, found 13 times in the NT, 10 times just in Acts, it gives us the English word “dialogue”), in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. 18 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. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? 20 For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” 21 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.

Context: After a major tragedy or a catastrophe, people usually search for meaning and purpose. They want to know where to stand or which way to move forward. In our age of social media, people usually turn to their social media platforms. After the murder of Charlie Kirk, many took a stand on social media. Some took a biblical stand, which I appreciate far more. Others, vented, which I understand. Yet others, posted just to get some attention, which I don’t understand. Unfortunately, there are others who chose to remain silent – from ordinary people to Christian leaders. I understand that some of you don’t post much anyways, and that is fine. But, if you typically speak out and you’re not, your silence is deafening…What I have seen is that much of what is being said, good or bad, is coming from a place of ignorance.Ignorance is not bliss. It can be fatal. In today’s message, I want to educate, challenge, and even encourage you to leave a legacy that matters. Before we can undertake, we need to understand. Before we can take action, we need to apprehend. I am praying that God will raise a generation that will understand what Charlie Kirk’s message was really about. I am praying that each of us will not allow his death to be in vain.

To begin with, we must step back to see forward. Where do we come from helps us to understand where we are and where we are headed. To see where our nation is headed, you must see it more as a house than a river. It doesn’t matter where a river originates, but it does matter what kind of a foundation a house is built on. America’s founding is often credited to the Ancient Greek Civilization. Thomas Cahill, famous author of books like How the Irish Saved Civilization and Gift of the Jews, wrote a book called Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter. I want to clarify that I don’t agree with him on everything, especially his rejection of Jesus’ deity. But, in his book on the contribution of Ancient Greek culture to our Western culture, he makes a point that is very true and helps us understand how to understand our foundation. He writes:

Though American democracy is often compared to its supposed Athenian model, the American experiment—as well as other modern examples of democracy—derives not directly from Greece but from the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth century of our era. The rediscovery of Athenian political ideals by the humanists of the Renaissance certainly acted as a catalyst to Enlightenment thought, but as one surveys the actual terrain of Athenian democracy, one is more likely to be struck by the vast historical and cultural divide that separates the burgeoning of Athenian democracy from the seething North American colonies of Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York in AD 1765, the year the Stamp Act Congress dared to pass its Declaration of Rights and Liberties.

First, what was this Athenian democracy that Cahill is talking about? It can be seen reflected in a speech given by Pericles who was an Athenian Statesman and General from the 5^th century BC. He was known as the “First Citizen of Athens.” He fought in the Greco-Persian wars and was now involved in a war between Athens and Sparta. We know it as the Peloponnesian War. Pericles was asked to give a speech after the first year of the war at the memorial of all the Athenians who had died defending freedom. I don’t have time to read the whole speech, just the parts relevant to us. Listen to how he describes Athens and see if it reminds you of America:

For our system of government does not copy the systems of our neighbors: we are a model to them, not they to us. Our constitution is called a democracy, because power rests in the hands not of the few but of the many. Our laws guarantee equal justice for all in their private disputes; and as for the election of public officials, we welcome talent to every arena of achievement, nor do we make our choices on the grounds of class but on the grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public life, so we carry the same spirit into our daily relations with one another. We have no evil looks or angry words for our neighbor if he enjoys himself in his own way, and we even abstain from little acts of rudeness, that, though they do no mortal damage, leave hurt feelings in their wake. Open and tolerant in our private lives, in our public affairs we keep within the law. We acknowledge the restraint of reverence; we are obedient to those in authority and to the laws, especially to those that give protection to the oppressed and those unwritten laws of the heart whose transgression brings admitted shame…

Wealth to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and we think poverty nothing to be ashamed of unless one makes no effort to overcome it. Our citizens attend both to public and private duties and do not allow absorption in their own affairs to diminish their knowledge of the City’s business. We differ from other states in regarding the man who keeps aloof from public life not as “private’ but as useless; we decide or debate, carefully and in person, all matters of policy, and we hold, not that words and deeds go ill together, but that acts are foredoomed to failure when undertaken undiscussed. For we are noted for being at once most adventurous in action and most reflective beforehand. Other men are bold in ignorance, while reflection will stop their going forward. But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what lies before them, glory and danger alike —and yet go forth to meet it…

In doing good, too, we are the exact opposite of the rest of mankind. We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by granting them. And so this makes friendship with us something that can be counted on: for we are eager, as creditors, to cement by continued kindness our relation to our friends. If they do not respond with the same warmth, it is because they feel that their services will not be given spontaneously but only as repayment of a debt. We are alone among mankind in doing men benefits, not on calculation of self-interest, but in the fearless confidence of freedom.

I skipped over much in that speech. It was a source of inspiration for Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, Churchill in his Second World War speeches, and Kennedy in his inauguration speech in 1961. I know that many of you are thinking – “That’s it! America is based on the Athenian style democracy.” According to historians, 40% of Athens and surrounding farms population was made up of slaves. Furthermore, metics (from metoikos) made up of nonvoting outsiders made up 40% of the population. This would leave only 20% of actual Greek citizens. Freeborn women were considered second class.

As inspiring as the Greeks were, America was not founded on just the Greek (Athenian) understanding of freedom, although it mattered. In previous messages (Great Nation and Represented), I explained that when it came to the writing of our nation’s Constitution, the most quoted book was the Bible. According to Donald Lutz, as much as 1/3 of the quotes are from the Bible – “the ideas of a limited government, separation of powers, a system of checks and balances, rule of law, due process, representative government, civic virtue, and social order are all coming from the Book of Deuteronomy.” How about the rest? They were turning to Enlightenment writers, Whig writers, English Common Law, Classical writers, and others. In other words, they were turning to the works of Montesquieu (French judge and philosopher), William Blackstone (English jurist and professor), and John Locke. In turn, these European philosophers and jurists were turning to the Classical writers like Strabo, Livy, Polybius, and Cicero for information on the Lycian League and similar federations. This is where the Athenian style democracy comes in, but it is not the whole foundation, just a small part of it. Our founding fathers tried to bring together all the best ideals that ever existed in ancient past, all the best thinking of the best minds of their time, and the Bible as the key foundation block to give us a very unique nation called the United States of America. Nothing like this has ever existed anywhere anytime on this planet since the dawn of time.

Charlie Kirk’s philosophy (as you saw in the video) was based on 3 ideas:

1. America is the greatest country in the history of the world.
2. The Constitution is the greatest political document ever written.
3. Free enterprise is the most assured way to lift people out of poverty and create prosperity for all.

The killer was using antifascist rhetoric. Some call themselves fighting the Nazis. Did you know that both fascism and Nazism came out of a debate within socialism. Its Marxism that fell apart into 2 groups: Bolshevism and Leninism; fascism and Nazism. You cannot wear a terrorist scarf and claim to fight the Nazis…you are it.

Let’s get back to Acts 17. When Christianity entered the Greek world, it had already become the Greco-Roman world. Rome had conquered Greece. Gone were the days of the lofty ideas of the philosophers. Gone were the days of Athenian democracy, as hypocritical as it was. Now, there was this strange conglomeration of the conquered Greeks with their ancient pride and the conquering Romans with their inferiority complex but brute power and control. In such a world came the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Athens, Paul began to reason (dialogue) with the Jewish and Gentile worshippers in the synagogue and the Greeks and whoever was there in the marketplace. Acts 17 (page #1710) 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? 20 For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” 21 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.

What Paul did next is what Charlie Kirk was doing on college campuses. Acts 17 (page #1710-1711) 22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; 23 for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, “For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” 32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” 33 So Paul departed from among them. 34 However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

The world on which Western Civilization is built is one in which the outward form is Greco-Roman but its inward content is Judeo-Christian. We have the old Greek values of freedom and democracy with the Roman ideals of law and order, but the heart of our culture is Judeo-Christian. It is based upon the truth of the word of God. This is what makes America unique, even more so than other European countries. What Greece had a fleeting glimpse of, and Europe only understood, we as Americans got to experience.This is what Charlie Kirk believed and was fighting for. We must teach our children to stand on this conglomeration. In other words, it’s not enough to raise your children with your values at home. We used to think that the training of the children is like a 3-legged stool – Home, Church, and School. I would like to make it a 4-legged stool – Home, Church, School, and even social media. Let them see you serve alongside in church, as Ryan talked about last weekend.

More than anything, we have to give them the gospel of Jesus Christ with courage clarity, and compassion. Are you saved? Are you doing your part to reach your section of the world for Christ?