22.08 | Provoked
Acts 17:16-34
‘Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.’
Acts 17:16
Sometimes our anger reveals our priorities.
Like when you’re cut up on the road when you’re in a hurry, and you realise that maybe getting there on time has become too big a deal to you.
Or when you’re more agitated by a sports result that didn’t go your way, than every other item that came on the news beforehand.
Or when you realise, when you snap at that person, that you’re really in need of some space.
Or when your housemate or spouse doesn’t do the washing up they way you wanted them to, that maybe you’re more controlling than you’d realised.
We’re provoked by things that bother us. Sometimes it is big things that provoke us, whereas oftentimes it is the little things that trigger a deeper measure of frustration, usually of some unaddressed part of our soul that is building like a pressure cooker, and ready to blow.
But when we read through the Bible, we notice the whole spread of human frustration.
We notice the juvenile frustration of people like Jonah, bitter that God was so very gracious to Jonah’s enemies, and petulant about his conveniently shady plant withering away and giving him a headache.1
But then, there’s also another kind of frustration—a deeper provocation that somehow feels closer to holiness. It is when the individual is provoked by something deeply wrong, in the hunger for something vastly better.
This is the provocation of zeal.
Paul today reaches the great ancient city of Athens. As he looks around, we get the impression he’s not been here before. The sights and sounds and smell and streets are new to him. And as he looks at this magnificent city, we read not that he was impressed, but rather that he was provoked.
He’s not provoked by the kinds of things that usually annoy us when we travel. This isn’t the frustration of trying to navigate a new transport system or language barrier or having forgotten your way back to the hotel.
Paul, rather is provoked by something else.
His spirit was provoked … as he saw that the city was full of idols.
The city was full of idols.
Paul’s provocation is about worship. He is grieved, frustrated, angered, distressed, that the city of Athens is full of statues to the ancient deities of Greece and Rome. This is not petulance. It is zeal. Paul’s desire for the city of Athens is bound up in his desire for the glory of God—that in this city the idols would be smashed down and worship of the true God would be established. His yearning—and the maturation of provocation—is found precisely here: that in this place the Name of Jesus would be honoured.
Our cities may not have such explicit statues and temples.2 But you can bet your life they have idols. Just as the Roman Empire had idols of love and sex and power and freedom and strength and youth and abundance, so too these aspects of human life become elevated in both our hearts, and the hearts of our neighbours and colleagues, becoming the lead desire—wrapped around that endless internal narrative that connects our truest sense of happiness to that thing or that activity or that relationship or that feeling. The human heart endlessly seeks salvation in the wrong places. The human heart endlessly makes ultimate things that are temporary. This is the nature of idolatry. It is when any thing or person or activity or desire takes the place that only belongs to God.
As Paul declares the message of Jesus in that city, his longing is for a purification of the worship of that place. His hunger is for the city to be filled with the knowledge and glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.3 His prayer is Hallowed by your name.4
What provokes us?
When we read such stories, we’re challenged from the small and mundane things that fill so much of our emotional energy, with this possibility of hearts that hunger for nothing less than the honour of the Name of Jesus, dethroning every idol of our cities with the elevated glory that can only ever be rightfully His.
Reflect:
What provokes me right now?
What might that show me?
Bring this before the Lord, asking Him to work in your priorities unto the growing of deeper zeal.
Pray:
Father in heaven,
Too often I am provoked,
By the small, the mundane, the trivial.
I rush and stress and have these standards for others,
And when they are not attained,
I am provoked.
And yet, Father,
My provocation reveals my heart,
Making clear the disorder of my priorities.
And so, Father,
With the best of my strength,
I lay down these trivialities,
And offer you again this heart.
Purge in me the idols within,
And create in me a zeal for your glory,
That my provocation
May be of substance,
And that the battles I fight
Be eternally worth the endeavour.
In Jesus’ Name,
And for His unending glory,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Job 4-5 | Psalm 103:1-5
See Jonah 4
Although we could easily argue religious imagery around our shopping centres and football stadiums and nightclub culture and high rise offices. James K.A. Smith, for example, describes how the shopping mall has become a worshiping environment, a temple to the gods of consumerism, in his book Desiring the Kingdom.
As longed for in Habakkuk 2:14
As Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer (e.g. Matthew 6:9)