If you this morning feel weak, helpless, and empty, and inadequate, and unworthy, this message,

this text might land on you as goodness.

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper demonstrates from Acts 17 how worshipping God

is precisely what we need in our helplessness. This sermon was originally preached at

Bethlehem Baptist Church on November 23, 1997.

One of the most exciting parts of the Bible is the Book of Acts, and it's written by a doctor,

a physician named Luke, and Luke was a fellow traveler of the Apostle Paul,

and the Apostle Paul probably heard Jesus preach in person when he was on the earth.

We know that he was educated in Jerusalem during the life of Jesus, and we know that

he was standing there listening to the message of the first martyr named Stephen.

And in fact, Luke tells us in the Book of Acts that he was consenting to Stephen's death.

In other words, he was very glad that Stephen was being stoned to death as the first Christian

martyr, just a few months or perhaps a few years after Jesus had died and been raised.

So this man, Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, is very, very closely tied in with

Jesus of Nazareth, accompanied and was probably the personal physician of the Apostle Paul who had

seen Jesus face to face and who had been there during the martyrdom of the first man who died

because of his faith. This Apostle Paul hated Christianity. He wasn't yet an apostle.

And why he hated Christianity is a very important question because a change came into his life where he

ceased to hate Christianity and began to lay his life down for Christianity. Why did he hate it so

much and what happened to him? He was on his road to Damascus to find Christians. He lived in

Jerusalem and he was moving from Jerusalem in Israel up to Damascus in Syria to find Christians to

persecute them, bring them back, put them in prison in Jerusalem. And on that road, something

...