"YOU NEVER MENTIONED
HIM TO ME"

There is a hymn in our new song books (799) that should prick the hearts of each one of us each time it is sung. The title of that song is "You Never Mentioned Him to Me." The words are captivating and not in a good way. Let's look at the spirit of the apostle Paul, by contrast.

In Acts 17: 16 - 34 Paul preached at the Areopagus in Athens, Greece. The people to whom he preached were not entirely unlike many of the people that we know and come in contact with on a daily basis. They had decided on their own what their gods were and what they were not. They had a god to everything. They had a god of love, a god of the sun, a god of war, a god of this, and a god of that. They even had an alter with the inscription, "to an unknown god" just in case they had missed anything. Paul was greatly distressed by this.

In the sermon that Paul preached he said, "The one you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you…" He began by presenting the God of creation as that unknown god. He was speaking to people who had no knowledge of the Jewish faith, who were from a totally pagan culture, and that apparently thought that if there were many gods in the universe then they must have a temple to each of them. This isn't all that different from some people that we all know, today.

Paul went to Athens for one reason. He went because they did not know the true God. After preaching to them, he told them that there might have been a period of time that God "winked" at their ignorance, but that time was gone, and He has commanded everyone to come to the truth.

I am haunted by an undeniable fact. That fact is that there are people whom I have known that will stand in judgment in a lost condition and I didn't try to do anything about it. I think most of us are in that boat together.

We need to be more like Paul. Won't it be so sad, on judgment day for someone with whom we associated, almost daily, to look at us in despair and exclaim, "You never mentioned Him to me?"