All right, in the 16th verse
we have Paul. Now, while Paul waited for them
at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly
given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the
synagogue with the Jew and with a devout person, and in the market
daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers
of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some
said, What will this babbler say? Others some, he seems to
be a setter for of strange gods, because he preached unto them
Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought
him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine
which thou speakest is? For thou bringest certain strange
things to our ears. We would know, therefore, what
these things mean. For all the Athenians and strangers
which were there spent their time in nothing else but either
to tell or to hear some new thing. Then Paul stood in the midst
of Mars Hill and said, You men of Athens, I perceive that in
all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld
your devotion, I found an altar with this inscription, To the
Unknown God. whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world, all
things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth,
dwells not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped
with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth
to all life and breath and all things, and as made of one blood,
all nations of men were to dwell on the face of the earth and
have determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their
habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if happily they
might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from
every one of us, for in Him We live and move and have our being,
as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his
offspring. Far as much, then, as we are
the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead
is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man's
device. And the times of this ignorance
God winked at, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,
because He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world
in righteousness by that man whom He has ordained. He hath
given assurance unto all, in that he hath raised him from
the dead. When they heard of the resurrection
of the dead, some mocked, and others said, We will hear thee
again of this. So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto
him, and believed, among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite,
and a woman named Demaris, and others with them." Now, what
we have just read occurred on the second missionary journey
of Paul, as those events that we studied in the 16th chapter
in our last study. And that was in the city of Philippi,
involving Lydia, a seller of purple, involving a demon-possessed
young woman and the Philippian jailer all having experiences
with Paul. Our present text this morning
finds Paul in Athens down in Greece. But since Paul did not
go directly from Philippi to Athens, it might be well if we
consider the interval and fill in the gap a bit for our understanding. By the way, if you have a Bible
that has maps in the back of it and has a map of the missionary
journey of the Apostle Paul, many of them do, It is easier,
therefore, to visualize in our mind the travels and the location
of the apostle in a particular city or country. I never have
said, open your Bible to the maps, but that might be a good
thing to do. Now, before Paul left Philippi,
a matter surfaces that gets little attention in covering the ministry
of the great Apostle Paul. And it's recorded in Acts chapter
16, and it is in verse 35 through verse 39. And it concerns the
fact that Paul was a Roman citizen. And that will be important in
Paul's dealings with them. and in their dealings with him.
So we ask the question, how is he a Roman citizen and how is
this relevant? What does this have to do with
anything that Paul is a Roman citizen? What difference can
it make in the life or the ministry of the apostle? We notice in
Acts 16 and verse 35 that the next morning after they had spent
the night in jail, the next morning after the earthquake, that the
magistrates, the civil magistrates, sent word down to the prison
that Paul and Silas were to be released. that they were to be
set free, that they were to be turned out of the prison. Now why this sudden change of
mind, we're not told. We're wondering if it might have
something to do with the earthquake and their thoughts now about
the apostle. Now, in verse 36 of chapter 16,
the message is given to Paul and to Silas. You are free. All
charges are dropped. Go your way. You are free men. But in verse 37, Paul says, in
effect, whoa! Hold on. Wait just a minute. They have openly, they have publicly
flogged us, have beaten us, that without any cause whatsoever. And they have thrown us in prison. They have made it appear that
we are some sort of criminal. And they have done this without
any due process, without any hearing whatsoever. without any
defense from us whatsoever. Therefore, says Paul, you let
the ones that threw us in prison, who ordered us to be beaten and
thrown in prison, Let them come down in person and throw us out
of the prison, showing our innocence and their error. I think the
key words here probably are in verse 37, being Romans. We, being
Romans, have been unjustly treated, unjustly sentenced, and cast
into prison. John Gill said that according
to the Porcian and the Sempronian laws, a Roman citizen might neither
be bound nor beaten, unquote. Yet both were done by Roman magistrates
in a Roman colony, in a Roman city, by to a Roman citizen. And so when they heard that Paul
was a Roman citizen, they feared that lest they lose their position
for violating government policy. Therefore, the magistrate attempting
to cover their lawlessness and their foolishness by letting
them secretly out of prison and secretly leaving out of town. Now, that being the case, we
wonder, and we wonder out loud, why did Paul not say something
before they beat him and threw him in that filthy prison. You
will see in Acts 22, 24 through verse 29 that Paul did use his
Roman citizenship to his advantage. On another occasion, when he
was in trouble, he declared himself to be a Roman as he was about
to be beaten. And the Roman official that was
in charge tells the apostle Paul, you're a Roman citizen? Look,
he said, it cost me a lot of money and it cost me dearly to
obtain my Roman citizenship. Paul answered, I'm free. I am so by birth. So some think that Paul's father
had been a Roman citizen. That citizenship was sometime
bestowed upon those like him because they had in some way
greatly aided the government and as a reward had been given
Roman citizenship. But we'll end that chasing of
the rabbit there. This must have been later on
very useful to Paul as he preached the gospel and traveled throughout
the Roman provinces, and as he faced Jewish persecution, and
as he faced unjust accusation, and was handled by Roman authority. In Acts 26, Paul is allowed to
defend himself. He's allowed to stand up and
give his defense. and to tell his side of the story. Now, be that as it may, chapter
17 traces the route that Paul took that brought him from Philippi
down onto Athens. From a filthy prison in the farmer
up on the Areopagus in Mars Hill, the latter sometimes called a
court as well. In Acts 17, 1-9, It finds Paul in the city of
Thessalonica, covering a span of at least three Sabbath days. And in verse 2, the last part,
and in verse 3, in the synagogue, reasoning out of the Scripture
that Christ is Messiah. But in verse 5 through verse
9, The infidel Jews caused an uproar and the brethren, for
his safety, were forced to send Paul out of the city under the
cover of night. And it brought him down to Berea,
where in verse 10, according to his custom, he went out and
found some willing listeners who weighed and judged what he
heard or said by the Holy Scripture. They were more of a noble sort
than those back Thessalonica, they received the word with readiness
and they searched out the scripture whether the things that Paul
was saying were true. And some honorable women, we're
told, believed prominent persons along with the fact that they
were Greeks and a godly or rather a goodly number of men as well. And this place, Berea, seemed
a very fertile place to plant the seed of the gospel. But alas, when the Jews back
in Thessalonica heard that Berea had received the word of the
Lord, they came down and they stirred up the people again against
Paul. Again he is forced to leave the
city. The brethren take him out by
night and bring him down to Athens. Now Timothy and Silas remain
at Berea. And Paul sends word back by his
escort that they are to join him in Athens as soon as they
can. And that brings us to where we
begin our reading. In verse 16, while Paul waited
for them in Athens, awaiting their arrival. He would abide
there until they came and joined him. Not that he would be inactive
or that he would live in seclusion and completely out of sight. No, he moved about the city,
he found the Jewish synagogue, he participated in and he mingled
with the students of philosophy who met in the marketplace daily
to philosophize and to mentally joust one with another over the
meaning of life or to hear the latest thing or to put forth
the latest theory. But we wade out into the deep.
Let's take a close look at verse 16 and give emphasis here to
two things. Number one, notice the feelings
of Paul expressed in those words, his spirit was stirred within
him. Then secondly we notice the cause
or the occasion of the stirring of his spirit within. It was
this, when he saw the city wholly given over to idolatry. You may notice that the margin
has it full of idols. And these two things stand as
cause and effect. The observing of the idolatry
stirred up the spirit of Paul. And since these bear relation
of cause and effect, let us first observe the cause which was there. The city was full of idols. In fact, it was wholly given
to idolatry as it is in the King James. It is full or filled with
idols. Everywhere he went, everywhere
he looked, here an idol, there an idol, everywhere an idol. Idols and images and devotions
and monuments to many, many deities and even one with this inscription
to the unknown God. Now, it is both interesting but
also disheartening to read the history of ancient Greece, and
Athens in particular, in regard to that period of time in Paul's
visit. It was not that Paul had never
seen, it was not that Paul had never encountered idolatry and
idols before. Idolatry was something that he
knew had existed and he had seen it before. He had seen it, for
example, in Acts chapter 14. But the author uses a word that
indicates that it had never before risen to the level that it was
here in Athens. And several expositors have said
that this is the only time that a particular word is used here
in the New Testament. And our translators have rendered
it full of idols. And Linsky renders the word as
conveying the meaning excessive as to idols, out-idoling any
other place that Paul had ever been. Historians, pagan authors,
Christian commentators have sought to describe what Paul came upon
on that occasion. For example, Petronius is reported
to have said, in Athens it was easier to find a God than to
find a man. Another said that Athens had
more images and idols than all of Greece put together, combined. Another called Athens one great
altar, one great offering to the God. Livy or Livy wrote,
in Athens are to be seen images of men of all description and
made of all kind of material. Everywhere one went, everywhere
one looked, every public building, many temples, images, pagan deities
all about in the city. So let's make a quick point that
you may or may not have noticed, you may or may not have considered
as relevant. The point being that there are
certain cities that have become centers of certain movement and
became known for this and famous for it. It might be a hippie
haven. It might be a city where the
artists are attractive, homosexuals like San Francisco, environmental
progressive, immorality like Hollywood. And though these sorts
are in every place in the world, Yet heavy concentrations of them
are sometimes found in certain places. And when that is the
occasion, they usually come to dominate the city. They destroy
the moral fiber and impose their agenda upon the city. And such see themselves as advanced
and progressive but not as ungodly. And so with Athens, the center
of idols, pagan philosophy full of idols, and though idolatry
was universal and vain superstition was everywhere that one went,
yet, as Calvin wrote, Satan had bewitched Athens more than the
other city, so that the men here were driven to their greater
madness, their impious and their perverted rights," unquote. Now,
that brings us to consider, then, how Paul viewed all of this. It made a great impression upon
him, and that goes without saying. He was moved by what he saw,
his spirit was stirred, but he was not impressed by the art
or the architecture or the beauty. He did not say, And he did not
even think in his heart, what a diverse and multicultural city
is this. Nor did he admire the religious
tolerance that all gods of every kind were welcome and all ideas
were tolerated. He did not ascribe to the idea
that all gods are good and equal and to be accepted. He thought
not. What a delight there is that
this is such a liberal and progressive city that I have visited. Rather,
Paul saw it as an abomination to the high and holy God of heaven. I thought that Calvin put it
well. Paul grew hot, he said. at the sight of the impious profanation
of the name of God and the corruption of his worship." Later Calvin
mentioned seeing the glory of God impiously violated in this
particular place. Now as Paul tarried there, waiting
for Silas and Timothy to catch up with him, our text tells us
of his contact. And he had contact with two sorts
of people. Number one, of course, the Jew
and the Gentile proselyte came across his path in the synagogue. And on the Sabbath day, he would
go there and reason, as was his custom, out of the Scripture. But, in verse 18, Beginning there
is a description of Paul's encounter with the philosophers that were
so plentiful in the city of Athens, especially a group called the
Stoics and the Epicureans, disciples of Zeno and Epicurus. And both of them had faulty views
toward the world. and blasphemous they were in
their notion of God and of men. Some have described the Epicurean
as atheistic speculators and the Stoics as being pantheist
in nature. The Epicureans teaching that
the world came into being by the action of Adam. The Stoics
tell that God made the world but that he had no hand in governing
it, no providence was upon it, but left it all unto faith. And they believe, I have read,
that at death the soul was absorbed into God. And the point being
that there were very strong differences between these two sets of philosophers,
but they did have one thing in common, which is this, both were
diametrically opposed to Christian teaching and the Christian doctrine
of God and of salvation from sin in Christ and of eternal
life. It was a new thing brought to
their ear, Jesus and the resurrection. And you notice that some of them
call Paul a babbler. Others said, he appears to be
a setter forth of strange God. Now, a babbler was Athenian slang,
and it pictures a bird picking up scraps here and there, a bum
who gathers scraps that have fallen, and they're calling Paul
a plagiarist, and a peddler of second-hand scraps of thought
gathered from others, what F.F. Bruce called an itinerant peddler
of religion. They invited Paul to tell them
more, for his words were strange and startling under their ears. They would know the meaning of
it. And we read that they ask him.
He's brought to Mars Hill, up on Areagapios. And there, a place
for speaking, there a place for the court to be held, judgment
and such like. And he's given free course that
he might speak unto them about the certain strange thing that
he has brought unto their ears. Now, I find agreement with those
who say this is neither a compliment or a criticism. The question
is about the word superstitious in the King James. Some understand
Paul to say, I see that you're very religious. I see that you
are very devoted to your deity." He just states a fact, not criticizing
or complimenting. It was based upon what he had
observed, the many devotions that he saw in their city. Idols, statues everywhere, inscriptions
and altars to Mercury, to Job, to Pilos and such like. Every
now and then, I thought of this, you'll see a car driving in the
parking lot with scripture stickers all over, covering it from one
end unto the other. You say to yourself, that must
be a very religious man. Or you might say to yourself,
that's a very opinionated nutcase, one or the other. Now Paul explains
the reason behind his perception of them as being very devoted
to their adopted deity. They were everywhere. There were
hundreds of them, uncountable. But then he says, in beholding
your objects of worship, I came upon an altar that had this inscription
upon it, to the unknown God, or likely to an unknown God. whom you ignorantly worship."
Now this is not, I don't think, as insulting as it sounds when
we put it in its context, connecting ignorant with the word unknown. Paul tells him, such an inscription
is a confession on your part that there is a God and that
He is unknown unto you. And though none can truly worship
a God that is unknown, yet Paul tells them, uses their words
and their confession to declare unto them the one true God. Him declare I unto you. Now, we have this advantage in
preaching to people on the nature and the attributes of God in
the world. And that is that most people
that we will encounter believe in a supreme being. They already
believe in a higher power. They believe in God. That's not
to say that they savingly or they spiritually believe. Most
of them, like the Samaritan in John 4 and verse 22, know not
what they worship. But now consider something different
here than Paul among the Jews. Were this an audience of Jew
and a proselyte, Paul would have reasoned with them out of the
scripture. He would have used the scripture
to show that Jesus was Messiah. But with these pagan philosophers,
he takes a different approach, for they did not believe in one
God. that created heaven and earth,
nor were they schooled in the Old Testament Scripture, nor
did they hold the expectation of a Redeemer to come and deliver
them from their sin. But since they acknowledged a
God, how be it an unknown God, Paul takes his start here in
order that he might declare to them the nature of the true God. And as Calvin put, to correct
their perverted religion, Paul need not convince them that there
is a God to be worshipped, They openly conceded this, so he sets
out to distinguish the one true God that existed from the idols
and false God that existed only in their vain imagination of
ignorant people. For not atheism, but idolatry
is the result of perverting the worship of God. Now, let's look
at some of Paul's points as we move through the text. Number
one, verse 24. God that made heaven and all
things therein. That is, Paul said this true
God created all things. He said that in Acts 14 and 15
as well. And seeing that He is Lord of
heaven and of earth, He does not dwell in handmade temples
or shrines. Heaven is His throne. the earth
is his footstool, he fills heaven and earth. You may remember that
Solomon was pinched by this thought in 1 Kings 8, verse 27, at the
dedication of the temple. We understand, of course, that
this was typical. How can this house hold you,
said Solomon, with the heaven of the heaven? cannot contain
you. Nor, Acts 17.25, is this God
worshipped or served or cared for? He has no need that a man
can fulfill, seeing He is the One that gives life and breath
and all things. He is completely independent
of every creature, yet all are dependent upon Him for life for
breath and for all things. What's more, look at verse 26.
All mankind is descended from one blood. All have common parents. God made from one man and one
woman and fixed their time and their dwelling. Paul likely says
this against the claim of the Athenians that they were aborigines,
that is, natives of the soil, that they sprung up out of their
own land and therefore were different from the other races. Pagans
held the view of the different origins of man, some of them
this and some of them that. So Paul declares that God has
made Adam the progenitor of the human race. One blood. Then look at verse 27. Let's
not Arminianize this text, however. It connects the thought of verse
26. God not only made the race, providentially disposed them,
that they should seek the Lord if perchance, if happily, they
might feel after Him and might find Him, that by the light of
nature they might be convinced thereby of the existence of God
who made all things and founded the race. And the last part of
verse 27, though He be not far from every one of us. Why? Because in verse 28, in
Him we live and move and have our being. We are, even when
unregenerate, supported in natural life by the power of God. And in verse 28, Paul quotes
their own heathen poets. a certain oratus, as having said,
we also are his offspring. By the way, Paul quotes other
heathen poets in 1 Corinthians 15, 33, Titus 1, 12. Now, for what one of their own
poets had said, Paul draws a logical conclusion, which is this. if
we are the offspring of God. Then, says Paul, it is illogical
to think that the divinity as being something made by men's
hand, or by gold, or by silver, or by stone, which are more impress
God than plastic or mud. They no more impress our God
than if it were made out of plastic or out of mud. Now we close with
a short consideration of verse 30 and 31, Paul's closing application,
that God had winked at former ignorance. However, owing to
the revelation made in Christ, idolatry is inexcusable and Christ
is appointed and a day is set when he will judge the world.
And here is the point to ponder. The appearance of the Son of
God in the world marks a new epoch, era, or age. The sending of His Son makes
a great change in God's dealing with the world. See such text
as Acts 14, 16, Romans 3, 25. John 4, 23, 2 Corinthians 5,
and verse 19. Remember in the parable of the
vineyard, last of all He sent unto them His Son, Matthew chapter
21. Now the times of this ignorance
God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Let's have a personal application,
the times of ignorance, our own personal ignorance. The long-suffering
of our God is salvation, says the Apostle Peter. Rather than
destroy us for our sin, He preserved us, gave us life and breath and
all things. Rather than give up or give us
over to a reprobate mind, God at His own time quickened and
He called us. I'll close by saying In Acts
17, Paul is breaking new ground with the Gospel and the Word
of God. F. F. Bruce calls Paul's speech
on Mars Hill, and I'm quoting, an introductory lesson in Christianity
for cultured pagans, unquote. And verse 34, some believe, yes
they did, Paul's words, some believe, Some would hear more,
some more. But Paul broke new ground and
opened a new door with the preaching of the gospel in Athens. And
we are thankful that this is in the record of God's Word.