We look first of all, I just
want to read verse 16 of Acts 17. Now, while Paul waited for
them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the
city wholly given to idolatry. Now look at verse 22 and following. Paul is invited to speak to these
philosophers in Athens. And in verse 22, then Paul stood
in the midst of Mars Hill and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive
that in all things you are too superstitious, some say religious,
for as I pass by and beheld your devotion, I found an altar with
this inscription, to an unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all
things therein, seeing His Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not
in temples made with hands, neither is worship with men's hands,
as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life
and breath and all things. and hath made of one blood all
nations of men, for to dwell on the face of the earth, and
hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of
their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if happily, perchance
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 also are His offspring. For 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 commandeth 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 hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance
unto all, in that he hath raised him from the dead. And when they
heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others
said, We will hear thee again of this matter. So Paul departed
from among them. albeit certain men, clave unto
him, and believed, among the which was Diosinus the Areagopite,
and a woman named Damaris, and others with them." Now, the text
in Acts 17 here is both interesting and unique because it finds Paul
on his second missionary journey in the city of Athens, Greece. And Athens was unlike any city
that Paul had ever visited before, probably, or where Paul had preached
the gospel of Christ. And for that reason, when Paul
was here, he encountered a different kind of audience than usually
he was speaking to. And consequently, because it
is a different kind of audience, we notice that he treats with
them in a different way. In most places, Paul's audience
were people gathered in a synagogue, a Jewish synagogue, on the Jewish
Sabbath day, and usually these congregations in the synagogue
would be made up of three kinds of people. There would be three
kinds of people usually mixed together in the audience. By
far the most predominant were Jews by nature, natural or physical
descendants of Abraham. Secondly, in any of those audiences,
there might be proselytes, those who had crossed over from Gentilism
under Judaism and had espoused the doctrine of Judaism and submitted
themselves unto the ceremonial law and lived as a Jew. Thirdly, there's a little bit
different one. There's what some have called
fearers of God or God-fearers. And in this last category, we
would include people such as Cornelius that we meet with in
the 10th chapter of the book of Acts. For although they were
technically Gentiles who gathered there with Cornelius, but not
what F.F. Bruce called, quote, raw pagans. They were not raw pagans in that
sense of the word. And Cornelius is described in
Acts chapter 10 and verse 2, as a devout one who feared God,
but he was not acquainted with, not ready for the reception of
the gospel. It was said that Peter, Acts
16 and 6, would tell you what you ought to do. In Acts 10 and
verse 22, to hear words from you, Cornelius said, Acts 10
and 33, to hear all things that God has commanded you to speak
unto us. So there were that third category
of God-fearers that were there at the house of Cornelius. Even
in Acts chapter 11 and verse 14, who will tell thee words
whereby you might be saved? That's Cornelius' or Peter's
defense of himself. Now, we have digressed to make
the point. that though Cornelius and his
friends gathered there to hear Peter were Gentiles, yet they
were not in the same state of Gentilism as those in Acts chapter
17 that Paul encountered. Those in Acts 17 in the city
of Athens were raw pagans, if we may use the expression. They
were superstitious. They were steeped in the teaching
of the philosophers who had held forth there in the Agora. And with Paul, he must take a
different route with them than he would take with others. He
takes an altogether different approach with these people than
he would have otherwise. For example, when Paul's audience
was mostly Jew in a Jew synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath day, his
method was to open the Old Testament Scripture and prove from them
that Jesus was the Messiah. With Jews, he would open their
Scripture that they confessed to be inspired. He used the Old
Testament Scripture. Now this is perfectly demonstrated
in Acts 17 verses 2 and verse 3. In Thessalonians, where was
a synagogue of the Jew, and we read there in that second verse,
and Paul, as was his manner or custom, went in unto them, and
three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scripture." Meaning,
of course, the Old Testament Scripture, and they were called
Moses or the Law, and the psalm and the prophet is how they were
divided. And in the third verse of Acts
17, notice what he did. Opening and alleging the truth
as it is in Jesus Christ, from the Old Testament Scripture.
Now, other examples of Paul using this method with the Jews you
have in such places as Acts 18 and verse 19. when at Ephesus,
quote, when he entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. Again in Acts 18 in verse 28,
over in Achaia, quote, he mightily convinced the Jews publicly,
showing by the scripture that Jesus was the Christ. As for
Marshall's interlinear, it renders it this way, quote, for vehemently
He confuted the Jews publicly, proving Jesus to be the Christ."
Well again in Acts 28 and verse 23, while even in custody in
Rome, awaiting his trial before Caesar, we read these, quote,
They appointed him a day, they came unto his lodging many, to
whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading
them concerning Jesus both out of the law and out of the prophets
from morning till evening." Now Paul was granted the privilege
of having his own dwelling place even though he was in custody
and even though he was accompanied by a guard at all times. Of course we remember Acts chapter
8 and verse 35, the eunuch sitting in his chariot reading from Isaiah
chapter 53, and Philip joining himself to him and saying to
him, do you understand what you read? And the eunuch answered,
how can I, except some man should guide me? And we reach, and he,
beginning at that same scripture, Isaiah 53, he preached unto him
Jesus Christ. But at Athens, Paul must, because
of his audience, take a different route and a different approach
in setting Christ and the things of God before them. He cannot,
as with the Jews, whip out the scripture and begin to read and
quote the Old Testament scripture. He does not at first reason with
them out of the scripture. In fact, we'll see he quotes
from some of their poets. to make his point. According
to the knowledge and the light that men have, we must meet them
according to where they are in light and knowledge and level
and so forth. Now by contrast, the Jews had
lived centuries in expectation of a Messiah. So among them Paul
preached showing that Jesus of Nazareth matched the Scriptures
and all of the prophecy, that Jesus of Nazareth met and all
Scripture was fulfilled in Him. He indeed is the Messiah. But here in Athens with such
a people, the heathen believed in, they worshipped and they
venerated and they honored many false and imaginary gods. What Paul once called in Acts
14 and 15, these vanities he called the gods of the heathen. Now this point before we move
on, this shows us the era of the one-size-fits-all evangelism
of the Arminian theology in our day. They have one-size-fits-all. They deal with all people in
the same way, tell them all the same thing. using the same scripture,
taking them down what we used to call the Roman road. They have one formula that they
impose upon everyone, and that one formula basically is summed
up in this, God loves you all, and Jesus died for all of you. Imagine now, to make a point,
If you spoke to an atheist, supposing a real and true atheist could
be found, I ask you what impression would it make to tell the real
atheist, God loves you and Christ has died for you. A real atheist
does not believe in God. Nor does he believe the Bible
that we quote, thus not in the Son of God. And you cannot prove
to the atheist the existence of God. You cannot offer rational
proof that might convince him. Now the zealous Arminian would
say, I will show him the wonders of nature. I'll speak to that
atheist about the grandeur of the creation that God has made. I'll have him look on the beautiful
flowers and on the majestic mountain, the division of the sea and the
land, the rotation of the season every so often. I'll point out
to him the wonder of childbirth and the rain and the harvest
that comes up out of the ground. Let me tell you that the atheist
will not be moved by all of this because he attributes all of
this to the process of evolution. For a real, genuine, bona fide,
legitimate atheist is an evolution. He must stop natural B. Thus,
we can understand the manner of Paul's dealings with those
in the city of Athens in Acts chapter 17. And for what it is
worth, and for our consideration, there are two passages that are
recorded for us in the book of Acts that has Paul preaching
before what I call, quote, pure pagan audiences, unquote. The other passage, in addition
to Acts chapter 17, is found in Acts chapter 14, which occurred
as Paul visited at Lystra, and is shorter in length than the
one in chapter 17. But in chapter 14, when Paul
worked a miracle, the pagan Lycanians of that city thought that the
gods had come down to them in the form of men. And Paul and
Barnabas, they gave names. of the constellation and Paul
and Barnabas barely succeeded in stopping them from offering
sacrifices unto themselves and falling down and worshipping
them. But in Acts 17 in Athens, Paul
encounters here some of the disciples of Zeno. Zeno, the founder of
what is called the Stoics here in this passage of Scripture.
Also there were those of the rival school of Epicurus. The Stoics held that the national
rational faculty was primary and that for all intents and
purposes, they were pantheistic in their view of God and of man. Now the Epicureans, on the other
hand, were such as taught that the chief purpose, the most important
purpose of our existence is pleasure and joy all the days of our life. Now on top of these, F.F. Bruce
described as, quote, attempts in pre-Christian paganism to
come to terms with life, unquote. These tried to figure out the
mystery of life and of all things about them. And these two schools
of philosophy, in verse 16, Paul saw the city wholly given to
idolatry. The margin said, full of idols. This city, someone said, had
more gods than men. That it was easier to find a
god in Athens than it was to find a man. But it was famous
for its sculpture and its architecture, and Paul looked about as he waited
for his comrade He saw all kinds of temples and all kinds of altars,
and with this devotion and that devotion, it had been said in
jest, as I said, that they exceeded all others in worship or matters
that they worshiped, and that they had altars to mercy, altars
to shame, to fame, to desire, and an altar they had there dedicated
to 12 gods in the city of Athens. Plus, we read that Paul even
saw one devotion or altar on which had been inscribed the
words, to an unknown god. That they might not miss any
god, for they wanted to hear of all. They had even set up
an altar or a monument or a devotion and on it was written the words
to an unknown God. And Paul looked out upon all
of this and his spirit stirred and strained at the least to
go and to declare the things of God. Now these philosophers
in Athens were different than the Jews, who were very violent,
very quickly rejected things. But these philosophers love to
engage in mental jousting, as it has been called. They even
had their ear peeled out for anything new that might come
along. They wanted to hear the latest
thing. They wanted to know the latest
fad there in verse 21. And when they heard Paul speaking
of Jesus and the resurrection in verse 32, They thought these
to be two new gods that they had not heard of before. And
they said, Paul is a setter forth of strange god. Thou bringest
certain strange things. unto our ears, and rather than
run him out of town like the Jews did so often, they wanted
to hear more. And so in our text, they take
Paul, not by force and not by violence, but they invite and
they take Paul to Mars Hill, or as it is called in verse 19,
Areopagus. It was a place where the council
met and formed judgment. It was a court where judgments
were made. Also a place for public gathering and public speaking. present, as Gil suggests, were
the Arogopite judges in that council, and the whole learned
philosophers and the different sects that were in the city had
gathered there to hear Paul. And Paul's given them a chance
to address them, to speak unto them. He begins in verse 22,
His opening remarks, men of Athens, I see, I behold, I discern that
you are too superstitious, which most people render religious
or reverent or God-fearing. Some think though It is not a
compliment, but neither is it a degrading insult heaped upon
them. But it is a statement of fact
that gives Paul an inroad unto them. You are very religious. You are devoted to deities, Paul
said, I see. In verse 23, the reason he said
is, I went about and beheld your devotions, God's that you worship, He said, I even beheld an altar
that had inscribed on it, to an unknown God. Now this gave Paul an opening.
It provided him with a text and with a subject to speak unto
these people, fit for both the occasion and the people that
were present there to hear. Paul says to them, My subject
is the unknown God. And Paul is upon a sure footing,
for he reminds them that they had acknowledged by the inscription
that there was a God which they knew not. And Paul says it is
his intention to declare unto them the truth about this God,
about which they profess their ignorance. by using the inscription,
an unknown God. Paul takes advantage of it and
he addresses their confessed ignorance so that the emphasis
falls upon their ignorance rather than upon their worship. For
they worshipped or they gave reverence to a multitude of deities
in that city, but they could not worship the true God He was
unknown. Can God worship none but God? Those who worship in spirit and
in truth are able to worship God aright. So Paul says to them,
that one that you confess to be ignorant of, Him I will declare
unto you." And preaching to the heathen now, where does Paul
begin in opening unto them the unknown God? Well, the answer
is, not at the redemptive purpose of God through Jesus Christ,
not of God sending his son into the world to die for sinners. That is, he does not tell them,
at least not yet, this God I declare unto you loves you all and his
son died for your sins. He doesn't tell them that. But
instead, he tells them how God stands related to creation. He sets forth the fact that creation
is owing to the power of God. Secondly, he sets God in relation
to the human family. First of all, let's look at creation.
For in Paul's audience were some of the Epicurean persuasion who
believed that the world came into being by chance as a result
of the moving of the atoms. They denied that the world was
created by any divine supernatural power. Gil thought that in this
audience also were some who held that the world was eternal. that it had always been, without
explaining, of course, its origin. And there are some there who
were pantheists, that God was matter, and matter was God, and
that the two are mixed up together. So Paul says, God, this unknown
God, the one I'm declaring to you, He made the world, He created
it, He brought it into being as well as all things that are
in it. And He is Lord of heaven and
of earth, literally being the Lord of heaven and earth. For there were some listening
to Paul, who being of the epicurean persuasion, who held that the
gods were nothing but phantoms, and that they had no part or
interest in the affairs of men. And concerning these many altars,
and memorials and monuments which fill the city in every place. Paul says God does not dwell
in temples made by hand. God doesn't live in handmade
temples. Paul here, as James A. Alexander said in his book of
Acts, is refuting something that they held, is refuting the error
of heathenism that God could be confined or that God could
be restricted to one place or one temple or one house. The Creator and Sovereign Lord
God does not dwell in handmade sanctuaries. Now Paul is not
denying the arrangement whereby God put His typical presence
and His glory among the Israelites in the tabernacle. For even there,
there was a recognition of the immensity, of the infinity, of
the omnipotence of God. If you look at 1 Kings chapter
8 and verse 27, quoted in Acts 7 and verse 48, Paul is refuting
the belief of many in Athens that the deity could be confined
to a temple, a shrine, or a monument. So look at verse 25. Neither
is he worshipped or served or ministered to from the hands
of men. To put it simply, God has no
need that man can fulfill. There is nothing that God has
need of that man can supply. Man can give God absolutely nothing
that will add to him one whip. Let's read, if you might, in
the Psalms chapter 50. There's an interesting passage
here, and it's kind of along this line, so I wanted to read
it. Psalms chapter 50, and it's just
verse 25, the last part, and verse 26, Paul declares, here
in this 50th chapter of the book of Acts, that if he were hungry,
he would not ask them. If he had a need, he would not
lay it before them. But going back to Acts chapter
17, verse 25 and 26, seeing, he said, seeing in the middle
of verse 25, seeing he gives to all life and breath and all
things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men for
to dwell upon the face of the earth." He needs nothing from
men's hands seeing that he is the giver of life because he
gives life and breath. And Paul's audience there, the
Athenians who considered themselves as to their being and existence
to be, here's a new word for you perhaps, Otokhthon. This is what they took themselves
to be. It means that they were indigenous
to the land. They were aborigines. They believed
that they were sprung up from the soil of their land or their
native land. They believed that they were
sons of the soil, that they had sprung up as to their being out
of the soil. Different pagan philosophies
had different ideas about the origin of the human family, but
this was one of them. Now, as an example, Let me give
you, or cause you to think upon for a moment, consider the green
religion in our country. You hear green, green, green. And it is actually a religion. I call it civilized paganism,
to be charitable to them. For the god, the goddess, the
goddess, of the Green Movement is the Earth. The goddess of
the Green Movement is the Earth, which they call Mother Earth
and practically worship. Mother Earth who brought us forth,
who sustains us, and by some, Christianity is okay to be mingled
together with the Green Religion, as if they harmonized, and as
this were a Christian duty. But Paul says the human family
is descended from a common source. One blood, he calls it, one man,
one couple, meaning Adam and Eve, the first and the common
parent of all mankind." He says something else. He said, not
only has He made them of all one blood, but He has caused
them to settle and to dwell, to migrate upon the face of the
earth by nations. You remember in Genesis 11 and
verse 8, God scattered them abroad upon the face of all of the earth. And it says here, Paul says,
he even determined the times and the places of their dwelling. So God's hand of providence has
been in all of that. Verse 27, take a look. It might give us pause unless
we take it in its overall context. The opening that, in verse 27,
is a continuation of the previous thought. It was God's providence
that the people might perchance or perhaps might seek him and
might find him. Not in a saving way, I say unto
you, for there is no saving revelation in creation. Nor is there revelation
of the manner of forgiveness of sin. There is only in creation
the manner, or rather the proof, of a creator. A creator has created. James
Alexander said of these things, calling them, quote, a vivid
and expressive exhibition of the state in which the Gentile
world was placed without a written revelation or direct communication
with their maker, yet with light enough to make their ignorance
inexcusable." And this is where they stood. Compare Romans 1,
19 through verse 21. Paul speaks of that. Paul says
in the end of verse 27, He is not far from every one of us. He is in close proximity to every
one of us. Verse 28. He tells how it is
that He is not far from all. In Him we have our being. In Him we live and we move. As he said back in verse 25,
He gives to all life and breath and all things. In Acts 14 and
verse 15, Paul tells the Lyconians, he, that is God, left not himself
without a witness. He gave providential gifts unto
them. In verse 28, in the last part,
Paul quotes not scripture, but one of their own poets. That poet had written, we are
his offspring. It's just a part that Paul quotes
out of that, showing that Paul was fairly educated and acquainted
with a lot of things in his day. I trust you're not disappointed
now with Paul for using the heathen writings rather than the scripture. He did it again in 1 Corinthians
chapter 15 and verse 32. quoting Meander, and in Titus
1 and 12, quoting Epimenides. But in each case, he uses it
against its original intent. He reasons with them. He said,
as your poets have said, we are God's offspring. He says if that
is true, then it is unreasonable and illogical to think that the
holy God bears any resemblance to any of these material things
that you have made or any man-made object. We close with a close
look at verse 30 in its natural context. that the former ignorance
God winked at. He let it pass by. For He had
said in Acts 14 and verse 16, in time past God suffered all
nations to walk in their own way. The Gentiles to walk in
their own way. As it were, He lay the reins
upon their necks. He left them under their ignorance
that they took up idol worship while His revelation was confined
to the chosen people or to Israel. But now, says Paul, He commands
all men to repent and turn from their idols. that they turn from
all of these vanities, that they acknowledge the true and the
living God who made heaven and earth and all things therein. Now we learn that idolatry or
the worship of false gods brings judgment and condemnation eventually
from God. For God will bring such into
judgment. He has raised up Christ as a
pledge of the coming judgment of such men. So the conclusion
from all of this is there is only one who is true God. There is one God, there is one
religion, and one religion is not as good as another. One religion is not as good as
Christianity. For to us there is one God and
one Lord, Paul said, 1 Corinthians chapter 8. Any other is raw,
bare paganism. And if you are a Christian, you
believe this. You believe that there is one
God, there is one true religion, that is the religion of God set
forth in the scripture. And Paul uses great wisdom in
dealing with these people because of where they were and because
of the limited life and knowledge and revelation that they had
had. And so he comes from it from
a different way, not by redemptively speaking to them at first, but
by showing that God had made the heaven and the earth and
created all things there were. And this is a starting point.
He that cometh to God must believe that He is. You know, I've heard
people say, oh, God, if you're out there, would you help me?
You know, that's just as empty as it can be. If there is a God,
would you help me? No, he that cometh to God believes
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek
him. And I greatly admire the wisdom
of Paul in the way that he handled this in the sermon that he preached. in the city of Athens with all
of their culture, and all of their arts, and all of their
philosophy, and all of their magnificent structures, that
he preached the simple word of God unto them. He did it very
wisely. He was spirit-led, we have to
say.