Dennis Tuuri

Well, in our sermon today, we’re going to read about men who were foolish, who said in their heart there’s no God, denies God in his heart. Those who, in verse four of our song, delight in works of shame and call out on Jehovah’s name. We read today of the account of Paul at Athens in Acts chapter 17, verses 16 through the end of the chapter. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts chapter 17 beginning at verse 16.

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 Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicurans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some said, “What will this babbler say?” Others, some, he seemeth to be a setter forth 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 whereof 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, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious.

For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, 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 and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth 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 all 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 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. For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is likened to 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 hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given an assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from 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.

How be it certain men clave unto him and believed. Among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. And after these things, Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth. Let us sing a song now, asking God to illuminate our hearts and to give us an understanding of who he is through the word that his spirit might do his work and also that the spirit might do the work of the teaching to the children from God’s word at the level which they can understand.

So let us now sing a song: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the academy and the church. Our instructions come from the porch of Solomon, away with all attempts to produce a modeled Christianity of stoic, platonic, and dialectic composition. We want no curious dispensation after professing Christ Jesus.”

So wrote Tertullian, one of the early church fathers, in his work, Prescription against Heresies.

And this question of Jerusalem and Athens has rung down through the centuries and now through the millennia. The question the church needs to hear over and over so that it understands the answer properly and appropriately. What is Tertullian getting at here with the question: What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens? What concord is there between the academy and the church?

Athens at the time of the writing of the book of Acts and for centuries before that and for some time after that was considered the height of human learning and ability and human philosophy. At one time it also was very strong politically. Its strength now politically had been diminished somewhat through Roman conquering and military efforts. But still Athens was the place to go if you wanted to study philosophy and if you wanted to think about the deep things of the world and how the world fits together. Athens was also the center of the civilized world so-called in terms of art and science and that sort of development as well.

So Athens speaks of the academy apart from the knowledge of the God of the scriptures. Athens is the best and brightest so to speak of civilized man. Jerusalem in Tertullian’s quote speaks to the Christian faith of course—the center of the world as God portrays it, at least being his worshiping people with a revealed knowledge of him.

The text before us is one then of great significance for us because it has to do with this question.

We see Paul representing Jerusalem, representing the city of God, coming into conflict with Athens and not just with the average citizenry of Athens, but with the very supreme authority of Athenian political or philosophical thought, those that met on Mars Hill to consider and weigh things. And so we have this classic confrontation between the best of Greek science, art, philosophy, and by implication political thought coming into contact with a messenger from Jerusalem, a messenger from the city of God, a messenger from the city of the King who brings the King’s message into that arena.

And so Paul will help us here in this particular portion of scripture understand the relationship of Athens and Jerusalem. He instructs us, God instructs us through this text in the proper understanding of this.

Additionally, this text is important for us because it speaks of course to evangelism. Let me just mention that in the context of evangelism here. Paul is evangelizing the world in obedience to the command to go and make disciples of all the nations. Paul is also an apologist. He gives a defense of the faith. And so his speech on Mars Hill is a defense of the faith as well as an evangelical effort.

That may be a small point to make. I don’t want to dwell on it here. You may think it’s a small point, but it’s not a small point. It is a very significant point to say that our apologetic and our evangelism is tied together. These things aren’t separated. In our day and age, you think of apologists and then you think of evangelists.

But in Paul’s day and age, in biblical thought, the defense of the faith always includes witness and testimony and evangelism. And evangelism always is involved with a defense of the faith. In Paul’s mind and the text before us, they are extremely closely wrapped together.

And so, it’s important to see that. And I say that it’s important for our evangelistic efforts because we speak to a world today in America that is very similar to Athens in that it is a world that has moved further and further away from God and more and more into a sense of culture, refinement, philosophy, science, art, etc.

Now Paul is the great apostle to the Gentiles. And it is a little bit strange I suppose that this speech, this sermon, this presentation of the faith at Mars Hill is the only one we have recorded of Paul witnessing to Gentiles—apart from proselyte Gentiles. When we say that Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, we mean to the pagan Gentile world. And yet this is the only place in scripture where that really is presented for us. Paul giving a sermon and address to the Gentile world.

Now we did have Paul at Lystra. Remember on the first missionary journey there were four cities and the third city was Lystra and they were worshiped there as gods. Paul and Barnabas were, and Paul gives a very short—there’s two or three verses recorded there of Paul’s talk at Lystra to absolute pagans and it’s very similar to this talk but this talk is much more fleshed out.

So this is an important text because it has to do with the relationship of Jerusalem and Athens. It’s also an important text because it is the only fully developed text in which we see Paul witnessing and apologizing, making a defense of the faith to pagan Gentiles. So it is important for us not just for our own minds to see the relationship of our faith to the world around us.

It’s also important for us to teach us how to do evangelism correctly in the context of a pagan culture, which is more and more what we find ourselves in here in America.

So, this is an important talk and I’m going to spend at least two weeks on it—this week and next week. And it’s important for lots of reasons.

What I want to do this week is simply give you a little overview of what is contained in the text. Hopefully, a very cursory and fairly quick overview of it and then, as you see on your outline, look at five particular questions in relevance to the overall thrust of what is happening here in Athens.

Paul is at Athens alone. We read that he is waiting. He had called for his assistants to come and be with him. We’re not sure why all that happens, but we do know that Paul is alone. And we read that Paul is waiting for them in Athens.

And in verse 16 rather, we see the beginning of the occasion of Paul’s talk on Mars Hill. How does Paul come to speak with the Areopagus on Mars Hill about the faith? Well, we’re told first of all how that came to pass. Then we’re given his talk. At the end of that, we’re given the result of Paul’s talk.

And so, first we’re going to deal with the occasion of Paul’s talk on Mars Hill. And this comes about first of all with Paul waiting at Athens, seeing the city, walking about apparently getting a grasp of the culture. And as a result, his spirit is stirred within him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.

Paul is angry. Paul is upset. This is the same basic term that’s used of the big conflict between Paul and Barnabas. Remember that with their big blowout? Well, that’s the same kind of term here. Paul is mad. Paul is irritated. Paul is upset. Just as he was upset with the demonic possession of the slave girl and that form of baseness, so he’s upset here with the idolatry of the city.

He walks about that great beautiful city of Athens with all these beautiful artworks and statues and all these religious inscriptions. And he doesn’t walk about as some sort of neutral observer saying, “Oh yeah, this is kind of a nice town. Isn’t that a beautiful statue of that particular goddess or god? And isn’t that wonderful representational artwork of that particular philosophical thought system?” No.

Paul walks around and sees that culture that we see around us increasingly in America today. But he doesn’t react as a neutral observer or as an appreciative fan of the magnificent art, science, and philosophy of the Athenians. Paul’s reaction is anger against the idolatry of men.

Paul is not urged into an evangelical attitude because of his great heart oozing love for these idolatrous Athenians. Now, I’m not putting that down. I’m sure part of this is that Paul sees these people are bewitched as it were and possessed with idolatry. But the spark—the scriptures tell us—for Paul’s presentation, the apostle of the Gentiles to an explicitly Gentile audience here, the spark for all that is his anger at their idolatry.

Why is Paul angry at their idolatry? Well, it’s because he loves God and he does not like man to give what glory belongs to God to anything else. It’s his love of God, his devotion to God, his jealousness for God’s glory that moves Paul, stirs him when he sees the idolatry of this particular city.

And the idolatry of this city was great. One of their own Roman satirists actually said that it’s easier to find a god in Athens than it is to find a man. It was that given over to representational idols of gods and goddesses etc. and forces in the universe. It was extremely filled with statues and representations of religious art. Idolatry was all over the place.

And when we see here that Paul is stirred, he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. The Greek term is idolatry full—full of idolatry. Same as you’d have a basket full of apples or something. This city is full of idols. And so they’re given over to it. And Paul, the occasion for him representing the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ at Mars Hill is first of all his anger being stirred.

Secondly, Paul then acts on the basis of this. Paul dialogues with the church and with the citizenry. In verse 17, therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him.

Now you see here a couple of things to note. He disputed with them. He didn’t simply—this word dispute means to engage in dialogue, to speak then get a response and to speak back. There was an interchange almost like a Socratic dialogue that’s going on here. Paul’s method is not simply to speak the word and not allow anybody to talk to him about it. He didn’t believe the word was a talisman. He didn’t believe the word of God somehow is magic—if you said the right words, things happened. No, the word of God is accompanied by the power of the spirit. But that word happens in the context of dialogue and reflection.

You’ve got to think about who you’re talking to. And Paul does, as we’ll see, very clearly as we get to the actual subject of his talk to the men on Mars Hill.

Paul dialogues with this group and you know he doesn’t go first of all to the citizenry, these idolatrous citizens. He doesn’t go to the marketplace. He goes first to the Jew then—in the context of the synagogue with the Jews—to the devout persons. That’s those Gentile proselytes we’ve seen all throughout the book of Acts. All these two groups of people at these synagogues: the Jews and then the God-fearing Gentiles, the worshipers. And when it says devout persons it means worshipers there. And we understand that to mean worshiping Gentiles.

So he goes to the church first—the synagogue. You know if you read the scriptures the synagogue read church there. That’s where the people that believed in God got together and worshiped. The synagogue is the institutional church. Paul starts even at Athens with the institutional church and only after he dialogues there does he move to the marketplace and dialogue with the citizens.

This dialogue with the citizens brings about a greater opportunity for the gospel. He doesn’t get to just talk in the context of the streets here. It turns out that in the providence of God, him being stirred against this idolatry of the Athenians, leading to discourse and dialogue with first the institutional church and then the citizens of Athens, that’s used by God in God’s providence to bring Paul before the very ruling men of the city of Athens.

Verse 18: certain philosophers of the Epicurans and of the Stoics encountered him and some said, “What will this babbler say?” Others some said that he seems to be a setter forth of strange gods because he preached unto them Jesus in the resurrection. They took him bronto Aeropagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine whereof 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 whether to tell or to hear some new thing.”

So in the context of this market discussion that Paul is having in response to the idolatry of the people, he sets forth, we are told by implication, Jesus and the resurrection. No surprise there. And this setting forth of the person and work of Jesus Christ and the historical fact of his resurrection from the dead brings a response from two particular groups.

Athens had at least four major schools of philosophies. We won’t go over them now. I might spend a little bit of time next week, but suffice it to say that at this time in Athenian history, there is no unified field of philosophy that everybody agrees to. It is disjointed. God has plowed up Athens. There’s lots of people with lots of different ideas who’ve come along and tried to put the pieces back together again. Plowed up philosophically, I’m talking about here.

Much the same way in our culture, we have a tremendous opportunity because we don’t face a monolithic citizenry with a concerted worldview. Rather, we face an area that God has plowed up the people. No answers work. So, they keep looking for more answers. And in the context of that, Paul comes with this message.

Two schools of these philosophers are the Epicurans and the Stoics. And I might talk more about this next week. I don’t know if I will or not, but just suffice it to say, they’re kind of opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. The Epicurans were those who loved taste and sense delights, etc. Everything is okay, everything is permitted. The Stoics were those who really held more to the pride of life as opposed to the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes as the Epicurans did. The Stoics more held to the pride of life. And they represented themselves as better than God, so to speak.

So, they’re really kind of opposite ends. They’re not the same group at all. And their response to Paul, however, is alike in that they want to bring him before the Areopagus.

Now, the Areopagus originally referred to men that would deliberate in different criminal cases and particularly capital crimes rather. It was those men that met on Mars Hill symbolically at least. Whether they met there literally or not, we don’t know. One time they did. There was I think there are still chairs carved there on Mars Hill where these rulers would sit. Indications are there about 30 men that would meet that form the council of the Areopagus who sat on Mars Hill.

This council would in times past particularly try men essentially and what new doctrines they were teaching. This was where Socrates was sentenced to death for perverting the youth of Athens some four or five centuries before Paul. And so this was an important place.

Now there’s no indication here from the text that Paul is being tried. It’s almost like some commentators have referred to it as a mock trial. They take him, they grab a hold of him and up to Mars for the presentation, but he makes his presentation. There’s some interaction, then he walks away. So, it doesn’t seem like he’s under arrest or anything.

Rather, the Areopagus was used primarily at this time to hear new forms of thought. They wanted to hear what the new next thing was, the new buzz, you know, the next—the newest philosophical or worldview buzz, what was going on, much like America today. Let’s hear some new thing. Let’s have our ears tickled by some new thought. But they were also very conscientious in terms of defending Athens against doctrines that would harm it.

And so Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus they saw as potentially damaging to their culture. And so they wanted to hear this thing out better. And so they do this little thing where they grab a hold of Paul and take him up to Mars Hill. He’s glad to go. Who would not be glad to give a presentation of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ before rulers and before those men that formed at least the philosophical underpinnings of a particular society? And that’s what these men were.

They were for the most part retired magistrates. They were patricians. You had to be wealthy to be a magistrate in Athens. It was a position that involved a great deal of cost. So these were rich, influential, older men. That’s who Paul is going before, who formed the philosophical background of the Athenian culture.

And so Paul’s being irritated and stirred by idolatry, interchanging then with first the institutional church, then in the citizenry, gives way to a graver opportunity for the gospel as he’s brought before the Areopagus to give his presentation of the resurrection of Jesus.

Now remember that’s what he’s there for, right? We’re told he’s there because of Jesus and the resurrection. Important to keep that in mind as we look at his talk.

Okay, so that’s the first part—the occasion. Secondly, the substance of Paul’s talk on Mars Hill.

And we then have recorded for us in verses 22-31 Paul’s talk. Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious.”

Before we get into the actual substance of what he says here, and I have that outlined for you in your text, but above that little space I left you, you might want to write in there: attitude first. Okay, when Paul goes to Mars Hill he’s going to try—he will not accommodate the idolatry of the Athenians. He will not try to be a nice guy for the sake of being a nice guy. It is my belief that the presentation of his message is one that strikes right at the core and brings them to a condition of condemnation and a need for repentance.

He’s not going to go soft on them is what I’m saying. However, the harshness that Paul brings is a harshness of the word of God. It’s not his personal harshness or animosity toward these men. He doesn’t get up and say, “Well, you lousy so-and-so.” He enters, and this is important too to remember, that he enters into this discourse or dialogue mode in this particular area where that was the primary method of interchange of ideas.

Paul’s attitude is good. First Peter 3:15—we all know about that: “Sanctify the Lord in your hearts, being always ready to give an answer to every man that asks you, a reason of the hope that is in you.” That’s what Paul is doing here. He’s giving an answer. That’s what we want to do as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But it’s very important to finish the verse: “Being always ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you with meekness and in fear of God, having a good conscience that whereas they speak evil of you as evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.”

So as we go to witness about the Lord Jesus Christ, which involves a defense of the hope that is in us, we want to do it with the same meekness that Paul exhibited here on Mars Hill. Meekness is being broken to God’s harness. It’s being usable for him, having your strength and power and your emotions under the control of the Holy Spirit.

Paul is angry against idolatry. He doesn’t lash out in his anger though. He presents a very reasoned, biblically based series of statements to the Athenians.

If there’s going to be offense taken by the Athenians and if there’s going to be offense taken by people that we present the gospel to, may it never be. God forbid that the offense is about the way, the manner in which we present it. If we’re short, if we’re curt, if we don’t respect that this is an image bearer of God who needs to be redeemed—of course—but nonetheless made in God’s image. If we don’t give him that glory, that weight, then we cause offense for the gospel not based upon the gospel itself.

So we want to have meekness and fear of God, having a good conscience when we go to bed at night at the end of the day. If somebody has rejected the biblical message we’ve taken to them, we want to have a good conscience so we can sleep good at night and not somehow worry that it was somehow when we got angry and flashed for a minute at that guy and said something in the flesh, so to speak, not dictated by the word of God under the control of the Holy Spirit.

We want to make sure that we don’t have that kind of bad conscience and thus can sleep at night even if rejected.

There’s no guarantee here that people won’t accuse you of that because he goes on to say that they may—”whereas they speak evil of you as evildoers that they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation.” They will falsely accuse your good conversation. Paul himself is called a babbler by these Epicurans and Stoics.

That word babbler meant seed picker is the literal meaning in the Greek. It was originally referred to gutter sparrows would go around and pick little seeds up and eat them. And then it was later used to refer to itinerant philosophers, men that would walk around and just give up snippets of secondhand philosophies that they’d heard from here, there, and everywhere. So, it’s a term of derision.

They will falsely accuse us, our conversation, our walk in the world. But we want to make sure that as we present the gospel, we do so under the control and direction of the Holy Spirit.

And so Paul here becomes all things to all men. He enters into Socratic dialogue to a certain extent here because that’s okay. It’s the message really that he wants to get across. That’s the context in which they hear it. You know, some people look at texts like this. He goes out in the marketplace and maybe what we should do is we should go down to Portland and become street preachers, you know, that’s what Paul did. He went in the marketplace and just preached.

Well, no. This was a common activity for men to go into the street and discourse about philosophies and worldviews and religions. So, Paul entered into the existing framework by which the gospel of Jesus Christ could be presented.

And so, it’s really a perversion, kind of barbarous perversion of what Paul was doing to think we just go out and preach and that’s that. We want to look at what opportunities this culture provides in terms of interfaith and dialogue and we can bring the claims of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And usually that’s not done in the marketplace at Saturday market. Maybe it is sometimes at Saturday market but usually not in the marketplace in Portland.

So Paul became all things to all men. He entered into the existing avenues of communication. God blessed that with a greater avenue to present the gospel before the Areopagus and Paul was a spirit-filled apologist and evidenced the fruit of the spirit in his presentation of the gospel, which we want to do as well.

Now having said that, attitude is important. What did Paul actually present here in the context of his talk?

Well, we’re told very explicitly and we’ve given a—we’re given a long, or—well, long in terms of scripture—number of verses that give us the substance of what Paul spoke about.

The first thing he says is: “I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. I passed by and behold your devotions. I found an altar with the inscription to an unknown god whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.”

So first of all Paul pointed out Athenian ignorance versus Christian knowledge. Paul immediately asserted the antithesis, which we’ve talked about now the last few months quite a bit. But it’s important—it’s important to see that Paul at the very beginning of his talk does not try, and some people say he does, not to appeal to some kind of common ground with them.

The first thing he tells them is you’re too superstitious in all things. Now, the word superstitious can be a good term or a bad term. It means worshipper of gods or worshipper of demons, whatever, worshipper of spirits, and it can be used in a positive sense, but it can also be used in a negative sense. And he probably put the Athenians a little off guard with this particular terminology.

But one thing for sure he was instructing them was he was reminding them that they are religious people. Okay, man is a religious being and Paul is reminding them that they were religious people. But they were religious people who had gone astray, who were too superstitious in all things, who were worshiping ignorantly, who had altars up to an unknown god.

There were probably a lot of those kind of altars, by the way. It’s a story about some sheep that were supposed to be sent down Mars Hill as a way to deliver the population from a plague, a number of years before this. And wherever these sheep went, you were supposed to put up altars to these unknown gods. Probably a lot of them.

But the point is that Paul is pointing out Athenian ignorance in the context of religious worship. And when we go to pagans today, we want to remind them of their religious character, of their being, as Paul did with them. You’re religious, all right, but your religion is twisted and perverted. You’ve suppressed the truth of God and unrighteousness. You’ve worshiped ignorantly and you’ve become too superstitious, not really worshiping correctly or worshiping Jehovah God, but rather worshiping all these demons.

And against this, Paul pits Christian knowledge: “what you worship in ignorance, him declare I unto you.” The word declare or proclaim is an authoritative term. Paul authoritatively says, I have knowledge. I have revelation knowledge from God about who God is. And I declare this authoritatively to you.

He critiques them and he presents the biblical faith. And this is really what he’ll do throughout the rest of this talk. He pits Athenian ignorance versus Christian knowledge. Paul presses home the antithesis. He doesn’t hide it. He doesn’t save it for late in the game. He doesn’t want to start with some kind of common basis where “I’m okay, you’re okay.”

No. He goes right to the heart of the matter and says things that are potentially very offensive to the Athenians and yet he does it in a way in which if they take offense it’s at the truth of what he says, it’s not in his manner.

So Paul begins and from beginning to end Paul will stress the unbeliever’s ignorance and it is always set over against the truth, the knowledge of Christian—the Christian worldview based not upon the Christian’s feelings of peace or the facts of the empirical data, but based rather upon the revealed word of God.

And that’s what Paul will give us here in his talk to these pagans. He has an antithetical starting point.

Now, remember I said, why is he there? He’s there to explain the resurrection, but he doesn’t start with the resurrection. He doesn’t get up there and say, well, you know, I have some signed affidavits here from people that were there who saw Jesus after he was resurrected from the dead. And I can prove to you empirical evidence that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. He doesn’t do that.

Nor does he say, “Well, you know, Jesus claims that he was God. He must be either the Lord or he must be a liar or a lunatic.” He doesn’t reason like that at all. He wants to put the resurrection and he wants to put the person of Jesus in the proper context. He wants to talk about worldviews. He wants to talk about presuppositional basis. He wants to talk about the religious foundations because those are the things that make you, that determine how you will interpret the facts as they’re presented to you.

I remember one of the first—I think the first or second—book I read by R.J. Rushdoony. He told the story about Noah’s Ark and how he was in a barber shop and these barbers were sitting around with customers saying, “Wow, they might have found Noah’s Ark up there.” But then I think one of them said something about how well maybe it came from a spaceship. Maybe space aliens put that Noah’s Ark up there on Mount Ararat.

You see, if they find Noah’s Ark and bring it down and display it at the Smithsonian, do not think for a moment that’s going to change anybody’s mind about who Jesus Christ is. Because man’s problem is not factual. It’s not an interpretation. It’s not the facts of the matter that are his problem. It’s his starting place. It’s his rebellion against God. It’s his suppression of the truth of God and unrighteousness.

And that’s what Paul wants to hit—at the resurrection. It’s brought in quite late simply as a demonstration that the Athenians are under judgment from God and they will be cursed unless they repent. The resurrection is put in the context of competing worldviews. He wants to talk about where we start, what the basis for our authority is. And he’s telling them that their basis of authority is twisted and perverted.

They are messed up. They are ignorant. But he has revelation from God. And that revelation is what he’s going to bring to them.

So Paul puts the resurrection in context and then he puts it in the context in these first few verses of the religiosity of the Athenians, but it is a warped sense of religiosity. They have erred. They have rejected or rebelled against the truth. Their ignorance therefore is culpable on their part.

He points out their ignorance and what it’ll go on to show is that their ignorance is something they are responsible for. It’s not as if God—it’s God’s fault that they don’t know who God is. They’re the ones who are responsible.

Over against this culpable ignorance of the Athenians, Paul pits Christian knowledge, the biblical authority of the proclaimed message of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so he goes on and we could also talk, by the way, that Paul starts with—we’ll see now in verse 24—the creation of the world. Okay? So he says, “I want to declare him to you.” And begins this declaration of who God really is. And this is: B. Athenian man-made dead idols versus the creating God and giver of life.

“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with man’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath, and all things.”

And in verse 29, he says, “Therefore 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.”

From the starting point of ignorance versus truth, he points out then that from their ignorance, which is a culpable ignorance, a perversion of truth, the Athenians have erected these dead man-made idols and tried to call them God. They’re worshiping the work of their hands. They’re worshiping their own heart, essentially their own twisted will.

As opposed to that, we have the creating God who gives life to all things. Dead idols are cast in front of the Athenians as a result of their religiosity as opposed to the revelation of the God of all creation who created and sustains all things as well.

Paul will move from the creation implications of God here to God’s providence and sustaining the creation as well in verse 26.

So Paul then pits in this manner of antithetical presentation the Athenian idols versus the creating God and giver of life.

Third: The Athenians are culpable for their ignorance and idolatry. And they must repent.

Verse 26: “God hath made of one blood all nations of man to dwell on all the face of the earth. And determined the times before appointed and the bonds of their habitation that they should seek the Lord if happily they may feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us.”

Very important verse. What does it mean? Well, first of all, he’s declared God as the creator and the giver of life. Then he says that not only is God the creator, he specifically is involved with every particular group. It’s not some sort of deistic god he’s preaching. It’s an active God, active in the affairs of man who gives the bounds of habitation and sets times for nations and also for men.

And so God’s creation is then put in the context of God’s—or then leads to the idea of God’s providence and then man’s fallen state.

He says that if happily they might seek after God. The word there has the connotation is they won’t—they won’t be able to figure out who God is—he says it’s the same term as the cyclops groping around in the Greek myths after he had been blinded. So he pictures the Athenians as ignorant Athenians kind of groping around blinded like the cyclops.

And yet he says it’s not God’s fault for your ignorance. He goes on to say he is not far from every one of us. He’s right there. The problem isn’t whether God can be seen or not seen. The problem is the Athenians are culpably ignorant. They have decided to blind themselves. They have moved in the blindness of their own rejection of God.

He’s just repeating the same truths of Romans 1: Ungodly man suppresses the truth, holds down the truth of God and unrighteousness. And as a result, he becomes ignorant and blinded like that cyclops wandering around.

“In him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, ‘For we are his offspring.’ For as such as we are offspring of God, we ought not to think and we read that verse before that God is like an idol.”

So he tells them that their ignorance is culpable. They’re to be held responsible by God for their ignorance and rejection of him because God is right with us. In him we live and move and have our being. And then he says, “One of your own philosophers have said this. We are also his offspring.”

Now Paul is not—why does Paul bring in this poet of the Athenians? He does it to further indict them for their twistedness. That’s my belief. He says here that after all, you guys, even in your ignorance, still have some knowledge that there is a God and that we’re his offspring.

Pagan man cannot make up anything. Ultimately, he twists everything. He twists the reveal—the revelation of God, both the natural revelation and the special revelation of the scriptures. The poet here that he’s talking to was from a poem that was an ode to Zeus. And really it was used in a sense of controlling Zeus was this idea of being his offspring. So Paul simply brings this quotation in here from the poet, the same way he brought the subscription to the unknown god, not to commend them that they’re worshiping, not to commend them that they have half the truth. They just need a little bit more truth. No, he’s saying that you have twisted and perverted truth.

And as a result, you need to change not just your ideas about the resurrection or about this little truth or fact here. You need to rip out the whole worldview in which you are operating because you’ve been in rebellion to God and you’re as removed from Christian revelational truth as you can be in your ignorance and your rejection of God and still you manifest some truths of who God is, knowing that you are his offspring.

You’re culpable as a result.

And as a result of that, he then tells in verse 30, “The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.”

Paul brings a sense of eschatology certainly. When it says that Paul was stirred at the idolatry of the Athenians earlier—that’s the same term that’s used in the Septuagint of Moses—or God rather—being angry at Israel for its idolatry. And God was angry at the idolatry of pagan nations and Israel in the old testament. So it’s not as if by this Paul is saying you never were responsible.

But what Paul is saying is: Since the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection, now God is on a hurry-up schedule so to speak. Now he is really bringing judgment home through this Lord Jesus Christ, his preaching—the preaching rather—the proclamation of what Jesus has accomplished and then God’s providential acts in history.

So he warns the Athenians now. He’s shown them the antithetical nature between what they believe, the revealed truth of God. He’s set those things in opposition. He’s talked about their ignorance. He said their ignorance is culpable ignorance because God’s going to hold them responsible.

And now he says, not only is it culpable, but you’re going to face judgment. And that right quick because of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then finally: God’s judgment of the Athenians by Jesus is at hand. This is the fourth element of his message in verse 31.

“He has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained.”

So God’s judgment, as I said, is promised here. They will be judged by the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then fifthly: The historical fact of Christ’s resurrection is proof of his impending judgment of the Athenians.

“Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”

He’s appointed a day of judgment by the Lord Jesus Christ, the man whom he has ordained, whereof he has given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead.

Finally, Paul gets to the resurrection, which is what they wanted to hear about. But what a context. What a context. I’m sure it was far different than they thought they were going to hear from Paul. Probably thought they’re going to be wooed by him or something. But no, he talks about the antithetical nature. He talks about the culpable ignorance. He talks about their need to come to repentance. And he talks about the sure judgment of God coming from this Jesus.

And the resurrection of Jesus is given as a demonstration to the world by God that judgment is now at hand. Far different than they probably thought they were going to hear. And sadly, far different from the way the resurrection of Jesus Christ is given in evangelistic messages today.

The message from Paul is one of judgment. He’s not interested in tacking on a belief in the resurrection of Jesus onto a pagan twisted worldview. He demolishes the worldview. He holds him culpable and he says that God is going to judge you. And that’s the context in which he presents the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jerusalem and Athens. Paul says: Athens must always be dependent upon Jerusalem. Jerusalem is not going to learn anything from these men.

Now, Paul did study the Athenian culture. It’s interesting when he said that as he walked around, he found this inscription to an unknown god. The word walking around there has the context of surveying. One could almost say theorizing. He walked around the Athenian structures and was filled with anger at the idolatry. But he also was analytical. He took that grid of the scriptures that God had placed into his heart and soul and mind and he used that grid to understand, survey, and theorize the culture around him so that he might give a reason for the hope that is within him and that he might demolish the strongholds of Athenian philosophical thought.

That’s the relationship of the church of Jesus Christ to Athens. We want to demolish the philosophical base, the foundation of Athenian culture and replace it with the revelational truth of God through his scriptures. And to that end, we preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we speak of his resurrection.

Well, what was the effect? Some didn’t believe. We read in verse 32, “And they heard the resurrection of the dead. Some mocked. Others said, ‘We’ll hear you again in this matter.’ So Paul departed from among them. A lot of them didn’t believe.

And as a result, the election of God was demonstrated not to be at work in their hearts. But yet the other side of this is that some did believe.

Verse 34: “How be it certain men clave unto him and believed, among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.”

You know, that’s the root Greek root of my name, Dennis. And I’ve always thought it was kind of curious that my parents named me with this root of Dionysius who was an Areopagite. We’ve been told early in the text that those guys just love to sit around and talk and I kind of like to sit around and talk too. But in any event, we are given two specific names of converts here. So the message, the gospel message reaches those that God has directed it will reach.

God does have his fruit of the message.

We’re going to return to this again next week and go over some of these points in a little more detail, couple of maybe different outlines for you to get you to really grasp it. I think it’s so important that as we go through the book of Acts, we think about—we do a little analytical survey of our own approach to evangelism and how we present the message of Jesus Christ and try to conform it to Paul’s message and his means. We’re going to do that.

But I want to ask here in closing a couple of questions from this particular text, just in this overview. And the first is: What is our response to the idolatry of our culture?

All of this began—the presentation of the gospel began—because Paul’s heart was stirred within him when he saw the idolatry of the city. Now you know we can say well we don’t really have any idols in our country too many. We don’t see many statues of gods, etc. Probably increasing numbers of them. But remember that in the scriptures, idolatry is not linked simply to a set of physical manifestations or representations of gods.

Paul tells us at least twice in the New Testament that covetousness is idolatry. And when Samuel spoke to Saul, he said that stubbornness is as idolatry. A little broader definition than we’re used to thinking of. In terms of if we think of it that way—if we think of man setting for himself what he wants to do, stubbornness, or grasping after and as a result deceiving and using deception to gain material wealth, we can think of that as idolatry.

Then we get a little broader definition and we can see the application to our own culture much more readily.