Acts 17:16-34 - Evangelism Failure and False Gods

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk, and I'm really excited about diving into this portion of Scripture with you all today. We are in Acts 17 and starting in verse number 16.

And Scripture says this, while Paul was waiting for them for Silas and Timothy in Athens, he was deeply distressed when he saw that the city was full of idols.

So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with those who worshiped God, as well as in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him.

Some said, what is this ignorant show-off trying to say? Others replied, he seems to be a preacher of foreign deities because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

They took him and brought him to the Areopagus or Mars Hill, and they said, may we learn about this new teaching you are presenting?

So here, instead of being taken and kidnapped and brought in front of judges, in this instance, Paul is being brought to the place where people discussed ideas, and they wanted to hear new things. So now they want to hear about the gospel.

What an incredible thing for Paul that his affections were stirred. He was deeply distressed when he saw the idolatry that was taking place. And notice he didn't just, he wasn't just distressed about the idolatry that was happening with the Greeks.

He was deeply distressed about the full of idols city. And so he went into the synagogue with the Jews. And I think there is something that we can learn, that idolatry is not just found in worshiping other gods.

Sometimes it's found in worshiping our own works and our own righteousness, which is specifically what the Jewish kind of culture was doing at this time, that it wasn't about God and his righteousness.

It was, I'm going to build up my own righteousness before God. And Paul goes into detail in all of that in Romans chapter 10. So they ask Paul, tell us the gospel.

What's this new teaching that you are presenting? Verse number 20, because what you say sounds strange to us and we want to know what these things mean.

Now all the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new. So this was kind of the entertainment of the day.

You didn't have sitcoms, you didn't have Seinfeld, you didn't have Friends, you didn't have Brooklyn Nine-Nine. So what did you do? You got people to come and spread their new ideas.

So verse number 22, Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said, People of Athens, I see that you are extremely religious in every respect, for as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which

was inscribed to an unknown God. Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it, he is Lord of heaven and earth. He does not live in shrines made by hands.

Neither is he served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. So, he's talking about God here.

He's specifically taking it from you guys are so religious, you even have an altar to an unknown God. And so, he says, I'm telling you who the unknown God is.

Now, some people might have taken offense to Paul saying that nowadays, where they'd say, but Paul, they weren't worshiping the one true God. So, to say that this altar, that unknown God, was the one that he was proclaiming, that's not accurate.

And here we can kind of see Paul used what people knew to communicate to them about what they did not know. So, to the Jews, they knew the law, they knew the scriptures.

And so, Paul could then use the law and the scriptures to be able to communicate the gospel to them. Here, Paul uses the only thing they knew, which was this altar to an unknown God.

They figured with all of the gods in their pantheon, there might be one that we're missing that we don't know about. And so, Paul used that to say, yes, there is a God you don't know about. Turns out he's actually the only one and true God.

He was the God who made the world and everything in it, that there wasn't 17 different gods that made the different portions of the world. There is one God. And he is the Lord of Heaven and Earth.

He's not just the God up on Mount Olympus. He's not just a God that is down in the Earth, like maybe a demigod like Hercules or something like that. He is Lord of Heaven and Earth.

And he doesn't live in your temples. He doesn't live in your idols. He says, neither is he served by human hands.

God doesn't need our worship. He desires our heart. He desires our worship, desires our love.

But if we don't give it to him, he's still just as much God. He's not going to go hungry without our sacrifices. His work is not going to be circumvented or abandoned if we do not give him our worship.

He is fully sustaining on his own. He is the I am. He is Yahweh.

He is the one that is uniquely self-sufficient, self-supporting. He doesn't need anything from anyone.

Verse number 26, from one man, Adam, he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.

So here we see Paul remarking on something that I want to make clear as well. Scripture talks about the fact that God made Adam and Eve, and from Adam and Eve came all the families of the earth.

There is one race, there is one blood that we all share. We are all the human race. Now, that doesn't take away some of the differences that God has built into us, that as we have, oh, there's a lot of genetics talk that I won't get into here.

We are all one human race. It doesn't erase the fact that there are Greeks, there are Jews, there are Gentiles, there are Romans.

It doesn't erase those things, but it does mean that none of us can look down on another race and say, oh, this race, they are less superior than our super great race.

And that takes various forms today and how people look at that and phrase that and think about those types of thoughts. People nowadays don't tend to have that blatant of a statement of, oh yeah, I'm just better, or this race is more inferior.

Today, it might look like it's phrased in different ways, but I want for us introspectively as we look at our lives, our hearts, inwardly, do you view yourself as superior to anyone else maybe because of the color of your skin or because of your

nationality or because of any reason? I would encourage you, realize that you are no different than any other person that God has made.

And so, that is something that Christians over the centuries have proclaimed, have said is true, not something that we have always followed in the way that we should.

And I can think even in American history that there were many people that claimed the name of Christ and that were racist and that owned people because they thought that they deserved to be subjugated or that in their subjugation, that they were

somehow doing their slaves a favor. And that was completely anti-gospel. So, from one man, God made all the peoples of the earth. He knew when they were going to live and where they were going to live.

Verse 37, he did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said.

For we are also his offspring. So, here Paul is quoting from a Greek philosopher, where he says, for we are also his offspring, saying that we are descendants of God, that God has created us, we are God's children in that sense.

Verse number 29, since we are God's offspring then, we shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.

He says, because we are flesh and blood, we shouldn't imagine that God is an idol, that he's made of these precious metals.

Verse number 30, therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed.

He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.

God calls all people everywhere to repent, because he's going to judge the world in righteousness, that there will be a day where we answer for the sins that we have committed, for the evil that we have brought into this world by our actions, by our

words, by our thoughts, that are then lived out in how we live our lives, and how we have treated those made in God's image, and how we have treated God's word, and how we have treated God's world. All of those things, there has to be an answer

given, and there will be justice, there will be a penalty for the sins that we have committed. And as we realize that, it should fill us momentarily with fear, because we realize what scripture says, that all of us have sinned and have come short of

the glory of God. We are all under condemnation and damnation, because we have sinned and fallen short of God's mark, of the glory of God.

As a result, the wages of sin, what we get for the wrong things that we've done is death, not just physical death, but eternal death, that separation from God forever. Because of all of this, we need Jesus, and that's why Jesus came.

He came to take our penalty, to take our punishment. And because he did that, we don't have to have fear, that we can know that our sins are forgiven, that we can know that we have a restored relationship with God.

We are not alienated from him because of sin. We have been reconciled through the perfect righteousness of Christ, that he has reunited us through his blood.

So, verse 32, When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him, but others said, We'd like to hear from you again about this. So Paul left their presence.

However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Demaris and others with them.

So here, Paul doesn't have kind of one of those big Berean moments where a great multitude of the Greek women believed, as well as a bunch of the Jews. That's not really the situation in Athens. And here there's skepticism.

There are some people that believe the message, but yet Paul was still faithful to preach. And I want us today to take note of the fact that Paul used what people knew in order to share the gospel.

That if you are giving people an entirely new frame of reference, that they have no idea how to imagine what you're talking about, you're not really doing them any favors.

And so he used illustrations from, if you will, from songs of the day, from popular movies. It's one of their poets.

It's one of the people that would create works that they would think about, that he uses illustrations to help people see what he is talking about with Jesus and the gospel. So he says, I'm preaching a new God to you. It's not Zeus.

It's not someone that's kind of like Zeus. It's a whole new God, different from any of the ones that you have. And then he subverts that which they knew.

So he says, here's this unknown God. They go, great, okay. Now he's going to tell us about the unknown God.

But this unknown God is actually the one and only true God. And all of these other ones are false gods. That all of these other ones, they only have authority over the ocean.

They only have authority over the storms, over the fields and crops and over love, as opposed to the one true God, the unknown God that you didn't know about. He rules over everything, all of heaven, all of earth, all of the aspects of earth.

He tells them, you have some frame of reference for another God existing, but then let me tell you, he's like no one you have ever heard about.

He's like all of the other gods put together in goodness, in kindness, that he has put you where you are, when you are, so that you will seek God.

Today, if you don't know Jesus as your Savior, God has placed you in this place at this time on Facebook or on YouTube or on podcasts, wherever you are.

If you do not know Christ as Savior, if you have never turned to him alone as Lord, trusting entirely in his righteousness, not in your background, not in your works, not in the religious ordinances or sacraments that you have partaken in, but in

Christ alone in his righteousness. If you have never believed in him, do so today. Cry out to God. It's not a magic incantation that gets you into heaven.

It's turning in faith to Christ alone that says, God, I believe what you've said in your word. And God, I repent from my way, I repent from my sins, and I'm turning to you alone. I'm making you the Lord, you the master of my life.

So he gives the illustration, okay, here's the unknown God, you know that, that's familiar, and then I'm going to kind of turn it on its head.

And he says, and you know from your poets, the poet that says, for we are also his offspring, he says, you know that poem, and so I want to communicate to you, God's, our God, the one true God, is not made with stone, gold, silver, any of those kinds

of things, but just like we are people, animate, so too is the one true God. And so don't be afraid of being able to use illustrations of what people do know to help them understand what they don't know.

And then I also want to highlight just the fact that even Paul himself, every time he preached, it was not a home run sermon that got tons of people saved. Not every time is a 3000 people saved or 5000 people saved.

Sometimes it's, oh, a couple of people, and he says Dionysius, Demaris, and maybe a couple of others that believed on the gospel. And if that was the apostle Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in power, don't be afraid, don't be ashamed.

If sometimes when you preach the gospel to others, sometimes when you share about Jesus or share about your testimony, if people don't automatically just fall in their face, like Acts 16 with the jailer, what must I do to be saved?

That doesn't always happen, and that's okay. Continue to faithfully spread the word of God wherever you are. Tomorrow, we are going to be in Acts 18, and we're going to be going into the city of Corinth.

A great study and some fun things that happened there, but we will see you tomorrow. Have a great day.