The Acts of the Apostles 68

Subtitle: The Unknown God II

Acts 17:24-34.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 9, 2024.

We stopped last time with the Apostle Paul speaking at the Areopagus in Athens, Greece.  He tells them of a shrine he found in their city labeled, “To the Unknown God.”  He then says that he will proclaim this “Unknown God” to them.  Or, we may say that he proclaims the One True God who was unknown to them.

Let’s look at our passage.

The Greatness of the Unknown God (v. 24-26)

Paul begins by describing the greatness of Yahweh, this God who is unknown to them.  The gods of the nations always had a certain sphere of influence.  Even Zeus had to respect the realms in which Poseidon and Hades ruled (the sea and the underworld respectively).  No one god had control of everything.  In fact, none of these so-called gods had created the earth or the heavens. This is the backdrop to Paul’s opening statement.

Yahweh made all things that exist in the heavens and on the earth (this would include their so-called gods).  Yahweh is therefore the Lord over all of these things.  This would also challenge their philosophies (Epicureanism, Stoicism, et. al.) regarding their views on the origin of matter.

Paul is pointing out their penchant for building temples, fashioning idols, and giving worship to such things.  Of course, we may object to this with the fact that even Israel had a temple, which God had told them to build. However, this misses Paul’s point.

Paul is not speaking about God’s ability to manifest in a mediated form on the earth while still being Lord over all “seated” in the heavens.  He is challenging their culture of building temples and idols, and worshipping these lesser beings. 

The God who created all things cannot be fully contained by a building on earth, even by a throne room in the heavens. He doesn’t dwell in temples made by men. 

Verse 25 opens with a secondary point.  He doesn’t dwell in temples we make, and He isn’t worshiped with men’s hands.  The word for “worship” here has a sense of serving God.  It was used for everything men did in the temple (sacrifices, offerings, prayers, etc.).  The religious actions that they were doing would not be acceptable to the Creator.  The God who created all things, i.e., is the source of all things, doesn’t need us to be a source of something for Him.  He is the giver of all things: life, breath, and anything else you can think of.  In all our work, we are not supplying something God can’t create for Himself. 

Yes, we can serve God’s purposes, but our offerings are not fulfilling something that God lacks.  Rather, we are filling up something that we lack.  God doesn’t need our money, but we need to be givers so our wealth does not rule our hearts.  Ultimately, the things we do are not done for God, but rather with God.  It is a child wanting to be like its heavenly Father.

In verse 26, Paul tells them that the Creator made all the nations of the earth from one person (note: some translations have “one blood”).  These both mean the same thing.  From Adam, Eve was made.  Through them, all humanity springs forth.  We are all connected and related by this common human origin.  However, we should notice that God is the source of Adam.  Thus, all humanity is connected by the One who created all things.

Paul tells them that the Creator has preappointed when nations would come into existence, how long they would last, and how great they would become, i.e., their boundaries.  We can even recognize different forms of governance that have risen over the years as another layer to these preappointed times. 

This is where we see an intersection between the reality of our free will as individuals, and thus as nations, and God’s sovereign will.  In His sovereignty, God has not determined everything we may do, but He does determine some things.  These determined things will impact our lives in unforeseen ways. 

This is what is happening as Paul preaches Jesus in Athens.  The golden years of Athens are behind her, but in a different way, the golden days of the Gospel had come to them by the will of God and the cooperation of humans.  The Gospel being sent to the nations was a preappointed time of God that would begin to change things.

The Purpose of the Unknown God (v. 27-29)

Paul now moves to the purpose of this Creator God that was unknown to the Athenians.  This is an ancient issue that even these pagan nations wrestled with.  What do the gods want, and how can we appease them?

The nations had come into existence because of the judgment of God at the Tower of Babel.  Why would God scatter the people into these resultant nations?  Why would He turn away from them and turn to an individual named Abram to make a nation out of him?  This might appear to be a harsh judgment, but God has a purpose in it.

Adam was judged and cast out of the Garden of Eden.  A curse was put on the ground so that he would have to sweat with painful labor to bring forth food from it.  He would then die, leaving his body to return to the dirt from which it came.  Yet, Romans 8:20 tells us that God subjected the creation to futility with a purpose in mind.  In fact, He did so with a hope before us that God would fix it all.  God always has a good purpose in mind even when He gives judgments.  We can learn a lot by prayerfully paying attention to His judgments.

In verse 27, Paul says that God wanted them to search for Him.  God’s judgment at the Tower was not a full rejection.  Rather, He wanted them to wrestle with the results of the sinful choices they had made.  Some times you have to let people go who insist on poor choices.  They may even hate you.  By letting them go, God let them discover that the path they were on was not actually good.  Their searching and groping would cause them to see that they are in the dark without any hope of finding truth. 

This is similar to the story of the Prodigal Son.  The father let his son go off knowing that he wasn’t making good choices.  Yet, the son couldn’t see how good his father truly was until he had blown his money in a far country.  There he became destitute to the point that he wanted to eat the food of the pigs he was taking care of.  It was then that God blessed him with an understanding of how good his father was. 

Notice that no one actually found God by groping and searching for him.  It was not the great philosophers of Greece that figured out who the Creator was.  Our understanding of God has always been a gracious revelation from Him.  Athens was in the middle of a glorious day of revelation as Paul spoke to them.

Paul emphasizes that, even in our groping days of blindness, God is never far from us.  In the Prodigal Son story, the father was watching down the road for his son’s return.  Of course, God the Father has far greater powers than the human father of this story.  Yet, He watches for our turning back towards Him with the same desire.  Simultaneously, the Spirit of God is working out in the far country to turn the son’s heart back to his father.  God was never far from the Greeks even in their days of weak groping.  The opportune time had come.  I believe this is true for humanity as a whole, but also for each individual.  God was never far from each person throughout history.  His purpose was always being worked out for our good.

On this day, the time of hard labor underneath false gods was at an end.  The truth about the authority and kingship of Jesus was now going forth.  Yet, even that hard labor had prepared them to receive the truth.  This is not saying that all would believe, but that those who did would better recognize what Paul was saying.

In verse 28, Paul quotes from some of their poets.  “In him we live and move and have our being,” is a quote from  seventh-century BC Greek philosopher, Epimenides.  “For we are also his offspring,” is a quote from the fourth-century BC Greek poet, Aratus.  In their groping for truth, little nuggets of understanding had surfaced by the grace of God.

On one hand, Paul is using these quotes as a bridge to help these Greeks understand that the greatness of God and His relationship with us calls for them to cease their temples and idolatry.

However, I believe that Paul is also demonstrating that there was some culpability in how far away from truth they were.  If they had understood through such poets that God is the very atmosphere and foundation of all that we do, and if they had understood that they were the offspring of God in some way, then they should have questioned the temple and idol worship that they were doing.

If we are the offspring of God, then how could we think that God could be properly imaged by wood, metal, and stone?  God never intended humans to make these ignorant attempts at imaging Him.  In fact, He made us to be His imagers!

They can’t blame their ignorance on God.  They had been culpable along the way.  The first generation that was judged at Babel should have humbled themselves in repentance and held on to the truth of God far more strongly, but they didn’t.  As God gave them nuggets of insight along the way, they should have rebelled against the wicked traditions developed by their culture, but they didn’t.  Crafting wood into an image becomes a way of side-stepping truth.  “I don’t want to work on me so I craft this piece of wood and make God into an image that makes me feel better.”

They can’t blame their blind condition on God nor on their forefathers.  Yes, they are impacted by the decisions of them both, but they had made their own sinful choices.

This brings us to Paul’s last point.

The Judgment of the Unknown God (v. 30-31)

The point about their culpability in their idolatry makes a great transition to the warning of a coming judgment.  The God they didn’t know about has set a preappointed time at which all the nations are going to be judged by Jesus.

Up to this point, God had been overlooking their idolatry and ignorance.  He had given them freedom to grope, rather than destroying them.  He was letting them wrestle with their choices and the questions that surface through that.  Sometimes we have to eat some pig pods so that we can appreciate the grace of God.

Yet now, things have changed.  God is commanding all men everywhere to repent, even Caesar.  This is an important distinction.  We are in an Age of God’s Grace where the Gospel of Jesus goes out to the whole world.  Those who call others to repentance and faith in Jesus must live a life of repentance themselves.  Our culture has developed ways of rejecting Jesus and worshiping false gods.  The Church must be careful that it doesn’t let the culture change it.  Rather, we are called to redeem people.  If enough people are redeemed, then that will affect the culture of that people.

The spirit of antichrist wants to exalt cultural differences to the exclusion of the message of Christ.  Yet, Jesus is Lord over all culture.  This means that there needs to be a change.  Some things need to change by truncation.  They simply need to be stopped, cut off, or removed.  However, other things need to change by transformation.  I may still make music and play songs, but now I do them for the glory of God, not man.  We may still enforce the law or have a military, but we do not do these things for the glory of America.

Now, we all have a day of judgment personally.  It is called the day of our death.  However, Paul points to a time when all the nations will be held accountable.  The way the world operates now will come to an abrupt end as Jesus comes back to set things right.

This makes the message of repentance from sin and faith towards Jesus extremely important.  Imagine a person who has lived a life of stealing from others, and yet, now he is caught.  He then stands in front of the judge, is proven to be a thief, and the judge is preparing his decision.  It is too late to say that you don’t want to be a thief.  It is too late to beg for mercy and ask the judge to pretend that you are now innocent.

Jesus is the man who has been appointed by God as judge.  He will judge in complete righteousness, and not as we do.  Do you remember those pictures and statues of Lady Justice.  She has a balance scale in her hand and she is blindfolded.  Humans generally have to be blindfolded in order to give a righteous judgment, but this is not true of Jesus.  There will be no blindfold on him in that day, and he will see through every flimsy excuse that we might raise.  Now is the time for repentance and faith in him, not when we are standing before him giving account for our life.

Paul tells them that God has given assurance to this reality by raising Jesus from the dead.  The resurrection of Jesus is the keystone of our message.  This is the evidence that God has given us, and that points to his ability and right to judge us.

Think about it.  There is no other person in history that predicted their death and resurrection, and then did it.  Not only that, but had over 500 witnesses  to the reality of his resurrection and ascension into heaven.  This is not coming to us from a mythological age within pre-history.  It is the most attested reality of the ancient world that we have.

The wonderful news is that we can survive God’s judgment through our faith in Jesus.  Yet, the shocking news of the resurrection seems to shock the crowd.  They break out in a loud response that cuts the sermon short at this point.

The Response of the Athenians (v. 32-34)

We are told that some of the people mocked him.  Who ever heard of a man coming back to life from the dead?  Others were inquisitive.  “We will hear you again on this matter.”  Of course, philosophers love to talk and hear other people talk.  No amount of inquisition can save us.  We must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  Lastly, some of them joined him and believed!

We need to be careful in America.  We can be too natural-minded in our work for the Lord.  God help us to quit looking at our culture and saying that it is too far gone.  Even if it was, so what!  Do we stop sharing the Gospel and believing that we serve the God of the impossible?

Believers need to have hope, and Jesus is the source of that hope.  Our hope is not that we will save everyone in town, or in the nation, or in the world, tomorrow.  Why does God still have us here?  Doesn’t He know that it is over?

I hope that you can see that this is what we are doing.  We are halting in the day of battle and questioning the general.  We are halting in the day of salvation and questioning Jesus.  We must stop this.  We must first get on our knees in prayer and ask the Lord Jesus to fill us with his Holy Spirit so that we can have the empowerment to share the Gospel like the Apostle Paul did all those years ago in Athens.  If Paul can preach with hope and receive a harvest in pagan Athens, then we can do so today in modern America.

Unknown God audio