We Preach the Unknown God

Paul goes to Athens and sees that the city is full of idols. He starts preaching in the synagogue and marketplace, and encounters Epicureans and Stoics who are interested in his message. They bring him to the Areopagus where he proclaims the unknown God to the Athenians. He explains that this God is the creator of everything and does not live in temples made by man. He urges them to repent and believe in Jesus, but some mock while others are interested. Some people join Paul and believe in his message. Paul's preaching is unique and challenges the false philosophies and religions of the Greeks. The following message is brought to you by the people of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. For more information, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org. And now, here's Pastor Jason Booth with the message. The message today is titled, We Preach the Unknown God. We Preach the Unknown God. The Word of the Lord found in Acts chapter 17, beginning in verse 16. Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took hold of him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man. Nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually 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 indeed his offspring. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man? The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he has appointed. And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, we will hear you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with him, the word of the living God. And may his name be forever praised. May he be glorified in the public reading of the Scriptures today for our good and for his glory. Amen. Amen. We preach the unknown God, much as Paul. Imagine, if you will, a world in which the gospel isn't just a long forgotten tale. In other words, a world that has not yet been touched by the ethics of the New Testament, by the Christian formation that comes into a land when it is touched by the gospel, the political ramifications, none of these things existed. There was no scaffolding on which to build even an understanding of what Christ's work was in the world of the ancient Greeks. There were no preachers that went before Paul. There wasn't a reference point, a frame of reference, other than the numbers of Jewish people who had gone before. And most of the Greeks were busying themselves with their own religion, and they saw even the Judaism that had pervaded into their country as yet another one of the many gods. Paul was doing something that was completely new, and he was going into these lands preaching and proclaiming Christ. And so the Spirit of God gave Paul the utterance, gave him the ability to speak to these people in a way that they could understand. And how was this afforded Paul? By divine providence. For Paul, waiting in Athens, the Bible says that his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. For a Jewish man, it had to have been shocking to be in the midst of all of that false religious depravity. Seeing all of these temples made by hand, these idols, the idol worship, the imagery, constant imagery all around of statuettes, and little idols bought and sold at the market that you could bring home and build your own little curio cabinet for, and bow down to, light incense to, and all of these things. It had to have been offensive to his sensibilities just from a cultural perspective. But more than that, the Bible says that his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city full of idols. God had destroyed places for less wickedness. And so, Paul went to the one place where he would find at least some semblance of normality. The Bible says in verse 17 that he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. So, he began his journey by speaking to the Jews. Then he would make his way into the marketplace to speak to the Greeks and those who were there. And he ran into both Epicureans and Stoics. Now, Epicureans come from a philosophy of pleasure. But I want you to understand that they weren't hedonists in the sense that all they cared about was rank pleasure. They had a system in place. Mind you, it's all works wickedness. Because their idea, both the Stoics and the Epicureans, their ideas were that men could, through the formation of their own appetites or the suppression of their own appetites, wielding their wants and desires in certain ways and forms could find balance in this world. The Stoics and the Epicureans both dismissed the notion of a personal God. The Stoics said that we can find balance by... Let me read the notes I have here on this so that I won't confuse the two for you. They believed that you would live in harmony with nature and, of course, rely heavily on reason. And so it was a suppression of emotion and the exaltation of reason. This is why we say, even today, if someone is at a funeral and they're not making much of an emotional display, we say that they remain very Stoic. So it's the suppression of the emotions and the exaltation of reason to find balance and harmony in the world apart from the divine. The Epicureans, they believed that their purpose in life was to find pleasure. Now, they would argue that pleasure needed to be balanced with the needs of the body. And so they still had some sort of a dogma about it. It wasn't just pleasure for the sake of pleasure, but they sought out pleasure as its final end. So one, lovers of pleasure, one, lovers of reason, and neither had any place in their philosophy for a personal God. And yet they loved to talk. They loved to be in the marketplaces sharing their ideas. And in the time of Christ, both the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies were running rampant in the Greco-Roman world. They were very popular beliefs. Many people winked at the pantheon of gods and goddesses. They played up the temple worship for their political purposes. But at the end of the day, most of the learned classes were influenced heavily by the Epicureans or the Stoics or a mixture of both. And this is the philosophical mulligan stew that Paul finds himself. Now, in our so-called multicultural world, we like to say that we are all about diversity and everyone's opinion is equally valid. And you'll hear all types of people proclaiming that, right? Well, Paul wasn't about to add the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the great pond of religious practice in Greece. He wasn't going to just take the pebble called the gospel and throw it into their koi pond and say, There's one more idea, one more notion of the divine. No, Paul had no intention of taking a back seat to any philosophy or to any theology or to any other godless practice that would dare exalt itself in the faith of the Lord God. This comes from the great tradition of our heritage of faith. I think of David as he stood there before Goliath. He didn't look to him and say, Oh, you're a mighty philistine. Maybe we could share. Maybe my God will share His glory with your false gods. No, he calls him out and he says, Who does this Gentile dog think he is to exalt himself against the name of the Lord our God? Paul had no intention of playing nice with the false theologies and philosophies of fallen, blind man. And the Scripture gives us this much insight. They all said to him that they wanted to learn more. Many of them called him a babbler. Now, they were used to babbling because many of them were paid to give speeches. They were paid to talk and argue. Many times they would choose opposite sides of the debate depending on the day and who was paying them. So, it was the television entertainment of their day, so to speak. To go to the place of meeting and to argue out philosophy and theology and speak of the gods and the underworld and the afterlife. All of the political notions of the day were all aired out in the public sphere. And here Paul found himself right in the thick of it. And, of course, they then, the Bible says, took hold of him and brought him to the Areopagus. This, by the way, is the same word that we use, the word that we use to describe this is Mars Hill. Mars Hill. And this is a hill near the Acropolis where in the ancient times a council had met. And so it became the place of meeting for the Athenian city council. It was a place where big things happened politically. And so Paul was taken up to Mars Hill. And there they questioned him more. And they said, you bring strange things to our ears. Well, what kind of strange things do you think Paul would have been able to bring to the ears of people who had hundreds, maybe thousands, of gods? For one, Paul came preaching a suffering servant, God. Christianity preaches and proclaims the death of our God for the life of His people. Thanks be to God, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, that the world through Him may have eternal life. Our God died so that we might live. And beloved, this is a unique aspect and a strange thing for the ancient pagans to hear. For their gods were concerned with their own self-preservation, their own opulence, their own comfort. Remember, their gods in their pantheon all played out like a soap opera. This god getting jealous of this god, this god double-crossing this one, this human thwarting the gods and becoming more than human but less than god, this god being cursed to hold the weight of the world on his shoulders because he was a titan who was in charge of the world before the new gods of Olympus came into being. I mean, it goes into grand detail. And here comes the true way. The way, the truth, and the life. Jesus Christ. Who comes as a lamb fit for the slaughter. Paul preaches the death, burial, and resurrection of the God-man, Jesus Christ. These were strange things to the ears of the pagans. Verse 20. They say, we wish to know therefore what these things mean. And then, of course, verse 21 tells us that in Athens it was the rage to sit around and talk about all the happenings. Now, all the Athenians and foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. What's going on? Well, we've got this guy, Paul, who's talking about how this fellow from Nazareth, from Galilee, came and died. But before he died, he was doing miracles. He was calling himself the Son of God. People were worshiping at his feet. He dies on a Roman cross, and then three days later they claim he rose from the dead. This guy's talking about all these strange things, but nothing like what we've ever heard before. Verse 22. Paul addresses the crowd. Remember, they have no prior scaffolding. There's no Christian mindset in any of these people. Paul is preaching to them fresh, and he's using whatever tools the Spirit of God has providentially placed in his path. And listen to what he says. Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. Let me stop here for a moment. Listen, it is not a big deal to look at someone who is in this world or trapped in false belief or religion to call them religious. Beloved, you can be religious and still be woefully wrong. You can be religious. I see men losing their minds over sports and all sorts of other things. And they can rattle off stats of every player. They can tell you about players' personal lives and all of their tragedies they've had this season and injuries and all of the victories and successes and the strategies their coaching staff have used, down to what their sub-coaching staff will do for offense or defense, their training regimens. They know all of the details, and they can talk and go on and on and on about all of the little minutia of their favorite sports programs. And they do so with gusto. They really, really, really find themselves vested in this sport, right? And if their team wins, they are shouting the glory down. And if their team loses, you don't want to even be around them for the next few days. They have emotionally tied themselves to this whatever sport it might happen to be in a very quasi-religious sense. And religiously, they have followed after this pursuit of knowing more and more about an otherwise useless activity. At least for them, they're not burning any calories watching the ball go up and down the court, right? And even in Paul's day, they had sport. People religiously attended the Coliseum, did they not? They also religiously attended their own religious rituals. Men are religious. Even men who claim no faith whatsoever will find themselves waking up at the same time every day, having the same sort of breakfast, beginning their day with a sort of routine that they have to have in order to get their day started correctly. Ah, men of routine. Men of religious routine. We are a religious species. Paul here had no qualms saying the truth about the people of Athens. He said, listen, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription. To the unknown God. In a world where no one had any qualms with there being multitudes of gods. Gods for certain crops. Gods for certain cities and not others. Gods for the air. Gods for the ground. Gods for love. Gods for war. Gods for the ocean. Gods for fishing. Gods of the seas. Gods of every make, shape, and model. And also, it might be that our neighbors, the foreigners to the east or west, might have a pantheon of their own, and maybe our gods have just chosen to reveal themselves as different names to those folks. That's why it was no problem whatsoever for someone who knew of the ancient Greek pantheon to look toward the north in Europe and see Odin and think, ah, Zeus. And so they had all of this Mr. Potato Head style pantheon where they could just interchange all the parts and if you wanted to worship those gods, that's cool because we've got our own gods. You bring your gods to the party, we'll bring our gods to the party. We'll build temples for everyone and we'll all just be happy. Oh, and as the Roman government was good to do, as their Greek predecessors, many of them were okay to wink at the practice of that peculiar tribe in Palestine who had the one god. And they claimed he was the only god. And they're very peculiar. And these people called the Jews. And we'll tolerate them as well. They're so minute, they're so minuscule, they won't matter anyhow. We'll have our god, they'll have their god. Everybody will be happy. And that was the mindset of the ancient world. Polytheism was all the rage. And Paul here sees that just to make certain they didn't offend the one or two gods or the two thousand gods or the two million gods they didn't yet know existed, they had a temple with an altar that said, To the unknown god. You could sacrifice to this god out of ignorance, just saying, hey man, let's just cover our spread here. We're going to go ahead and maybe throw a few turtledoves on that altar too, just to make sure we've got all the bases covered. Sort of to protect your flanks, you know. And Paul, by the power of the Holy Spirit, remember the Bible tells us in verse 16, his spirit was provoked within him to even begin this work. Who provoked Paul's spirit to begin this missionary effort there that day, that time, that season? It was the Spirit of God. Does He not lead us into all truth? And how does He lead us into all truth? He, many times, will send a preacher. For how shall they hear except there be a preacher? And so here we see Paul says, I noticed you had this one altar that said, To the unknown god. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. And then he opens the door. Using their own pagan temple architecture and archetypes against them, he begins to go to war against this false and satanic pantheon. He begins to tell the people, this unknown God, this God whom you are ignorant of, He is the Lord of heaven and earth. He sent His Son, Jesus. And he goes into detail. We read it already. He says, we didn't have our lineage from multiple gods. There's one God. It only makes sense. Look around. He begins to use logic. And he says to them, The God that made the world and everything in it, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything. So Paul is immediately setting up the truth of the one true God. He's not a God who is fickle, who needs the worship of man in order to be complete, like the ancient Greek pantheon. Zeus and all of those others were constantly looking for the favor of men. Using men, abusing men. The ancient texts even talk about how the stories of the gods coming down and being with women in that carnal way. Paul says nonsense to all of that. Our God does not need to be served by human hands, as though He needed anything. He's the dread sovereign of the universe. Since He gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. In other words, God is the source of all things. He doesn't need you. You are His offspring. In that carnal sense. It's definitely not the spiritual sense just yet. But in the carnal sense, yes. And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the whole face of the earth. How is this proven? It's proven by the fact that when you walk into any country on this planet, we're all going to be basically the same height. We're all going to have the same basic DNA structure. We can all have babies together because we're the same species. Now we have wide variation in our species. Very dark skinned people, very light skinned people. Super tall people, very super short people. Black headed people who will have a black head of hair until the day they die. And other people like me who turned 13 and started going gray everywhere. But what's Paul's point? He's saying, use your eyes people. We're all the same. And if we all had different gods, different deities, different things, then the laws of nature wouldn't even work from one land to the next. Your God is God completely over your particular section. Yet, we all breathe the same oxygen. We all have the same DNA. We all have the same red blood. We're all the same. No. Nature itself declares the glory of God. Not God's. God. If there has been no God before Him, there will be no God after Him. He is the all in all. And Paul starts with the brass tacks truth. There is one God. Hero Israel. The Lord our God is one. Hallelujah forevermore. And He made from one man every nation, the Bible says, verse 27, moving on, that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him. So our responsibility as people, just from the nature that surrounds us, is to seek and feel our way toward God. Paul says in Romans that men are left without excuse. That's pretty profound. Natural theology will not lead you to Christ. But natural theology will undoubtedly lead you to the notion of one true God. The Scripture says so. That they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each of us, verse 28, for in Him we live and move and have our being. Paul here is quoting a Greek poet. So as to make them understand that he knows what time it is. Paul is not a stupid man. He was well read. He knew their philosophies. He knew exactly what to say. The Spirit of God empowered him to preach this truth. And so he's telling these people, listen, nature declares, the heavens declare the glory of God. Men are without excuse. Everyone should know that there is but one God. Just by nature. That's what he says here. And he goes on to say, but then God's offspring, being God's offspring, we ought not to think of that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. So, again, he's blaspheming all of the pagan temples all around. He's saying, why in the world do you have statues of your God? Are you kidding me? The one true God cannot be fashioned in the sense that He's any part or parcel of the creation of man's hands. Yes, all of these gods that you worship very suspiciously sound a lot like vice-filled men. Our God is of a different sort and substance. Verse 30. Well, before that, look again at also verse 29 when he says, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. Boy, if I had time, we could camp out here for a minute. How many people today, so sad. Even in our day, you think Paul couldn't go and preach this exact sermon right now in the middle of a big city? He could. Men today worship gods that are fashioned after their own vain imaginations, and many times they do it in a building they call a church. We've got romper rooms instead of church houses. Places that promise you wealth and health and happiness. Places that promise you all sorts of material things if you'll just give the preacher a little bit of money. One of those charlatans was on TV not long ago saying that the Lord would have already returned by now if everybody would have just sent this particular preacher enough money. You believe that nonsense? You believe that? Well, let me tell you. Paul could easily re-preach this sermon right now in America, and it would be just as timely as it was in the days when he preached it in Athens. And so the scripture says, in verse 30, Paul just preached that, hey, you ought to know the one true God by the things that He has revealed in this world. And then verse 30 he says, the times of ignorance God overlooked. And so God, in His judicial providence, overlooked so much of the excess of sinful man in order that He might have His will and way unfold in the world. After all, if God constantly destroyed the world for the sinful actions of men, His own purpose, He would have thwarted His own purpose. But so that the purpose of election might stand, God, in His judicial forbearance, winked at the ignorance of fallen men so that His will and way could unfold in the broader historical timeline of the world. Does this make sense to everyone? God doesn't wink at sin as to say, I'm never going to judge it. He permits sin in this world so that His greater purposes can be fulfilled. That's the same thing Joseph told his brothers when he said to them, You intended this for evil, but God intended this for good. Because God has fixed a day on which He will judge the world. Now you see, He winks at ignorance in the moment, but He is not about to just let sin pass. You know as well as I do that we're not saved because God decided to overlook our sin. We are saved because God Himself bled and died to pay our sin debt in full. He didn't overlook our sin, beloved. He paid the sin debt in full. That's why He is just and the justifier of the ungodly. Hallelujah forevermore. He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed. Do you see how Paul is making the move from monotheistic reality, God is one, and he says to them, You ignorant fools. You should have known that there was no pantheon. You should have known that there was one God in heaven by the very pulse in your veins, by the fact that men everywhere are the same, by the laws of nature, and by default nature's God. The Stoics and Epicureans, they had no problem believing that we all came from a single source. They had no problem even saying that we were created by a single God. They just dismissed the notion of God after the fact, much like the deists would do later in history. But here, Paul makes the case of monotheism. He says there is one God. He has winked at your ignorance, but no more. And He has appointed a man whereby He will judge this world in righteousness. And He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead. And then he begins to expound on how it is that God, by necessity, is one, but who exists in three persons. We see that in this very text. Who moved Paul's spirit to go and preach? The Spirit of God. Who did Paul begin to talk about in the very beginning of this Mars Hill lecture? The one true God of heaven, God the Father. And who did he appoint in righteousness? Who is righteous but the Lord? He now speaks of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Paul has a Trinitarian framework that he is now expounding all under the auspices of the one true God. And when they heard this, in verse 32, they heard of the resurrection of the dead. Some mocked. There's a shocker. Dead men not wanting to hear the truth of the gospel. But others said, we will hear you again about this. So when Paul went out from their midst, so Paul went out from their midst, verse 34, but some men joined him and believed. Isn't it something? The Lord adds to the church daily such as should be saved. Imagine, you showed up to Mars Hill to hear this new philosophy, this newfangled thing. Some called him a babbler, a speaker of strange tales and doctrines. And you go there just out of curiosity, but you had no idea that the Spirit of God had a sovereign appointment with your soul. And you go and hear this strange man. The Bible says that Paul was kind of a boring speaker too. He preached people to death. One old fellow fell out a window and died. He never said that I'm going to bring you enticing words of man's wisdom. He says, I'm going to preach to you in the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit. So when Paul had that old boy fall out the window on him, what did he do? He went downstairs and by the power of God, he raised him from the dead. I bet you people listened real good then. Ah, yes, the demonstration power of God. Well, you don't even know that the Lord's got a plan for your life today. And you go and hear this old bald fellow preach. And he starts talking to you about Jesus. He starts talking to you about the one true God. How he's going to judge the world in righteousness. And I know he expounded. The text, of course, gives us the summary. But you know he had to expound on what it meant to be righteous. Who it was that gave righteousness to his own people. Because if he's going to judge the world by righteousness, your next question better be, am I righteous? And he's going to say no. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You're not righteous. You've missed the mark. But I know a man. I know a man who can deliver. I know a man who can open the blinded eyes. I know a man who can raise the dead. I know a man who can make the lame walk. I know a man who died and split time in half. I know a man who three days in the tomb come up in glory. And here you are. A Greek Christian. Because now you've been called to believe the gospel. There you stood. Imagine, that's what the Bible says in verse 33. Some men joined him and believed. Praise God. The gospel goes forth in doing what God would have it accomplish. Among those, Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. So God knew exactly what he was doing when he moved Paul's spirit to go into that area and to confront and to preach and to stand up for the truth of the gospel in a world that was, by default, hostile. Beloved, this day we preach the unknown God to people who do not know him. But thanks be to God, our task, our holy task, our magnificent obsession should be to share this gospel and make our Lord known to all men everywhere. He does call all men everywhere to repent. Some people will serve as a sweet savor of death unto death as they harden themselves against the truth and the call of this gospel. Other men will be a savor of life unto life because the spirit of God works in them to will and do God's good pleasure. And we are not, we are not, we are not sufficient to understand these things. But thanks be to God. Imagine poor Paul. He didn't have an entourage. He didn't have a ton of money. He didn't have anything but the truth. But let me tell you, when all you have is the truth, it's all you need. Daniel was in that old lion's den. He didn't have anything but the promise of God, did he? And the promise of God wasn't, wasn't tangible. It wasn't like there were going to be 17 armed guards around Daniel. Daniel just knew that he could trust God to do right. And the Bible is very clear. The Lord shut the mouths of the lions. Here's Paul going into a place that would have intimidated most Christians today, I'm sure. All of these learned men, all of these well-read men speaking all of these philosophies, philosophies that continue to influence the modern world even to this day. And they melted like dross off of pure gold when the gospel came in on the scene. Beloved, when the gospel encounters a soul for whom Christ died, that soul will bend the knee in love and in, and in contrition, gospel repentance to the truth of this holy, holy work that Christ did. I thank God for the cross. I thank God that he sent Jesus to save poor and needy sinners like me. Because guess what, beloved? Unless, I don't know how many of you are from the Middle East. I don't know how many of you have ancient blood that goes back to the kings of Israel. But I know this much. If I were alive in Paul's day, I would have been a Greek, not a Jew. And I'm thankful that Paul, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, was caused to go to the Gentiles. Caused to go to people like me and you. And we would have went to our homes. And we would have knocked down all those idols off that stupid shelf in the corner. And we would have told our families about the one true God. And we would have told our children, don't you pray prayers to those false gods. For I have met Jesus Christ in the full pardon of my sins. And I know who the real God is. We no longer sacrifice haphazardly at the altar of the unknown God. For he has made himself known. Hallelujah forevermore. Lord, we pray that you would bless our time together. Thank you for this account of Paul's ministry. Found there in the work of Acts there of Luke. And we thank you, Lord, for that. We ask you, O God, that you be with us. That you help us, Lord, to remember that we ought not take a back seat to the philosophies of this old world. The vain notions of this fallen mass of humanity. But help us to, in the power of your Holy Spirit, share the true gospel with those who will hear. And let us be bold as the Spirit gives us utterance. We ask these things through Christ. Thanking you, Lord, for pardoning grace full and free. Amen, amen, amen. You have just heard a message from Pastor Jason Booth of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. To learn more about the good news of Jesus, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org.