WWUTT 1106 Sermon at Mars Hill?

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When Paul preached his sermon at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17, he wasn't trying to preach a fluffy sermon to appeal to the most number of people, rather he was there to preach the truth.

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And the truth offends when we understand the text. This is when we understand the text studying

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God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. We come back to our study of the book of Acts, still in chapter 17.

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This week we're going to be looking at Paul's sermon at the Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill.

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I'm going to start reading in verse 16 and read through to the end of the chapter. 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.

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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.

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Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him, and some said, what does this babbler wish to say?

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Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

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And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?

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For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.

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Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

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So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

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For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription,

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To the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this

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I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being

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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.

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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

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God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

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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

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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.

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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.

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And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

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Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, We will hear you again about this.

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So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were

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Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. Now, this is a very famous sermon, of course, and many who like to fancy themselves apologists will center their apologetics ministry on the sermon that Paul preached here at the

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Areopagus, a place also known as Mars Hill. It was the place of the gods. Whenever a new philosopher would come into Athens and he started gaining attention, people would want him to preach there at the

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Areopagus, where there were idols of various gods, all kinds of gods.

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And in fact, they even had an altar there, as Paul points out, to an unknown god, just in case there's anybody we missed.

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We want to make sure that we please all the gods, but if we miss someone, here's our altar to that unknown god, so maybe he won't get angry or upset at us.

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But with the presence of those idols there, a philosopher would present his new thinking or teaching, and if the people were interested in it, he gained his followers, then he must be blessed by the gods, and he could start up his school there, or whatever would follow after that.

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So because Paul is there preaching this new thing, and he's pointing to this guy named Jesus, and they even say of him, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, this

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Jesus who's from Israel, down where Judea and Jerusalem and all that place is, and probably nobody in Athens had ever even been there, or very few people had.

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So they bring Paul to the Areopagus, well, here you go, you want to preach about foreign divinities, we'll present your case here in the presence of our gods, and Paul uses that as a visual aid to point out their religious affiliations, but also to say that,

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I mean, if you're truly going to believe in God, he's not going to be formed by the imagination of man, that's absurd, because God made us, we do not make

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God, we do not owe him anything, we can't please him with anything by our hands, since he's the one who gives us life and breath and everything.

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Now, even though there's a lot of apologists that will want to use this sermon as kind of the basis of how they do apologetics, it seems like a lot of their argumentation stops somewhere around Paul quoting the

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Greek poets, where he says that he is not actually far from each one of us, 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.

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But then look at what Paul says after that, 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

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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.

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Something that I seldom hear in the presentation of these apologists who will want to base their ministry on Acts 17, on Paul's sermon here.

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One of the things I seldom hear from them is any sort of mention of repentance or a coming judgment.

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So even though they want to base their apologetic approach on the way Paul argues with the

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Greeks, they don't go as far as mentioning that God is going to judge you because of your sin, so you better repent before that day comes and seek the righteousness that God calls righteous.

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Because notice here, it says he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

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How are you supposed to know what is righteous in the eyes of God? You turn to that man, the man whom

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God has appointed and raised him from the dead. He is our righteousness.

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How do you know what the righteousness of God is? You look to that man, and that was exactly the man that Paul was preaching about,

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Jesus Christ. And everybody knew that's who Paul was preaching about. That's why they brought him to the

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Areopagus. I've heard Andy Stanley say that it is not necessary whenever you preach a sermon to even mention the name of Christ or quote scripture because Paul didn't do that at the

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Areopagus in Acts 17. But that's totally taking his sermon out of context. That's ignoring the fact that it says people knew what he was talking about.

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They said, what does this babbler wish to say? Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching

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Jesus and the resurrection. His sermon at the Areopagus doesn't exist in a vacuum.

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There's a context here. Lest somebody like Andy Stanley say, well, because Paul didn't quote scripture, he didn't even mention the name of Jesus, then

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I don't have to either. Paul was preaching to unbelievers, not the church. And he did mention

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Christ and even talked about judgment and repenting of sin before that judgment comes upon you, which, by the way,

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Andy Stanley doesn't talk about. He wants to say that he models his kind of preaching after the way

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Paul did it at the Areopagus, but he doesn't. Let's let's go ahead and come back here to verse 16.

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We'll start looking at these things in context ourselves before I'm too all over the place. Verse 16.

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Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, waiting for who he was waiting for, Silas and Timothy, who were left at Berea.

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And so he summoned for them to come to him. And it's almost like we're being told here that Paul wasn't intending on starting the ministry that he was going to do there at Athens until they arrived.

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But his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

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So he can't wait. He's got to get started on this. He's got to begin preaching now. Verse 17.

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So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews, because as we've mentioned over and over again, that's the first place he goes when he gets to a city.

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He goes to the synagogue and he preaches from the scriptures to the Jews. But he also preached to the devout persons, those others who believed they believed in the

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Hebrew God and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.

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So he's talking to everybody that's that's in the busiest places of Athens, no matter what their beliefs are.

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But then we get specific and we understand who some of those philosophers would have been.

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Verse 18. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him.

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Now, I've heard someone like William Lane Craig say that when Paul preached at the Areopagus, he was preaching to an audience of Epicureans and Stoics.

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So that's only partially true. It was a wide variety of various philosophies that were believed here, because notice it's talking about how

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Paul had preached to the Jews, other devout persons reasoning in the marketplace. Oh, and some of the

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Epicureans and Stoic philosophers would have been there as well. And as it says in verse 21, skipping ahead, but I'll come back here in a moment, it says now all the

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Athenians and the foreigners who live there would spend their time in nothing except the telling or hearing of something new.

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So there was this longing and this desire to hear new things. The Epicureans and the

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Stoics were kind of left behind by those Athenians that wanted to hear new philosophies.

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The Epicureans and Stoics, I mean, those philosophers in particular, that was 300 years ago.

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So that stuff's old. And there were some Athenians wanting to move on. We don't want to hear what those guys have to say anymore.

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You're preaching something new. So we want to hear what you have to say. Now, this is a little bit different than the way that the

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Romans responded to new philosophies. The Romans actually weren't all that interested in new things.

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They liked the old. It's kind of one of those things where if this has been around for a long time, well, they must know something.

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That's why this philosophy or this idea has been around for so long is because they've got it figured out.

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So a lot of times Romans would turn to older stuff. They wanted to hear the old, which was why you had some people in Rome who were fascinated by the teachings that were going on in the synagogues since this

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Hebrew God has been around or he's been talked about for at least the last 1 ,500 years.

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The Ten Commandments were given to the people of Israel 1 ,500 years ago at the time of Christ when the

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Romans would want to even sit in the synagogue or outside the synagogue and hear some of the things that were being taught.

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So because it was old, the Romans were interested in it. And it's the same approach that gave rise to what we refer to today as the

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Roman mystery cults. You would have some cult groups in Rome that would worship like the

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Egyptian God Horus or they would worship the Persian God Mithras. Why did the

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Romans care about these old ancient gods? Because they were old. And so that must mean they're true.

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So they would start up these cult groups and some of the practices or the traditions that they would associate with the worship of these false gods wasn't anything like the

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Egyptians did or like what the Persians did. The Romans would make up their own system, their own way to worship these false gods.

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But it was the fact that those gods were old. Therefore, they must be true. And the Romans approach things that way.

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The Greeks had a different approach. They wanted something new. They were tired of old philosophies.

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And a lot of times the old philosophies just weren't interesting to them anymore. So even though Epicureanism and Stoicism still had quite a place in Greek culture, there were many

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Greeks who were looking for something new. These philosophies have been around for about 300 years up to that point.

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What's something new that you have to tell us? These philosophers in particular were not really big on the worship of gods like Epicureanism taught that a person need to eliminate any fear of the gods or of death because those things cause strife in your life.

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And the Epicureans were saying you need to eliminate anything that could take away your desire or your pursuit of pleasure.

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And since people generally fear the gods, pleasing the gods, or they fear death, then you just need to not think about those things so that you'll have, therefore, a more positive outlook on life.

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So the Epicureans were not big on worshiping the gods. And where did the Athenians bring

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Paul to share this new teaching that he had? They brought him to the place of the gods.

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They're the Areopagus where all these idols were. So the Epicureans and the Stoics were certainly there, but probably did not make up the vast majority of the audience that Paul was preaching to.

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They're only a portion of this audience. All that's being demonstrated here by Luke, who, of course, is the writer of Acts.

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Luke is demonstrating that there were people of all different kinds of beliefs in various philosophies there in Athens.

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They believed all kinds of stuff. And Paul kind of narrows down this vast array of various philosophies and beliefs.

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He narrows it all down by saying to them, I see you're a very religious people. So I'm going to talk to a group of people who is religious, but you've placed your faith and your trust and your belief in the wrong thing.

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That's the gist of the beginning of Paul's sermon that he preaches here. We'll look into the specifics of that sermon a little more deeply tomorrow.

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But in the meantime, you have some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers conversing with him, and some said, what does this babbler wish to say?

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Now, the interesting thing about that word that's translated babbler, it basically means that Paul was like a hen picking up seeds.

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And he's just I mean, he's just kind of grabbing stuff out of thin air. This is a way of the

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Greeks saying this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. That's why they called him a babbler. He doesn't know what he's saying.

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He's just saying random stuff. He's just pulling stuff out of his rear end.

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He does not know what he's talking about. So when Paul in his sermon then quotes some of their own prophets or some of their own poets, when he begins quoting their own writers, then he's demonstrating to them that he does know what he's talking about.

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And he's actually a very educated man. Paul was a very smart guy.

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So they want to say of him, he's babbling. They're kind of poisoning the well by saying that they're trying to establish before we've even heard what he has said, we're just going to say he's a babbler who doesn't know what he's talking about.

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What does this babbler wish to say? They act like they're interested in what he's saying, but really, they're just trying to discredit him before he even says it.

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Others say he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching

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Jesus and the resurrection. He had been doing this all over the place. He'd been doing it in the synagogues.

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He'd been preaching to them in the marketplaces to the philosophers that came and would talk to him.

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He was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. This is what he was talking to them about.

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This is what had them interested in what he was saying. So they wanted to bring him to the place of the gods.

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Say it to all of us. Say it in the presence of our own divinities. Since you want to be a preacher of foreign divinities, let's see if your foreign god stands up against ours.

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Verse 19. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, Ares Hill.

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Ares was the Greek god of war. To the Romans, it was the god Mars, which is why this place also gets called

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Mars Hill. This was the place where trial was held. It was held in the presence of the gods to determine whether or not this person who's speaking is saying something true or something false.

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It was always kind of weird to me that there were preachers who would start churches and call their church Mars Hill.

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I never got that. Why would you name your church after a false god? Of course, they're naming it after this place where Paul preached to a bunch of unbelievers.

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And that's not really who we're preaching to primarily. When a pastor stands in the pulpit and delivers a sermon on Sunday morning, he's preaching primarily to the saints.

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There might be unbelievers there. But the intended audience should be those people who are gathered together to exalt and praise

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God on the Lord's day. So that just doesn't make any sense at all. Start a church and call it

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Mars Hill. Don't do that. So anyway, they took 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.

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We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. We've heard you talking in the marketplace.

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We've heard you talking to the Epicureans and the Stoics. You've talked to the Jews. You're talking about the same thing here.

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You've been talking about Jesus and resurrection will address us all. Talk to us here in the presence of the gods and may they determine whether what you are saying is true or false.

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Verse 21. Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

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So some were genuinely interested in what Paul was talking about. This is new thing. We haven't heard about this

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Jewish God who came and was a carpenter and was crucified by his own people.

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And he's resurrected from the dead. This is God incarnate, God in human flesh. We've never heard about this before.

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So they're interested in it. They want to hear it because it's something new. But the majority of people are going to wind up mocking him by the time we get to the end of this because he speaks of the resurrection of the dead.

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And that was unthinkable. That was unheard of to the Greeks. Resurrection from the dead. Most of them believed that when a person died, they died.

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There really was no difference between the human soul and the human body. They did not believe in an afterlife where the soul would go and live with the gods.

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That's not what the Greeks live. That's not what they believed. When a person died, they died. They went into the ground.

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So at best, we need to try to find how to make the most out of this life that we are given.

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That's what the Stoics and the Epicureans were talking about. We're teaching. How do you get the most out of this life?

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You just think positively. Don't let negative thoughts get into your mind. But you need to make the most of the situation that you have.

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Or you need to look for the best way to glean pleasure out of the things that are given to you in life. This is what the philosophers were putting out there.

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The philosophers were basically coming up with ways that you can get the most out of life, that you can get the most pleasure out of life, that you can find happiness in what is, for most people, generally a pretty miserable existence.

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And so since this is what the Greeks were after, something new to help me cope with this life that I'm in, let me hear this new guy and what it is that he has to say.

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But as soon as Paul starts talking about the resurrection of the dead, well, then they start mocking him. That's absurd.

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There is no life after this. This is all we get. So I'm telling you to tell me that you need to teach me how to get the most out of this life, because this life is all we've got.

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Once you start talking about the resurrection of the dead, I'm tuned out, y 'all, because that ain't real.

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That ain't even a thing. And they mocked him for that. But some did believe. And they said, we'll hear you again about this.

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We want to hear more about this judgment that is coming from God. And we need to turn to the one whom he is appointed is righteous.

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And that's Jesus Christ and is shown his appointment of him by raising him from the dead. This is this is very fascinating.

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I want to hear more about this. And some did end up becoming believers. But Paul did not preach a sermon that was meant to appease the most number of people, which is, again, as I as I come back to the way that some apologists will base their ministries off of the way that Paul preaches here in Acts 17, some of these apologists will believe that they're trying to appease the most number of people.

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I don't want to offend anybody by this. That most definitely was not Paul's aim here in his preaching.

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He was there to preach the truth. If that offended people, so be it. But he was not trying to amass the largest following and appease the most number of people.

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Paul preached about righteousness. He preached about judgment. He told the people to repent and he pointed all of this back to Jesus Christ, the one whom

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God had appointed, had risen him from the dead. And this is the man who will judge us all.

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The God man, Jesus Christ, who was ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

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There is a judgment that is to come. There is an afterlife. We all will stand before God who made us and we'll have to give an account.

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And how are you going to be able to stand before a righteous God on that day? It is only by faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ who died for our sins and clothes us in his righteousness.

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And by faith in him, we are justified. We'll talk more about the specifics of this sermon, get into the actual meat of the sermon here tomorrow, starting in verse 22.

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Let's conclude with prayer. Our heavenly father, we thank you for this gospel of repentance and faith.

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And I pray that we continue to grow in these things every day, maturing in repentance, maturing in faith.

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May we turn from those sinful desires and desire the righteousness of Christ.

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Mature us in this day by day, that we may want to do those things that are pleasing to you.

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And when we have sinned or stumbled along the way, we seek forgiveness.

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And we know and we are promised in this, that if we ask forgiveness for our sins, you are faithful and just to cleanse us from our unrighteousness.

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We ask for your goodness upon us today. In the name of Jesus. Amen. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .utt