Sunday, October 27, 2024 AM

Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you today to give you the glory. You deserve all of our praise. We thank you for giving us your Son, Jesus Christ, giving us to him.

We thank you for sending forth your Holy Spirit to indwell us and to comfort us and to guide us into all truth. We thank you for your Word. Everywhere you as the Father speak here of your Son by the Spirit.

So we pray that as we read your Word today, as we come under this authority, that we would rejoice in your truth and you would do your work in us by this Word to your glory. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Acts 17 and the Unknown God

I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts 17, Acts chapter 17, and we'll begin reading in verse 22. Acts chapter 17, and we'll begin reading in verse 22. If we think about the good God, this chapter reminds us of the good book and the good fight.

And here we have Paul on Mars Hill at the Oropagus, the center of all thinking in the ancient Greek world, declaring to them whom they do not know, the one true good God. All throughout the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, we are reminded of this good God.

Not only is He revealed, not only is He self-sufficient, but He is also sovereign and Savior. Those two ideas, that He is sovereign and Savior, go very well together. Jesus informed His audience one time that those that they thought were the closest to God, the wealthy, they thought that the wealthy were the most close to God because obviously God had given the most stuff to them.

He was most happy with them, that's why they had the most stuff. But Jesus said how hard it is for a wealthy man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a wealthy man to get into heaven, meaning it's harder for the man that you think is closest to God to get into heaven.

Harder for him to do that than for the largest moving thing you've ever seen to go through the smallest opening you've ever seen. And then everyone despaired and said, well, then who can be saved? And Jesus said, well, with man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.

So we're reminded of God being both sovereign and powerful and in charge, and Him being the one who saves. It's important we know that because man cannot discover God or divine God or discern God or derive His character and attributes by any scientific method, rational process, or mystical formula.

The good God must be revealed to us, and that is the grace of God. That is the grace of God, and not only revealed to us, but in a saving way so that we are brought to Him in communion with Him by His Son, Jesus Christ.

I invite you to stand with me now as we read God's holy word. Let's listen to this sermon Paul preaches at the Europagus to these Greek philosophers, beginning in verse 22 of Acts 17. This is the word of the Lord.

Then Paul stood in the midst of the Europagus and said, "'Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious. For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, "'To the unknown God.'.

Therefore the one whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you, God who made the world and everything in it. Since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He worshiped with men's hands as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling. So that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for Him 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 also some of your own poets have said, for we are His offspring.'". This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. The good God is the only God, bountifully God, truly God, gloriously God.

How many people live in this world, God's world, made in God's image and don't know.

God?

It's a remarkable thing to consider. How many people today, living today, would look upon our communion with God through Christ as an indecipherable riddle? And yet, we were made to dwell on this earth, all of us.

And we were made to seek God. And what grace, therefore, we should rejoice in, what thanksgiving we should offer that God has so made us for this purpose. It is remarkable that those who are made in God's image and live in God's creation and breathe God's air and exist by God's good grace, how remarkable it is that any one of us, man, woman, or child, how could it be that we not know God, not worship God, not serve God, not proclaim God, not love God, not fear God?

He is the good God, and we need His special, sovereign, saving grace so we will know Him, commune with Him, and rejoice in Him. We do not commune with God except by the risen Lord Jesus Christ, one mediator between God.

And man.

We don't know God or love God or rejoice in God except by Christ, and He is a great and gracious Savior. As we looked at last time in verses 24 through 25, God, this good God, He is self-sufficient. What does that mean?

It means He created all and He sustains all, which also means that He owns everything, therefore He needs nothing, which also means that He is uncontained and unconstrained. Following on from that thought, in verse 26, we see that God is the one who originates and ordains, and God is the one who extends, and God is the one who restrains.

Look at verse 26, the good God is sovereign. Verse 26 says, and He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.

There in a single verse is the theology of history. When we reflect upon history, we may have two directions to go. We might reflect upon history as the sovereign, ordained process that God has brought about in His governance so that we recognize man's sin and God's glory, and thus we are helped in repentance, helped in our trust and confidence in God.

Or we may read history without the good God, read history without His sovereignty in mind, read history without considering God at all, and then all we have is fuel for bitterness. With God being good and sovereign and guiding, we are led into repentance, led into confidence, led into thanksgiving.

If we read history without God, all we have is fuel for bitterness. But God is the one who has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling.

Now, Paul has just told the Athenians the premier idolaters of the day. They were proud of it and famous for it, 30 ,000 shrines, public shrines in their city, not to count the private ones, and the greatest one of all, the Parthenon.

And Paul stands on the Oropagus and says, God does not dwell in temples made with human.

Hands.

And this unknown God that you don't really know who He is, He doesn't need any sacrifices, anything that you may offer to Him, He already owns. So He is struck at the very core of the Athenian pride. He shows that they are actually ignorant, though they are the most educated of their.

Day.

Paul does not let up. Now he takes aim at their ethnic pride, their national pride, their temporal pride. They think they're special because they're Greeks. They think they're special because they live in Greece.

They think they're special because they live, obviously, at the pinnacle of all history. All of history has come to this moment in which they live. They are the epitome of all humankind. And today, they are a footnote in history.

So Paul says, let's not talk about your glory. Let's talk about the glory of God. God originates and He ordains. These are the rhyming thoughts in verse 26. There are four thoughts in verse 26, the first and the third rhyme.

Notice, He has made from one blood every nation of men, means He is the one who originates.

All men.

And notice then He ordains where they live and He has determined their pre-appointed.

Times.

Hear it again. He has made from one blood every nation of men and has determined their pre-appointed.

Times.

He originates all men and ordains where they're at. The second and fourth lines of this verse also rhyme in their thought. He has made all men to do what? To dwell. They are to dwell on all the face of the earth.

That's the second thought. Notice the fourth thought. God has determined the boundaries of their dwellings, made them to dwell and where they.

Dwell.

So first of all, think about this. God originates and He ordains. God made all men from one man. God made all men from one man. Paul here affirms the unity of mankind, the unity of humanity. There is a common origin.

God made us. We all come from one man, one bloodline, Adam, and to be technical, also Noah.

One man.

Now that is something that was counter to Paul's day. He is not saying something that they all agree on. He's saying something very controversial. And to say it today would still be controversial. Greek philosophy as well as evolution assumes the fractured speciation of humanity.

What Paul says here in Acts 17 runs counter to Greek thought, runs counter to modern thought. The Greeks thought of themselves as of a much better stock. That they sprung from the ground of their superior attic soil and the gods made them out of superior stuff than those barbarians.

Greeks were just better kinds of humans than other humans. And so the view also runs counter to Jewish pride as those who occupied Jerusalem and the temple would have thought of themselves as far superior to all of those other nations, those Gentiles, those pagans.

But Paul here preaches as one who was a Jew of all Jews and a Pharisee of all Pharisees and he is now turned to Christ. Now he preaches this one true God. He says, God made all men from one man. All men from one man and He has ordained, determined, decided for them their pre-appointed.

Times.

Their pre-appointed times. The term in the Greek for determined or ordained is horizon. We hear horizon in that word. Who gets to decide our horizons? The explorer says, give me that horizon and God says, only if I say so.

Who determines when people live and how they lived and what they have experienced in their.

Time?

We think of different moments in history. I wonder what it would have been like to live then. Why do I have to live during this time? I wish I could have lived in the United States at a different time.

We wonder about the times in which we live and yet God is the one who has determined the pre-appointed times in which all men who have come from one man live. What a stark contrast to the Greek thought as they considered the pantheon of their gods.

They thought that the only kind of determination that would come down from on high would be whatever is the fallout and the wreckage of the arguments between the gods. That the lay of the land would be determined by the violence and capriciousness and the arguments of the gods.

And yet Paul is saying, I want to preach to you about the unknown God, the true God, and He determines all of this. Not by way of argumentation and conflict, but He simply decides. This God is not like the other gods, the gods that are invented by men.

In Psalm 115, the psalmist says, why should they say, where is our God? Verse 3 of Psalm 115, our God is in heaven. He does whatever He pleases. And that's a good thing because He's a good God, so everything that pleases Him is good.

Not only does God originate and ordain, He also extends and restrains. He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth. So He made man to dwell on all the earth, to expand, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, said it to Adam, said it to Noah.

Before sin, after sin, still a plan. All mankind dwell on all the earth. Not only that, does He extend men across the face of the earth, but He also restrains man. He's determined the pre-appointed times of men, but not just their times, but their places.

He's determined the boundaries of their dwellings, the text says. So if you're looking for an explanation of history, why is it that certain people lived when they lived and where they lived? How did we end up with the present situation of today?

This verse, in a single verse, is the whole theology of history. God determined it. God planned it. God brought it about. There is a lot of angst today, a lot of guilt, a lot of conflict, a lot of arguments today about the fact that different people live in different places and what happened at different.

Times.

Such is the angst and the anger that certain people live in certain places and certain people lived at certain times that people want to today kill people and get people fired and smear people and tear down statues and beat them up.

We're not very far advanced from Athens wherein if you get angry at a god, you can beat up a statue. We're not very much far advanced from the ancients. How did all this come about?

God did it.

God was in charge.

God governed.

That's how we got to where we are today. Why is it that the Western European countries were richer than the Eastern European countries? Because the rivers flowed west into the ocean for the Western countries and the rivers flowed east for the Eastern European countries and so the Western European countries fared better.

Who decided that?

God did.

Who decided when the new world was discovered and how? And how it all came about?

God did.

God's in charge of it all. Now, this is to give us the opportunity to lay down many burdens in worship, to lay down many questions in worship, to say, I am not God. He is God. I am not. I don't have all the answers, but I have the answer in which all the other answers are.

Given.

God is in charge. I can rest in that. I can be at peace with that. I'm the creature.

He's the creator.

I'm the pot. He's the potter. I can rest in that. I'm not responsible to answer everything, but I know the one who is in charge of everything and I trust him because he is a good God. I can't explain everything to you or answer every question that you may have, but I know that God is a good God and that he is completely in charge.

The day belongs to God. The night belongs to God. He has prepared the light and the sun. He has set all the borders of the earth. He has made summer and winter and all the seasons, Psalm 74 says. Why has God determined all these things, decreed and authorized all these matters?

He's governing all of history into the fold of his glory. He's shepherding all of history into the fold of his glory. And the fold of his glory is shaped in Christ. Psalm 2, verses 7 and 8, I will declare the decree the Lord has said to me, you are my son.

Today I have begotten you, ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. All those nations where they're at and where their boundaries extend, all of that given to Christ.

Which is why when the resurrected Lord Jesus spoke to his apostles, he said to them, all authority has been given to me in heaven and earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.

Nations given to Christ, authority given to Christ, the commission given to us, confidence therefore given to us, the triune God received by the nations, by all kinds of people from all kinds of places, from all kinds of cultures, and God saving those made in his image through Christ.

When we think about the sovereignty of God, this is where we lay down all the what-ifs that keep us up at night. This is where we lay down all those if-onlys that haunt us and discourage us. The what-ifs that keep us up at night, the fears of the future, the anxieties about the future, what if this happens, what if that happens, the thing that keeps us up and makes us anxious, we lay that down into the sovereignty of God, and then the if-onlys.

If only this had worked out, if only this had been different, all those things that haunt us, this is where we lay it all down. We lay down all the if-onlys into the sovereignty of God, we lay down all the what-ifs into the sovereignty of God, we may rest, we may rest in Christ, rest in His goodness, bank on His sovereignty.

God Seeks and Saves Those Who Grope for Him

Notice how the sovereignty of God is connected to the saving work of God, verses 27 and 28. Now, the very last part of verse 28 really kind of goes with verse 29 in the poetic structure. But listen to these four lines in this next stanza of Paul's poetic prose.

Verse 27, why has God determined all these things, where people live and what time they.

Live?

Verse 27, so that, here's the purpose, so that they should seek the Lord. So that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being.

So once again, we have four lines, the first two are related to each other, the next two are related to each other. So that they should seek the Lord, what is the goal of seeking the Lord? In the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him.

Notice the second thought, though He is not far from each one of us, why is that the case? For in Him we live and move and have our being. In other words, God has made us to dwell and He has determined us to seek, therefore that's what happens.

So the fact of the matter is we dwell in God's Word, in God's world, and we seek our Maker. Even as those who deny the truth in unrighteousness and suppress the truth in unrighteousness still end up doing this.

All of our thinking as those made in God's image, all of our thinking, all of our meditating, all of our reasoning, inquiring, and aiming and craving relentlessly everywhere and in all places assumes God.

There is no human being anywhere on the face of this planet who doesn't have an existence in which they do not automatically assume God by the way that they think and experience life and gropes for God.

What's this relationship between seeking God and groping for God and finding God? By warrant of our creatureliness that we're made in God's image, by warrant of our creatureliness we seek God. By consequence of our depravity we grope in darkness.

But by measure of God's goodness and grace, and this is the good God who gives to all mankind life and breath and everything, by His grace we find Him so that we might glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.

By warrant of our creatureliness we all seek God, by warrant, by measure of our depravity we all grope for God, and yet it is only by His grace that we find Him. Calvin commented, it is man's duty to seek God.

Here's some good news, God Himself comes forth to meet us. What a good and gracious God. Paul says He's not far from each of us, it's not like we're groping having to go find a mountain to climb up and don't know which mountain it is, He is not far from each of us.

That's an idea that was expressed by the Stoic philosophy of Paul's day, but they treated it as a what, a principle of what, but they didn't know the who. They didn't know the who, therefore they didn't know the why.

And he says, for in Him we live and move and have our being. Now this is a quote from a pagan poem. Paul quotes Epimenides the Cretan. You may remember Epimenides was the one who came up with the really nifty idea of stopping a plague in Athens by setting loose various sacrificial animals from the Aeropagus to wander about the city and see where they lay down so you know which shrines nearest by would be the gods who were angry, sacrifice the animals to the angry gods, you stop the plague, but every once in a while one of the goats would lie down in their place where there was no shrine.

If you can believe it, there was a space in Athens where there was no shrine. And so they would build a shrine to an unknown god, hence Paul's illustration. This Epimenides wrote a poem, and he writes it in a sense of a false god named Minos who was complaining to his father Zeus about a lie that the Cretans told about Zeus.

Remember that Epimenides is a Cretan. He's from the Isle of Crete. So here's the poem. He says, they fashioned a room for thee, O holy and high one. By room he means tomb or grave. The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.

But thou art not dead, thou livest and abides forever, for in thee we live and move and have our being. That's Epimenides. In other words, he's speaking through the voice of the false god Minos saying to Zeus, these Cretans are lying about you.

What was the lie? That Zeus had got himself killed by a bunch of wild pigs and they had to throw his body into a tomb. And this was a horrendous lie, but they're Cretans so you can't trust what they say.

The idea here is that Epimenides is taking the Greek pantheon and he's in a sense changing it into ideas of philosophy and he knows there has to be something bigger than everything and everyone in order to bring coherence.

So he's going with Zeus. He's saying, Zeus is so big and essential that all the Cretans pigs and all the Cretans tombs, they exist inside Zeus, so it makes no sense for Zeus to get killed by pigs. This references the principle of the thought of the Logos in Greek philosophy, but John says it's not a principle, it's a person and the beginning was the Word, the Logos.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and everything that was made was made through Him and apart from Him, nothing was made that was made.

In Him was the light of men and this is life. It's not a principle, He's a person and as soon as that happens and this person, the Logos, the Word took on flesh and dwelt among us, the entire apparatus of Greek philosophy is shredded and Paul is saying, you're worshiping an unknown God, let me tell you about the unknown God who was revealed to us by the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.

So Paul makes two points by hijacking Epimenides. Point number one, he says to the philosophers, you are ignorant of the person even as you try to hold to the principle. Two, this supreme being is revealed by the one whom God raised from the dead.

Salvation Through Jesus Christ and the Need for a Mediator

So let's talk about Jesus of Nazareth. Now God has sovereignly arranged all of this. He put mankind and put all men everywhere at all times to do what? To dwell upon the earth and seek after God. In other words, to fill the earth and live as His image.

To be all about Him, to fear God, to think about Him first, to think about Him most. And so if those made in God's image don't know God, then all their emotions are made like groping about. But the groping doesn't deny their purpose, it only confirms it.

Now the point is that God has sovereignly arranged matters to bring about man's salvation. Did you notice man's salvation listed for you in the passage? Did you see it?

Him.

So that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they may grow up for Him and find Him. He's our salvation. He's our good. We were made for Him. Sin is what separates us from Him and He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die in our place and to be raised from the dead and to reveal Him to us and to bring us to Him because He is the good of our salvation.

He's the good God. We need Him. We were made for Him. We were made for Him. Man's sin problem is emphasized in the passage that by the fact that all men live in God and move in Him and have their being in Him and He's the Creator and the Provider and the self-sufficient God and He gives us life and sustains us and arranges our lives and yet here is the horrendous nature of sin that despite all of that, unless God savingly reveals Himself to us, we don't know Him.

That kind of blindness. That kind of death. This is the Athenians' problem. They need to know God. This is our problem. We need to know God. That problem has not changed in all these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

It's a stunning consideration that we can exist in God and live in Him and move in Him and never know Him, never commune with Him. The whole time we live, we live in God and yet we are lost without Him.

This is why we need a Savior. It's why we need a mediator. Some people think that communion with the all-encompassing God may be had by meditation. But we need mediation. Some people think that communion with God comes through social participation, but we need our Savior's propitiation.

This is a good thing, a praiseworthy thing, that the good God so arranges and so ordains the lives of mankind that they live and move and have their being in Him, whether they ever acknowledge Him or not, whether they ever praise Him or not, whether they ever serve Him or not, He is good to them, good to them, good to them, good to them.

His Son rises on the wicked and the righteous. His reign comes upon the fields of the wicked and the righteous. And He sovereignly arranges matters so that there are no men far from Him in the sense of being without excuse.

He's not far from any of us. And this is made more urgent and brought home by the revelation of God through Jesus Christ and His resurrection. Psalm 145, verses 17 through 19 says, "...the Lord is righteous in all His ways," He's the good God.

"...the Lord is righteous in all His ways, and He is kind in all His works. The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear Him. He also hears their cry and saves them.".

This is a good God who is sovereign, a good God who saves. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this reminder of how good You are, how in charge You are, and how You ordain and structure things and bring all of history into a glorious testament to Your grace and Your salvation.

I need You to help us to remember that as we share in this communion supper, as we think about the fact that You have so arranged all of this, that we would be in communion with You, that we would know You, that we would rejoice in You.

We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.