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Reading Acts 17:24-29, part 2 of our study of Paul's sermon at the Areopagus, where Paul argues with the Greeks that it is the one true God who gives life and breath and everything. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
The Apostle Paul, preaching at the Areopagus, points out to these Greeks that they do know there is one God who reigns over all, but they have suppressed the truth with their unrighteousness, when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand The Text, studying God's Word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wutt .com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. In our study of Acts 17, we come back to Paul's sermon at the Areopagus. I'll begin once again by reading verses 22 to 31. Hear the word of the Lord. So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects.
For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, To an unknown God. Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and all things in it.
Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to inhabit all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps 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 exist, as even some of your own poets have said. For we also are his offspring. Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to suppose that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the craft and thought of man.
Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now commanding men that everyone everywhere should repent, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he determined, having furnished proof to all by raising him from the dead.
And there is that famous sermon that Paul delivered on Mars Hill, also known as the Areopagus. Mars Hill to the Romans, Areopagus to the Greeks. As we had considered yesterday, we looked at just verses 22 and 23, where Paul called attention to their religion.
And today we'll be looking at verses 24 to 29, where he calls attention to the real God. And they know that the real God exists, that there is one true God. There is an understanding of that to them anyway, though they may suppress the truth with unrighteousness, as we also considered from Romans 1 .18.
Tomorrow, when we pick up the remainder of the sermon, we'll look at verses 30 and 31, where we have that call to repentance. So for today, let's consider this argument that Paul is making for the one and true God.
Beginning in verse 24, Paul says, the God who made the world and all things in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. So remember, Paul is standing in the Areopagus, the midst of the judges that are there in the capital city of Greece.
He has considered the objects of their worship. He's seen the idols. He's seen the great temples, these things that were monuments to the Greek culture. And yet Paul's heart was stirred within him. He was vexed by what he saw.
While many people would travel to Athens and marvel at these architectural wonders, that wasn't Paul's reaction to it. He saw people that were going to hell because they worshipped what was false. They worshipped what they had made with their own hands instead of the true God.
Now he points out to them at the very beginning of this sermon that they know there's really only one God of all the things that the Greeks had made to worship or as icons of their worship. He sees this altar with an inscription to an unknown God.
And as I said to you yesterday, it's like the Greeks are going, in case there's any of these gods we forgot, let's just make an altar here to an unknown God. And that way we'll get all our bases covered.
That way there won't be a God out there that'll think that we have forgotten him. He hasn't revealed himself in a certain way. And so we're just going to call this God unknown. Well Paul is pointing out to them kind of the futility of that statement to an unknown God.
You actually know him. You know that he does exist. You have to know that he exists because you've made an altar to him. You might put an inscription on it that says to an unknown God, but that just kind of reveals the folly of their reasoning.
There's a God out there that you don't know, yet you're making an altar to him, to an unknown God? No, you know him. What you worship in ignorance, I proclaim to you as known. So he is presenting to them and does for them what for us is just what two verses, two sentences.
He points out to them, you know, there is a God that is above any of these other gods that you claim that you worship. You worship that one true God in ignorance, but I'm going to proclaim to you as known.
The God. And that's the way we start this next section now is he makes an argument for the one true God. Verse 24 opens with, he is the God. He is the only God. He is the God above all who made the world and all things in it.
Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he does not dwell in temples made with hands. And that is directly calling their attention to all of these things that they have made, all the temples that are all over Athens, as well as throughout Greek culture.
Every major city had a place of worship of some kind, several places of worship since they worshiped multiple gods. But Paul is presenting to them an argument here. He does not have to argue with them that all these other gods aren't real.
He just simply points out to them. There is one God that is true and you even know he's there because you made an altar to him. But what you have worshiped in ignorance, I'm going to proclaim to you as known.
He is the God who has made all things. Now, remember that the Greeks believed in this, this, you know, a polytheist or a heinotheist even collection of gods. Polytheist is many gods. Heinotheist is that you would have one God above the rest.
And in the Greeks case, it would be Zeus, right? So Zeus is kind of the chief of the gods and all the rest are subservient to him. Many of the world religions, many of the pagan religions at this time were probably categorized as heinotheist more than polytheist.
The Egyptians were the same, the same way because the chief God was raw. The Canaanites, their chief God was Baal in the, in the Roman culture, it was the same sort of thing. Jupiter was their chief God, which was, you know, really the, the Greek Zeus.
So though they were polytheistic or heinotheistic in their theology, Paul is saying there is one God and you recognize that there is one God. He doesn't have to go through all those gods and disprove that they exist.
There is one who has made everything. He has made the world and all things in it. Now, when, when the pagans have these ideas of their multiple gods, they believe that a different God made a different thing, right?
Poseidon made the sea, Zeus is the one who makes the lightning or brings the rain. So he's the one that we're praying to in order to have fertility, that our land would be plentiful, that we would, that we would have all that we need.
Aphrodite is the goddess of love, on and on it goes. You have different gods that have made different things. But Paul is arguing here, there's one God who's made everything. He made the world and all things in it.
Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he reigns over all of it. He does not dwell in temples made with hands. You will not find him in any of these buildings that you have made. You cannot contain him there.
Is really the argument that Paul is making. You can't even contain this God. He is above all of that. You can't go searching for him in your city. He is not served by human hands. Paul goes on to say in verse 25, as though he needed anything, God does not need anything from us.
So what was the sacrificial system all about in the old Testament? The Greeks are not asking that question, of course, here, but I'm just following up with that. If God did not need anything, then what was the whole thing about making sacrifices to him?
Remember, all of that was types and shadows that was pointing to Christ. God was going to send his only son who would be the atoning sacrifice for us. God did not need the blood of bulls and goats. That was done for us to show us the need for blood to have the forgiveness of our sins.
We have sinned and what we deserve for that sin is death. We deserve to lose our very lives. So God gives the sacrificial system to Israel that they would see the cost of sin in the blood of the animal that would be sacrificed on their behalf.
And again, all of this is pointing to Christ, the son of God, who would come and die on our behalf, spilling his blood, giving his life so that in Christ Jesus, by faith in him, we would be forgiven our sins and have everlasting life.
That was what the sacrificial system was for. Not because God needed blood, not because he needed a sacrifice to be made to him. That was for us. That was for people to recognize the seriousness of their sin and need for a savior.
So as Paul goes on to say in verse 25, he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. Everything that we have comes from God. It is not from anything that we do, even though you will work and labor to earn a living.
And with that living, you will buy food, you will pay rent, you will pay your bills, you'll purchase clothing. Yet everything that you have comes from God. And we need to give recognition to God for all that we have.
You need to be thankful every day. As Paul talks about in Romans chapter one, it is those who are ungrateful that end up turning to more wicked habits and even worship those things that are made rather than the maker who made them.
God does not need anything from us, but he rather has given to us life and breath and all things. So what are you doing with your life? What do you do with your breath? Do you give thanks to God who gave it to you?
Paul goes on in verse 26 to say, he made from one man every nation of mankind to inhabit all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and their boundaries of their habitation. My goodness, Paul is even going back to Genesis one through three.
He is even pointing out that all of this thing began with one guy. God made one man, one man and one woman. And from them, the rest of the human race has come. This is a young earth creationist argument here that Paul is making before pagans.
So lest you think that now I need to, I need to prove that God exists first and I can't touch creation or anything in Genesis one through 11, because the people I'm talking to, they're just going to reject all of that anyway, I've got to be able to prove certain things to them first, and then I can come to all of that.
Paul is laying out right here, exactly what the Bible says, and he is not ashamed of any of it. Remember his statement in Romans one 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe to the Jew first and also to the Greek, which is exactly who he's speaking to here.
So God made from one man, every nation of mankind to inhabit all the face of the earth. We all come from the same place. We are all made by the same God. Now this is important as Paul is telling this to the Greeks, because as I've pointed out to you many times before, different nations believe in different gods.
This is why you've got, you know, the Greeks will call the gods one name. The Romans may have the same gods, but they call them by another name. Well, the Egyptians, they have different gods altogether.
There is a, there's an Egyptian relief. In fact, that shows the gods of Egypt giving honor to Alexander the great. And it was because when Alexander the great came in and he conquered the Egyptians, well, the Egyptian, the Egyptian said, well, our gods are on his side.
That was why he was able to conquer us. And Alexander the great said to them, you can continue to worship your gods as long as you become part of the Greek empire and you're paying your taxes to the Greeks.
So they continued to worship their gods, but you had the gods for the Egyptians and you had the gods for the Greeks. And so it would be believed by some that, well, especially among the Greeks here that this Christian God, well, that was a God for, I don't know, the Jews or these Christians, wherever they're from.
This certainly puzzled the Greeks because remember, as we read earlier, when Paul was arguing in the marketplace, they said of him, he seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities talking about this God who came and died and rose again from the dead.
And so they just thought, well, what is this? The Jewish God, who are these Christians here that are believing in this God called Jesus Christ. So they called him Christians. They said that as a derogatory term.
But Paul is saying to them here, no, there's not multiple gods. There's not a God for us and different gods for you. There is one God who made everything. He made every nation of mankind to inhabit all the face of the earth.
And then going on in the rest of verse 26, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, God had appointed the time and place of every person and where they were going to live.
This even goes back to Job chapter 14, verse five, his days are determined and the number of his months is with you and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass. Paul is even referencing ancient scripture here when he is talking to these Greeks about where we have come from, the same God who made us all every nation of mankind.
He even determined when you would be alive and where you would live and that you would not live too far away from this point, but you would always be right here. Every step that you have taken, every decision that you have made has been appointed by God.
It was determined and appointed the times and places in which all of us would live. Why did God do this? Verse 27, so that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for him and find him though he is not far from each one of us.
Yes, God is near to everybody because as we had said in, or as we read rather in Romans chapter one, verses 18 through 20, that his divine nature and eternal power are clearly perceived in everything that has been made.
So we can look around at all that has been made and we can know that God exists and he's not some deist God that exists on the far reaches of the universe and you can't possibly reach to him. No, he is real and he is here.
He is interacting with his creation even now, as Paul is pointing out to them. God had appointed the times and places that everybody would live, their boundaries so that they cannot pass them. Even how many days a person would live, according again to Job 14, five, and he did this so that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for him.
In other words, not everybody is going to, not everybody is going to reach for God or look for him, but no one will have any excuse. As Paul said in Romans one 20, the evidence of the existence of God is there and no one will get to the day of judgment saying, well, where were you God?
I never saw you anywhere. No, the evidence of him was everywhere so that they would reach for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. In fact, Paul is right there in their midst talking about this God right now.
So this is even a demonstration of how he is near to each one of us. He has sent me to speak this to you. So you are hearing the message of this true God and the way of salvation that he has made because a missionary of God was sent to you.
So Paul says in verse 28, in him we live and move and exist, or as probably said in a translation you might be reading, in him we live and move and have our being. We have life itself, as we talked about a moment ago.
Even our ability to move, motion, the progression of life, that things are able to continue on, even this is by the gracious hand of God. Remember what we read in Colossians 1 17, he is before all things and in him all things hold together.
The reason why the universe is not flying apart, that it has motion and is still able to hold together is because God is holding it together. Again, this is an argument for how God is here with us now.
He didn't just make everything and then take his hands off of it and exist somewhere in the far reaches that we can't ever get to. He is here allowing us to move and have our being even exist. The reason and meaning for our existence is in him.
That's what Paul is arguing for here. As even some of your own poets have said, for we also are his offspring. Now these two lines, the one in verse 28, well both of the lines are in verse 28. The first line, in him we live and move and have our being, might be from Epimenides of Crete.
Now that one is debatable. We don't know for sure whether Paul was quoting Epimenides of Crete, which is why if you're reading this in the legacy standard, that first part of verse 28 is not quoted. It's not in quotations because the editors of the LSB have decided that line is just strictly from Paul.
That's not quoting Epimenides. Paul quotes Epimenides elsewhere. He actually quotes him in Titus chapter one. So that one's kind of up in the air. Was that Epimenides or was that just Paul? But then the next line it is determined does come from someone else because Paul gives him credit.
As even some of your own poets have said, for we also are his offspring. And that comes from Eratos' poem, Phaenomena. And who he was talking about in that poem was Zeus. But we're not Zeus' offspring.
See that would have made sense to a Greek for Paul to say that. We also are his offspring. Like it's revealed from your own poets that we are his offspring. And he's talking about the true God. Well, Eratos was talking about Zeus, but even the Greeks then, some of those Greeks would have been going, yeah, that's a good point because how could we have been derived from Zeus?
We're not Zeus' offspring. That wasn't even Greek mythology that we were the offspring of Zeus. So how could Eratos been saying that about Zeus? Well what Paul is pointing out here is your knowledge of the true God who has made all things, it's there.
You just ignorantly attribute it to a God who is not real. Even in the Greek mythology, Zeus is not the father of all people. So where is it that people must come from? Well, we all come from the same place.
And this statement in verse 28, we also are his offspring, that is not a statement that we are all children of God. Because remember, scripture is quite clear that those who are not in Christ are children of Satan.
Only those who are in Christ Jesus are truly children of God. We've been adopted into the family of God. But all Paul is arguing for here is that we have come from the same creator, just as he had said before.
He made from one man every nation of mankind. So we also are his offspring. We have all come from God. Verse 29, being then the offspring of God, we ought not to suppose that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the craft and thought of man.
This comes right back to the statement that he made at the very start about their idols, all of these idols that they worship. These cannot be God. You made them. So these can't be the God who has made us.
He's really arguing logically, and not just from scripture, but from reason that they would understand that we are derived from God, we were made from God, so therefore he can't be like the objects that have been made through the craft and thought of man.
And he's going to go from there to say, if this God truly exists, and if he is shown by whom he's going to judge the world, raising him from the dead, then he is commanding all people everywhere to repent.
And that's the last part of the sermon. And we'll come back to that tomorrow. But my friends, we learn from this, that understanding that we all have come from God and all of us must turn from our sin to the Lord Jesus Christ in order to be saved.
God has appointed even the times and places of our boundaries. And he had appointed what day you would hear the gospel so that you would turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Who knows, but God may be using you to bring the gospel to somebody else today that they too may hear it and believe in Jesus and live.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read as we continue through this sermon that Paul had preached at the Areopagus. And may we continue to see the majesty of who you are, the blessedness that you have given to everybody.
There is a common grace that everyone enjoys just because they have breath in their lungs. But may we point people to the one who has given us life and breath and all things. Even our very existence, our reason for being is bound up in Christ alone.
Give us courage to share the gospel in these days that others may come to faith and live. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand the Text.