Transcript

In the year he was elected president, Jimmy Carter was one of three men invited to speak to the 17,000 delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention.

Each had a five-minute time limit. The first of the three presenters was the eloquent evangelist, Billy Graham. The speaker following Graham was a truck driver.

The man was not well educated, and seated beside the next U.S. president, the truck driver shared that he had never given a speech in his life. Nervously he confessed, “I don’t think I can live through it. I just can’t do it.”

After Billy Graham gave his powerful talk, the truck driver rose to speak and stood silently before the audience. Taking a glass of water handed to him, he mumbled into the microphone.

“I was always drunk, and didn’t have any friends. The only people I knew were men like me who hung around the bars in the town where I lived.”

The truck driver went on to describe how someone told him about Christ. Once becoming a Christian, he wanted to tell others about the Lord. Spending time in Bible study and with other Christian men prepared him for witnessing.

Since he felt comfortable in barrooms, he decided to talk to people there. The bartender wasn’t sympathetic, telling the new convert he was bad for business and a nuisance.

Not discouraged, the truck driver kept on with his mission, and in time the people at the bar began asking questions. He said, “At first, they treated me like a joke, but I kept up with the questions and when I couldn’t answer one, I went and got the answer and came back with it. Fourteen of my friends became Christians.”

Jimmy Carter wrote later, “The truck driver’s speech was the highlight of the convention. I don’t believe anyone who was there will ever forget that five-minute statement—or remember what I or even Billy Graham had to say.”

Paul told the Corinthians that he was “rude in speech,” yet his powerful short sermon on Mars’ Hill is and will always be remembered since it is in the pages of God’s Word.

Paul’s heart and genuine burden for those in Athens were evident when he preached the gospel there. And after he preached his short message on Mars’ Hill, some mocked him, but there were others who responded to the gospel and were saved.

Acts 17:16-21: “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.

“Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.

“Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

“And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.

“(For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)”

Paul is on his second apostolic journey here. He had just been urgently driven out of Berea because of persecution and taken to Athens, and he was escorted there by a group of believers from Berea. Paul’s co-workers, Silas and Timothy, stayed behind.

So Paul sent word with those who accompanied him to Athens, when they were departing to return to Berea, that Silas and Timothy should “come to him with all speed.”

Thus, Paul was left alone in Athens. Athens was named after Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare, and handicraft. The Parthenon in Athens was dedicated to Athena.

The city had reached its prime hundreds of years before Paul visited it, but it was still the cultural and intellectual center of the Greek world in Paul’s day.

And while Paul “waited” for Silas and Timothy, “his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” The word “stirred” means to irritate, provoke, or exasperate. And “wholly given to idolatry” means full of idols.

Paul was distressed at the sight of the numerous pagan temples and altars, and seeing Athens literally overrun with idols. Idolatry rightly upset the apostle because it robbed God of the glory that is rightly due Him.

It grieved him to see the spiritual blindness of the people. Paul saw Athens for what it truly was: a city full of lost people who needed Christ. He looked at the city spiritually, with open eyes and a broken heart.

Paul then channeled his exasperation and distress into action. And so he went to the synagogue and the marketplace in Athens.

In the synagogue, on the Sabbath, Paul “disputed…with the Jews, and the with the devout persons,” or with devout, God-fearing Gentiles.

We get our word “dialogue” from the Greek word translated as “disputed” in verse 17. This shows that Paul had dialogue and discussion in the synagogue with the Jews and Gentiles about Christ, the gospel, the Scriptures, and spiritual truth.

The rest of the week, Paul was “in the market daily with them that met with him.” Paul went to Athens’s famed agora or marketplace, addressing any who happened to be there and who would stop and listen as he spoke.

The fact that he went “daily” to the agora showed Paul’s burden for lost souls.

The agora functioned not only as a marketplace but also as the social center of Athens. It was where magistrates judged court cases, and philosophers gathered to discuss and debate their views. It was situated west of the Acropolis where the Parthenon stands.

In verse 18, we find a third group that Paul interacted with in Athens. First, it was the Jews and Gentiles in the synagogue.

Second, it was regular, everyday Athenians who Paul met, spoke with, and listened to him in the marketplace. And third, it was the philosophers in the marketplace.

Verse 18 says, “Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him.” Paul preached Christ to two groups of philosophers, the Epicureans and the Stoicks.

The Epicureans were followers of a philosopher named Epicurus who lived a few centuries before Paul. Epicureans believed that pleasure is the chief end of life, and they sought tranquility and freedom from pain. They also believed that the gods took no interest in human affairs, and death was the end of one’s existence.

Stoics were followers of Zeno, a contemporary of Epicurus. Stoics believed that self-mastery was the greatest virtue, which came from being indifferent to both pleasure and pain. They stressed individual self-sufficiency and were fatalists. And they were also pantheists, believing that God is in everything and everything is God.

The philosophies and ruling principles of these two groups could be summed up as pleasure and pride, and these are two enemies to one receiving the gospel.

While these two groups of philosophers were different in their beliefs, both the Epicureans and Stoics were united in their rejection of Paul and the gospel.

“And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.”

“Babbler” means picking up seeds, and it refers to someone who randomly picked up odd seeds of information here and there, like a bird picking up seeds, and then spouts them off second-hand without any real knowledge of their meaning.

Others accused Paul of proclaiming “strange gods,” a response due to their inability to grasp Paul’s preaching of Christ and the resurrection, which was totally foreign to their thinking. No matter the place or the audience, Paul’s message did not change, “he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.”

Some of these philosophers decided to bring Paul to the “Areopagus.” The words “Areopagus” and “Mars’ hill” in verse 22 are translated from the same Greek word.

They both refer to Mars’ Hill, a 370-foot-high hill that was located above the marketplace but beneath the Acropolis of Athens.

The Areopagus was both a hill and a court that met on Mars’ Hill. The Council of the Areopagus had authority over religion, morals, and education in Athens.

The philosophers brought Paul to this council for him to informally give an account of his teaching, doing so because they felt that what Paul had preached was strange enough that it required an explanation before the Council on Mars’ Hill.

Arriving there, the proceedings opened with a question: “May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.”

Verse 21 is a parenthesis that tells us of other people on Mars’ Hill that day, as also present were Athenians and strangers to Athens from other places, who were people that “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.”

Thus, it was the novelty of Paul’s message that had also led him to be taken to the Areopagus. These people who gathered “to hear some NEW thing” would have been anxious and interested to hear the “NEW doctrine” from Paul. Their interest in what Paul believed, however, gave him an amazing opportunity to preach the gospel.

Acts 17:22-31: “Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.

“For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

“And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

“That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

“Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

“Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”

Mars’ Hill was located almost in the very center of Athens and its height and location afforded a view for Paul of the marketplace, the Acropolis, the streets of the city, and many of its temples and idols.

As Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ Hill before the council, he began, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.”

As a point of contact, Paul started by stating that since he had arrived in Athens, he had perceived, and it was plain to see with every turn he made throughout the city, that they were very religious and devout in all respects, and more religious than others.

Paul said, “For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions,” or your objects of worship and devotion. This meant that Paul had walked through Athens, taking note of their images of idols and altars. And he took note of one in particular, telling the Council, “I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.”

In their extensive pantheon of gods, the Greeks dedicated an altar for the worship of THE UNKNOWN GOD, which covered any god that may have been neglected, doing so out of fear that they might have overlooked some deity that they did not know about so that no god might punish them for their neglect to worship him.

Despite all their knowledge, philosophies, and worldly wisdom, the Athenians didn’t know everything, and they did not know the true God, the most important thing of all to know! Through the inscription on the altar, they acknowledged that they did not know Him.

Paul told them, “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” Paul told them that the God you confess ignorance of and worship as “unknown,” this God I proclaim, unveil, and reveal to you.

Then in verses 24-25, Paul made four statements about the God of the Bible: God created the world. God is sovereign over everything. God does not need anything. And God sustains His creation.

Paul teaches us that the best starting point for making the gospel known to those with no knowledge of the Scripture is to explain the Person behind the creation.

Paul said, “God,” the unknown God to them, He “made the world and all things therein.” Because God made everything, He is supreme over all. And He has no equal.

There is not a god for this and a god for that like the many gods the Athenians worshipped, there is one God who made the world and all things.

That being so, “He is Lord of heaven and earth,” supreme Ruler over it all. All the works of His hands are in absolute subjection to Him. He presides in august royalty and authority over everything in heaven and earth.

And “seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth,” He “dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” Such a great and massive God does not live in humanly constructed temples, as the Athenians assumed their Greek gods did as seen by the many temples in Athens.

Paul shows here that their idol gods, which were put in their temples, were less than the places in which they were contained. But the Unknown God, the Lord of heaven and earth, is transcendent, distinct, and greater than all He has made. God is infinite, He is too great to possibly be restricted or confined in any temple that man could ever build.

Thus, as Stephen said in his address in Acts 7, “Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?

Hath not my hand made all these things?” (7:48-50).

Paul said neither is God “worshipped” or served “with men’s hands, as though He needed any thing.” In the temples of idols, the priests often bring food, drink, and other necessities to their gods.

But the true God is self-sufficient, and, in his greatness, He does not need anything from man. God does not depend on anything or anyone outside of Himself for His existence or completeness. God lacks nothing and is never in need of anything. He possesses every quality, attribute, and ability in infinite measure.

And, “He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.” The God Who does not need anything provides everything. He sustains all things. He does not need us; we need Him. It is God who gives to us what we need: “life, and breath, and all things.”

Every single day we depend upon Him for our life and breath, and all things that we need for life, like oxygen, food, and water and so on.

And the true, sovereign God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.”

All are one blood. All people have descended from one man, Adam, whom God created. All are equal. All are members of only one race: the human race.

Paul affirmed the unity of the human race with our common origin and with God as our Creator, and to Him, each and every one of us is accountable.

God is not a distant God Who is disengaged from His creation. He cares and is involved in it at all times. God is involved in our lives individually and He is also involved in the nations, the duration of their rule, and their boundaries. God is sovereign over the political and military affairs of nations.

In ways unknown, but to God, He has decreed the history, “the time before appointed,” as the rise and fall of empires and nations are in His hand.

God has even set the boundaries of their habitation, placing nations in their exact places, in their specific geographic locations.

All these things, God’s goodness and activity as Creator, Ruler, Giver, Sustainer, and Sovereign is so “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.”

In all that God has done in creating and sustaining His universe, God is revealed to the world on a daily basis, and His innumerable mercies should lead man to “seek the Lord.”

Since God continually reveals His existence, power, and wisdom to humanity, there is a responsibility on those continually shown that revelation. They should seek the Lord.

And if man would seek the Lord, and feel after Him, he would find Him and find that He is “not far from every one of us.” God can be found by searching.

And since He is not far from every one of us, it shows that every soul can be saved and have a relationship with the true and living God.

Showing how near He is to every one of us, Paul said, “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Our entire existence revolves around and is due to Him.

We are dependent on God for life. We owe to Him the ability to perform the slightest motion and movement. And our existence and continued existence is due to Him.

That we live at all is His gift. That we have the power of movement is His gift. And our existence and prolonged existence is His gift.

Paul then quoted one of their Greek poets, choosing an illustration familiar to his audience, “as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”

Paul used this quote to point out that we are the offspring of God, not by regeneration here, but BY CREATION, in the sense that we are created by God and receive our very life and breath from Him.

Paul preached to these Athenians that all of creation and their very life and existence was due to and depended on this one God whom they did not know.

And Paul’s conclusion was that idolatry is illogical. Since mankind is the offspring of God by creation, God is so much more than a mere man-made idol and it becomes impossible to think of God as a gold or silver or stone idol.

Idols of gold, silver and stone are created and shaped by art and man’s devising, and therefore are not even as great as men who created and made them.

The truth is that human beings are the creation of God, made in His image, and are living, moral, rational beings. Since man is not a lifeless object of metal or man’s artistry, no one should think of the living and true God as existing in the idols that man created.

God Almighty, our Creator, cannot be reduced to an image made of gold, silver, or stone, conceived and constructed by man. He is infinitely greater.

Paul’s purpose in his message was to convict the Athenians of their accountability to the one true God. Thus, Paul preached, “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent.”

The times of this ignorance God winked at, or overlooked, does not mean that until this time, God had not held the Gentiles world accountable for their idolatry.

Rather, God overlooked human ignorance revealed in idol-making, and He was patient, holding back divine wrath. This parallels what Paul said in Acts 14:16, “Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.”

But now, with God turning to the Gentiles to have a program with the nations, and Paul being raised up and sent to the world to proclaim the gospel of grace, the Gentiles were responsible and were and are being called on to respond to God in light of this.

And now God commands all men everywhere to repent, Paul said. The Greek word for “repentance” simply means to change one’s mind, and any unbeliever who becomes a believer has had a change of mind in the process.

Paul is dealing with idolatry here with the Athenians and said that God commanded repentance, a change of mind,

Now that the Athenians were no longer ignorant about the unknown God, they were being called to repent and turn from believing in idols to believing in the one true God.

This is what the Thessalonians had done when they believed the gospel of grace, they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.”

The reason God commands all men everywhere to repent, Paul said, is because judgment day is coming and God “hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness.”

And God will judge the world, “by that Man whom He hath ordained,” and that Man ordained to judge the world is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the perfect Judge of mankind because He is both Man and God. As John 5:22 says, “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.”

All are accountable to God and their Creator. And Jesus Christ is the Creator; He is God, Who created all men and is the Judge of all men.

This judgment day is assured the apostle preached, “whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.”

The resurrection of Jesus Christ guarantees the resurrection AND judgment of all men.

Thus, all men everywhere need to respond to the gospel and believe it or they WILL face the judgment of God at the Great White Throne and for eternity in the lake of fire.

The sermon ended with Paul mentioning the resurrection of the dead, as some on Mars’ Hill then spoke up and mocked the apostle and “said, We will hear thee again of this matter.”

In verses 32-34, we find three responses to the resurrection: some mocked, some delayed, and some believed. The same three responses happen today when the gospel is presented. Some reject it outright, some delay the decision, and some believe.

How about you? Have you trusted the gospel that Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose again? If you have not, please don’t delay this decision. As Acts 16:31 says “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”