Summary:

“Superstitious” (v.22) means excessively devoted, as the Athenians were to their idols (cf.v.16). They’d park an “altar” (v.23) in front of each idol to sacrifice to it (Ezek.6:13). But the one Paul found had no idol, for it was to the unknown God (v.23).  They had 30,000 gods, but were superstitiously afraid they’d missed one!  Paul said he would tell them about that god they were already worshipping, lest they kill him for trying to introduce a new god, like they did to Socrates.

Paul told them their unknown God created heaven and earth (v.24), because after He did, He spent the next 2,000 years trying to get the Gentiles to worship Him.  They refused to (Rom.1:21), so Paul is taking them back to their roots as Gentiles to show them where they went wrong, as Stephen did when he took the Jews back to their roots (Acts 7:2).

The first place they went wrong was in building God temples (Acts 17:24cf.IISam.7:5-7). Secondly, they worshipped Him “with men’s hands” (Acts 17:25), i.e., with idols (cf.Isa.2:8),  “as though” God needed an idol to represent Him!  He’s a giver, not a needer.  He gave us all “life” (Acts 17:25) when He gave us “breath” (v.25cf.Gen.2:7).  And He gave us “all things” (v.25) when He made Adam king of the world.

God didn’t make us “all of one blood” as opposed to the four blood types.  He made us “one blood” as compared to when Satan made men of two bloods (Gen.6:1-4). Letting that happen was the Gentiles’ third mistake. But the Athenians could relate to that!  Their gods were always sleeping with women and having kids called demigods.  But God made men of one blood when He killed off those men of demonic blood with the flood, and appointed Noah king of the world, and all men came from his blood.  That’s what “determined the times before appointed” means (Dan.2:21).  They could relate to that too, since they believed Zeus flooded the world, and Deucalion survived on an ark, and we all came from his blood.

Ancient man’s fourth mistake came when Noah’s seed refused to “replenish” the earth (Gen.9:1), and built a city instead (11:1-4).  God scattered their language (v.6-9) to make them scatter.  That set up “nations” (Acts 17:26), nations who set “the bounds of their habitation” when they set up borders around their nations. God did that to make them “seek the Lord” (v.27cf.Gen.11:4-6), but those scattered Gentiles built more cities in their nations.  And when men live together, they start telling each other how smart they are, and “imagine” (Rom.1:21-23) something really vain—that they are God.  They had a better chance finding God by feeling after Him, like blind unsaved men have to, than they had living next to a neighbor who told them they were gods.

The Greeks believed the gods all lived far off on Mt. Olympus, but Paul says the unknown God wasn’t far from them (v.27cf.Ps.139:7-10).  They made images to their faroff gods to bring them up close and personal, but Paul said they didn’t need to do that for their unknown God.  He then reminded them their own poets said we’re God’s “offspring” (v.28).  We’re His offspring by creation (Lu.3:23, 38), but His children by faith (Gal.3:26).  But since offspring resemble their fathers, and we “live” and “move,” they shouldn’t think God is an idol that doesn’t live and move (Acts 17:29).

“Winked at” (v.30) means to overlook, as when a grandfather winks at a grandson who did wrong instead of punishing him.  God overlooked idolatry in Gentiles for 2,000 years (Acts 14:15,16) because He intended to get the Jews saved and have them tell Gentiles to repent.  So He didn’t suffer idolatry in Jews (Ezek.14:6), but He suffered it in Gentiles—until Paul.  He then sent Paul to tell “all men” to repent of idolatry (Acts 17:30cf.26:20), not just Jewish men.

They knew what “man” Paul meant (v.31cf.v.18). God made Him the world’s judge (Jo.5:22,27) because He could judge as one who’d been tempted and didn’t sin.  Men thought they got rid of their judge when He died, but they didn’t!

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: “Paul’s Answer To Superstition” Acts 17:22-34

Summary:

How important is it to search the Scriptures (v.10,11)?  Even the prophets who wrote the Scriptures searched them (I Peter 1:10,11), as did angels (v.12 cf. Eph.3:10). “Noble” (Acts 17:11) refers to noblemen (Acts 24:3), and Luke wrote Acts to a nobleman (Acts 1:1cf.Luke1:3; Acts 23:26).  He was reminding Theophilus that he may be noble in men’s eyes, but he’d have to search the Scriptures to be noble in God’s eyes.

History’s greatest nobleman said, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter” (Pr.25:1,2).  It was the glory of God that He was able to conceal Paul’s mystery (ICor.2:7,8) from the devil himself.  It wasn’t hid in Scripture, it was hid in the heart and mind of God (Eph.3:9). But now that Paul’s written 13 epistles about it, it’s our honor to search it out in those epistles. 

We know God was thinking about the mystery when He inspired Solomon to write Proverbs 25, for verse 3 says it is the honor of kings to search out a matter, “the heaven for height, and the earth for depth” (cf.Eph.3:1-3,18).  When Proverbs 25:3 ends, “and the heart of kings is unsearchable,” hindsight tells us God had the mystery in mind there, because the heart of the King of kings is certainly unsearchable!

But if Paul told the Bereans about the mystery, how did they search the Scriptures to see if it was so if the mystery isn’t in the Old Testament Scriptures?  He said, “It’s not there.  If you don’t believe me, search and see!”  When they did, they found it was so! They also found what James found when he heard about the mystery from Paul—it “agreed” with the Old Testament (Acts15:15). He’d have known the mystery was not so if it didn’t, because God never contradicts Himself.  And the Bereans knew it was so for that reason as well.

Only some in Thessalonica got saved (Acts17:4), but many Bereans did (v.12) because they searched the Scriptures.

Paul went to Athens (Acts 17:13-15) because it was such an influential city.  He didn’t usually order his helpers around (v.15), but he knew the importance of fellowship, even for a great apostle like himself.  Looking around Athens, he saw what history says were 30,000 idols (v.16).  So he was itching to witness to some idolaters, but he didn’t let that keep him from doing what God sent him to do and go to the Jews first (v.17).  You shouldn’t let anything you see around you keep you from preaching Christ & the mystery either.

The Greeks were famous for philosophers. Epicureans (v.18) believed man’s chief goal in life was to get pleasure, while Stoicks believed in stoically accepting whatever lack of pleasure life brought.  These were opposite philosophies, much like Corinthianism and Galatianism.  The Corinthians were guilty of pleasurable sins like fornication, but the Galatians were guilty of legalism.  Legalism denied that pleasure, but it also denied the good kinds of pleasure, like giving(Gal. 4:15 cf.Acts 20:35).  All the sins Christians commit fall into one or the other category, and all philosophies are either the lust of Epicurean flesh or the lust of Stoic mind (Eph.2:3).

Babble (Acts 17:18) means to speak incoherently, like a drunk (Pr.23:29,30).  Greeks called anyone who wasn’t Greek a barbarian (Rom.1:14) because it sounded like they were saying bar bar to them.  They had gods of abstract things like harmony and democracy, so they thought Paul preached the gods of Jesus and resurrection.  This shows he didn’t believe you had to study a false religion to win proponents of it, as some say today (cf.Deut.12:30;Rom.16:19).

The “Areopagus” (Acts 17:19) was named after the Greek god Ares, whom the Romans renamed Mars, and “pagus” means hill, so Paul followed them to “Mars’ Hill” (v.22).  This is a tale of three cities because those in Thessalonica were too closeminded, and the Athenians were too openminded (v.21).  In between stood the Bereans, who kept an open mind to new truth, then searched to see if it was truth.

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: “A Tale Of Three Cities” Acts 17:10-21

Summary:

Paul’s same old routine involved entering a city and making a beeline for the synagogue (v.1).  But he didn’t pass over Amphipolis and Apollonia because God told him He hadn’t chosen any of those people to be saved.  His new routine was to target big cities and let the gospel radiate out from them to small towns like those, and it worked (cf. IThes.1:8).

But why did he go to synagogues if he was “the apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom.11:13)?  It was to provoke them to get saved (v.14) by magnifying his office to the Gentiles.  “Emulation” is a form of jealousy that makes you want to emulate someone, and “emulate” means to want to equal or excel you at what you’re doing.  Paul was doing the Jews’ job of reaching the Gentiles, and magnifying his office would make them want to get saved and join him in reaching the Gentiles.   Some did, and became his equals, his fellows (Col.4:10,11).  Saved Jews will excel Paul at reaching the Gentiles in the kingdom (Rom.11:12; Isa.11:9).  In the meantime, God’s Word says that the best way to reach the Jews is by magnifying Paul’s apostleship to the Gentiles, as we do.

Paul was only in Thessalonica 3 sabbath days (Acts 17:2), or 14 days total, but the Philippians sent him money there “once and again” (Phil.4:15,16)—and they only had one messenger to do it (Phil.2:25-30).  How’d you like to walk 400 miles in 14 days? Paul says to hold Christians like that “in reputation.”

Paul preached boldly in Thessalonica, even though it got him beaten and imprisoned in Philippi (IThes.2:2).  It took bold-ness to do that because Jews didn’t want to believe their messiah was crucified (ICor.1:23).  Crucifixion was the death of crooks, not Christs.  This proves that Jews like Abraham and David weren’t saved by believing Christ would someday die for their sins, as some say (cf.Gal.3:8).  There were verses that said Christ would die, but Jews preferred the verses that said He would make their enemies die (cf.Lu.1:68-75).  Paul proved Jesus was Israel’s Christ (Acts 17:3) by quoting verses like Genesis 49:10, Micah 5:2, and Isaiah 35:4-6.

When “some” Jews believed, but “a great multitude” of Gentiles believed (Acts 17:4), that’s a picture of how the Body of Christ is made up of both, but this is a primarily Gentile dispensation.

“Envy” (17:5) is another form of jealousy, the bad kind (cf. Acts13:44,45).  “Lewd” means lustful, and “base” means low, like the base of something is the lowest part.  Envy in the heart of a few men ended with a city in an uproar, so don’t let it get so much as a toehold in your life (cf.Mt.27:17,18).

They assaulted “the house of Jason” because they thought Paul was staying with family (cf.Rom.16:21), but he wasn’t (Acts 17:6).  They were right/ Paul was turning the world upside-down, but Adam had turned it upside down, so turning it upside-down again would turn it right side up.  Paul did it with grace, but after the age of grace ends at the Rapture, the gloves are coming off, and God will turn the world upside-down with wrath. He’ll start with Israel, because they should have known better (IIKi.21:12-15; IPet.4:17).  But after that, He’ll turn the whole world upside-down in judgment (Isa. 24:1,19).  For now, He wants it turned upside down with grace, and not with angry petitions and protest marches.

If the charge of doing things contrary to Caesar sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what they charged the Lord with (Lu.23:1,2).  If the reaction Paul got sounds familiar (Acts 17:8,9), it’s because that’s the reaction the Lord got (John 19:12).  I Thessalonians 4:13-17 indicates that some of the believing Thessalonian Jews were killed.  That’s why Paul chose that church to talk to them about how the dead in Christ will precede the living at the Rapture (IThes.4:13-17).  The dead in Christ in Thessalonica hadn’t died of malaria, they died of persecution. 

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: “Paul’s Same Old Routine” Acts 17:1-9