Sermon Idea: The Christian faith has the explanatory power to make sense of our lives, the world, what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it.
Introduction: In an effort to make sense of the world in which we live, there is a series of fundamental questions that every person and every civilization will seek to answer. The answer to these questions will determine how we see and understand the world: Who or what am I? What is wrong with the world? How can it be fixed?
There are other related questions we could add, but these basic questions will help you identify your worldview—the lens through which you interpret all your experiences.
Throughout most of our study of Acts, the gospel has been proclaimed to Jews raised in the Old Testament Scriptures or to Gentile God-fearers who had come to believe in Israel’s God. In those cases, Peter and Paul would often reason from the Scriptures, proving that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah whose death, burial, and resurrection have made salvation possible through faith in his name. There was a place to begin because common ground was already established by a shared worldview.
When Paul sits waiting in Athens, he is among a people with an entirely different worldview. They see, think, and explain the world very differently.
Athens was culturally and intellectually significant. F.F. Bruce wrote, “The sculpture, literature, and oratory of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. have, indeed, never been surpassed. In philosophy, too, she occupied the leading place, being the native city of Socrates and Plato, and the adopted home of Aristotle, Epicurus, and Zeno.”
It was also a city, as you would expect, full of pagan idolatry. It was a place of temples, statues, and images of worship. There would not have been a place you could have turned without being inundated with a religious culture contrary to truth.
I don’t know if Paul had intended to speak while in Athens, but the longer he sat waiting for Silas and Timothy, and the more he witnessed the pagan idolatry around him, the more his spirit was provoked.
16 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. (Ac 17:16)
To say that Paul was provoked means that he became unsettled with uneasiness about all that he saw, so much so that he couldn’t help but speak.
17 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. (Ac 17:17)
Paul’s zeal for the glory of God will not allow him to be apathetic when the honor and worship due to God is given to vain idols. We should be so zealous for God’s glory that we are heartbroken by any measure of idolatry, not only in our hearts, but wherever it is found in culture and society.
I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. (Is 42:8)
Verse 17 does say he reasoned with Jews and God-fearing Gentiles in the synagogue, but the focus of this chapter is Paul’s ministry in the marketplace. Paul isn’t afraid to engage these different belief systems with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he does so in a conversational, interactive way. Paul is engaging with opposing ideas in a way that fosters conversation and sharing, rather than shutting them down.
18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean. (Ac 17:18–20)
Philosophical schools were common in Athens, and Paul engages with two of them: Epicureanism and Stoicism.
Epicureanism pursued pleasure and happiness as its ultimate goal by avoiding physical pain and mental distress. They had a naturalistic view of the world; everything comes from atoms and matter. Human beings then had no reason to fear death, becasue the soul would cease to exist at the point of death. In fact, Epicurus thought the fear of death caused unnecessary anxiety, and not believing in the eternality of the soul would free people of that mental distress. They rejected the afterlife and any divine judgment. Although they believed in many gods, they held that the gods did not intervene in the world or in people’s lives.
Stoicism sought to cultivate inner peace, resilience, and virtue no matter the circumstances of life. For the Stoics, god was in all things, thinking nature has a divine soul, the logos.
These are attempts to explain real-world experience and how to address the difficulties that come with being human in a fallen world. There are many such attempts today to make sense of the world and the difficulties we experience. We need to know and expect that we will encounter alternative explanations for who we are, why we’re here, what’s wrong, and how to fix it.
In our day, there will be secular naturalists who will explain that this world is all there is. The material is everything, and the cause of everything. The universe is closed, and there is nothing supernatural at work in the world.
When I was in high school and in college, postmodernism and relativism were all the rage. Truth is not an objective reality but a subjective, social construct.
In our time, critical theory has consumed our culture, training many to see the world through the lens of power dynamics and lived experience. It is one’s lived experience that gives one access to the truth, especially if one is an oppressed minority.
What’s my point? There is no neutral ground on which we walk, and there are no neutral ideas that we encounter. Everything is rooted in presuppositions and beliefs that offer explanations for the world in which we live, what it means to be human, and how things are made right.
What Paul is going to do when brought to the Areopagus, and what I want you to be able to think about is how the Christian faith has the most explanatory power to make sense of our lives, the world, what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it.
Although some accused Paul of being a charlatan and a babbler, others thought he was a preacher of two deities: Jesus and Anastasia. Others wanted to hear more from Paul, so they escorted him to the Areopagus to speak with those eager to hear new ideas.
21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. (Ac 17:21)
When given this opportunity, Paul speaks with clarity and conviction, but in a wise and winsome way. He steps into the world of the pagan idolatry around him and uses their presuppositions and beliefs to tell the true story of the world. Look with me beginning in verse 22, and we’ll see that the Christian faith explains the truth about God.
I.) The Christian faith explains the truth about God (Acts 17:24-25)
22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. (Ac 17:22–23)
As Paul engages them, he begins with their own presuppositions. He points out an altar to the unknown god. The Athenians did not want to accidentally neglect the worship of a god, so they set up an altar as an assurance. They believe this god exists, but they are ignorant of him.
Paul takes that sincere worship of this unknown god and proclaims the one true and living God, “…this I proclaim to you.”
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. (Ac 17:24–25)
God is the creator-God, the Lord of heaven and earth. Nothing that has come to be apart from God’s work of creation.
The opening words of the Bible declare, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Ge 1:1)
The prophet Isaiah said, Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it (Is 42:5).
The author of Hebrews teaches us, 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Heb 11:3)
God is not part of the universe or the material world. He transcends the universe as the Lord of heaven and earth. God is entirely free and independent of creation.
Paul then gives us three negative statements. Since God is the creator and independent of his creation. He gives us the first two in verses 24-25.
- He does not live in a temple made by man
- He is not served by human hands
To say that God does not live in temples made with hands won’t feel as applicable to us, but it would to the men of Athens. Their gods were housed in temples and manifested in images and statues.
As creator and Lord, God is also self-sufficient. He is not dependent on anyone or anything. He is self-existent and has life in himself. The Christian tradition has referred to this attribute as divine aseity—Latin for “from himself.” God is a perfect being whose existence is found in himself alone. God needs nothing and needs no one. Before creation, God was perfectly fulfilled as God, for the Holy Trinity is perfect fellowship.
This is why Paul says, “…though he needed anything.” God created freely, not out of necessity. When we serve him with our lives, but we do so as a gift of fellowship that we need as creatures, not that God needs as God.
Why is thinking about God important for us? How does the doctrine of creation inform our Christian life? I can’t say all that needs to be said, but I want to make mention of just three brief things.
- Life is a gift that should stir gratitude in our hearts.
- Dependence is what it means to be human, so it should be embraced.
- Purpose: The doctrine of creation directs us to why we exist, to know God and worship him.
Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever. (Westminster Larger Catechism)
II.) The Christian faith explains the truth about humanity (Acts 17:26-29)
Knowledge of God as creator explains why we are here and tells us about who we are. We know from Genesis that we are created in God’s image and meant to reflect his glory.
In Acts, we learn that, in God’s providence, He determined the periods and places in which we all live. The diversity of every ethnic, tribe, and tongue is under the sovereign will of God, and through the gospel, He is going to redeem a people from every tribe, nation, and tongue.
26 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,
We live in a day and age in which people are obsessed with identity. There is pressure to be our authentic selves, a self deep within us that we have to pull out and express. A theology of creation and what it means to be created by God should alleviate this pressure to a degree. Identity is not something we make or create. It is something we inherit and receive.
None of us chose where we were born, who our parents are, or where we were raised. All of these things are part of what God has used to make you uniquely you, and He does not make mistakes. The only thing that is wrong with you is the sin that taints your understanding of God, yourself, and others.
The purpose of this allotment is to have the opportunity to know God, even if that opporunity in sqaundered because of sin.
27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 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.’
29 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. (Ac 17:26–29)
Verse 27 may seem odd to us because we are used to reading Paul, who tells us no one seeks after God. The seeking here, though, isn’t an inclination that desires God, but a reaching out for something blindly. Also, the grammar suggests that this feeling their way won’t happen on its own. We will all need help.
We all need help because we have all sinned.
For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Ro 3:22–23)
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (Ro 5:12)
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Co 4:3–6)
The problem with the world is sin, transgression, and rebellion that break God’s law and separate us not only from Him but also from one another.
Although it’s subtle, Paul is beginning to provide a more thorough explanation for the world they’ve experienced. The Christian faith tells us what’s actually wrong and how to make it right.
III.) The Christian faith explains the truth about salvation & judgment (Acts 17:30-31)
30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 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.” (Ac 17:30–31)
There was a time when God overlooked the idolatry and unbelief of the nations, but now something has changed.
It is very similar to what Paul writes in Romans.
This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Ro 3:25–26)
What has changed is that God has sent himself in the person of his Son to proclaim the Kingdom of God, live in perfect obedience to the law, die for sins, and be raised from the dead.
God commands everyone everywhere to repent because a future judgment is coming, at which everything that is wrong will be made right. The way in which God will judge the world in righteousness is by the appointed Lord Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus confirms that Jesus is the one by whom we’ll be judged. That either happens on the cross or on judgment day!
5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. (1 Ti 2:4–6)
To this command there is no exception. God is worthy of worship, and there is glory due His name. What everyone needs most is to be restored to the God whose law they broke and from whom they have been separated.
The only way that is possible is through faith in Christ. As we place our faith in Jesus, we repent, change our minds about who is in control of our lives, what is right and wrong, and to whom we’ll give our allegiance and affections.
32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. (Ac 17:32–34)
The Christian faith has the explanatory power to make sense of our lives, the world, what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it.
Application
- Pray for a greater zeal for the glory of God. The Lord’s Prayer is a good prayer to pray in that regard.
- You were created to know God and worship him. Does your life and its priorities reflect your created purpose?
- Repent and prepare for that coming day! It is only through faith in Jesus that we will be saved from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:9)
- Proclaim the gospel and God’s command to repent, motivated by both God’s glory and the gravity of eternal judgment.
Nathaniel R. Martin 