12. The Book of Acts
August 09th, 2009
Knowing God: Athens
Religion can make us do some strange things. This is not new. It has been going on for thousands of years.
If you turn to Acts 17:16 we see Paul arriving in Athens. Athens is the intellectual capital of the ancient world. This is the place the greatest thinkers of the ancient world called home. It was an incredible city where the Parthenon one of the seven wonders of the ancient world was built. The ancient Greeks were surprisingly intelligent. They knew the world was round 1000 years before the Europeans realized it. They practiced medicine and there is some evidence they even practiced brain surgery. They built and designed architecture that is still standing today over 2000 years after it was built. They were an incredibly advanced people. Yet for all the understanding of the world they had some strange religious practices.
Ac 17:16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. Ac 17:17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. Ac 17:18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Ac 17:19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? Ac 17:20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” Ac 17:21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.) Ac 17:22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. Ac 17:23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. Ac 17:24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. Ac 17:25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. Ac 17:26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. Ac 17:27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. Ac 17:28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Ac 17:29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. Ac 17:30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Ac 17:31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
Paul arrives in Athens and is very distressed to see all the idols that filled the city. The people there were extremely zealous about their religion which is seen in the sheer volume of idols they erected. There were recorded to be somewhere between 2000 and 3000 notable idols within the city. An ancient writer Petronius joked: “it is easier to find a god in Athens that a man.” All throughout the city of Athens there are statues, altars, and temples to these pagan gods. Now this is interesting. The Greeks prize wisdom and knowledge above all things. They were very advanced as a people but yet they failed to see the irony of their idolatry. They were worshiping gods and statues they built with their own hands. How great could their gods really be if the needed men to build them temples? How is it the Greeks didn’t see the foolishness of their practices? Say your ancient Greek and you believe in all the gods. So one day you take a piece of clay and you mold half of it into a bowl to eat out of and the other half you mold into a statue of a god for your home. How do you know you used the right half? What if you have been worshiping your dinner bowl and eating out of your god? How would you know the difference? You made both of them. These intellectual people failed to realize that their gods didn’t make them they made their gods.
Paul understood that these idols where not just harmless statues but means for worshiping demons. In seeing this Paul’s spirit was provoked and he began to preach. As he preached he drew a crowd and captured the attention of some of the Athenian intellectuals. You see Athens was the home to the greatest minds of the ancient world. This is the city in which all of philosophy began. Athens had produced minds like Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato whose thoughts and ideas have impacted the world even to this day. So these intellectuals come along and are curious about what Paul is saying, thinking him to be a fool for preaching Jesus and the resurrection. So they take him to a place calls Mars Hill and ask him to speak further.
Paul begins his speech in a respectful manner even though he was grieved by their idolatry. He says I can see that you are very religious. The word that Paul uses here is brilliant for it can mean two things: religious or superstitious. To call them very religious is a compliment. To call them very superstitious is a slap in the face and the only way for them to know which he meant was to pay very close attention to what he said. So right out of the gate Paul captures their attention. He notes they are very religious for he sees evidence of that in all the statues around the city. In fact as he traveled he even found a statue engraved saying: to an unknown god. You know this had to frustrate the Greeks. The prized knowledge and to build a statue to an unknown god was to admit their own ignorance. Paul notes that they are worshipping an unknown god. He does not rebuke this, but rather uses it as a means to connect them to the true God. He says I know the identity of this God whom you worship in ignorance. He tells people who crave knowledge: I know something you don’t know. Once again he has captured their attention. He says this unknown god you worship is actually the one true God, the creator of the world and the Lord of heaven and earth. He is a God too great to live in temples or statues built by man because this God needs nothing from man. All these little gods that you worship you made them. They are of your design. But there is a God who made you, who made the world and everything in it, a God who gives breath, life, and all that is and that God does not dwell in your temples. He says this God reigns from the throne of heaven and has given us all the right to become not His servants but His children. The Greeks were worshipping a God they didn’t know and in the past God overlooked such ignorance. But now that Jesus has come into the world and made God known. Now that God has been revealed the time for ignorance is past. It is time for us to know God. We must repent from our lives lived in ignorance and turn to a knowledge of the life that comes from a relationship with God. Now that He has made Himself known man is without excuse. In a masterfully crated sermon Paul says to these men: if you really crave understanding then it is time you stopped living in the ignorance of your own design and came to a relationship with God. For in knowing Him we know all that really matters.
The Athenians were very religious but they worshipped a god they did not really know. They saw signs. They saw characteristics of God but they did not really know Him. I wonder how true that is today. If you look around Joplin you might wonder if this is similar to what Paul sees in Athens. In Athens there are statues on every corner, in Joplin we are the Bible belt, we have churches on every corner. You throw a rock hard enough you can bounce it off one church onto another. I even found a street here I cant remember where it was exactly but in standing at this crossroad there was a church on three of the four corners of this intersection. In looking at a town in the Bible belt it is clear to see that we are very religious but do we really know God or like the Athenians are we worshipping an unknown God.
The problem that we face in the world today is that we are seeing more and more people who have disconnected themselves from God. We do not know God like we should and often times we trade Him for a routine. There seems to be this general refusal to surrender ourselves to His authority in our lives. So many think that because they accept the name or the title or that they show up at the right place at the right time that they are part of the redeemed children of God. For some reason we get it in our head that we can believe in God without obeying Him. This idea has been a major factor in our disconnecting ourselves from God. When we reject His authority or ignore His requests we are essentially setting ourselves up to be the gods of our own lives. This creates a distance between us and Him. It is no wonder we see depravity increasing all around us. Morals failing, violence increasing, families and marriages falling apart. We live in a world that is getting further and further from God and so many of us don’t even notice. You see we have traded away a genuine relationship for a ritual, a routine, a religion. Imagine that we are sick with a deadly disease. In effect what we have done with religion is given ourselves a shot that doesn’t cure the disease but that makes us feel better. When we feel better we forget that anything is wrong. We don’t think about the disease unless it causes us discomfort. So because we inoculate ourselves with religion we fail to recognize our need for a relationship. It is the relationship with God that has the power to effectively cure the disease that is killing us but because we give ourselves this shot of religion we feel better so we think we are better and we stop looking for the cure all the while we slowly begin to die.
The real danger is that many people think they know God because of their religion. They worship, they serve, they pray but just like these ancient Greeks they are worshiping a God they don’t know. Honestly some of the churches today they should have a plaque on the wall that say: the church to an unknown God. When we trade a relationship with God for a religion we worship a God we don’t know. In the past God overlooked such ignorance but now is a time for repentance. What God desires is not our going through the motions, God desires a relationship with us. He wants to know us and He wants us to know Him. It is time we let go of our religion. It is time we set down our rituals. God is a personal God who desires a relationship.
