As I began to study this portion of scripture in preparation for a sermon, a phrase jumped out at me as one that could be used to define all of mankind, in all of history.
“...if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him...”
Now before I go any further with that, let me make clear that the title is not ‘Searching For God’.
Paul quotes the Psalmist in Romans chapter three, and he says there is NONE who seeks for God.
“...all have turned aside, together they have become useless.” There is no one who seeks for God in his own nature; by his own desire.
But history itself proves that man was created for God and therefore, when man is godless, he gropes for a god to fill that void in his life.
The Athenians were very strong evidence of that truth, and Paul talked to them in the book of Acts. He was before a group of philosophers that used to gather here on Mars Hill in Athens daily, for the purpose of hearing new philosophies, new ideas, different religions - and they were a little society, with rules and guidelines for all who came to speak to them.
One of those rules was that the speaker was not allowed to compliment this austere gathering in any way. The purpose for that rule was so that they could listen with an open mind, not having been influenced by any ego-boosting from the one who was there to convince them with his argument.
That’s the extent of my knowledge about this group at the moment; but this is what Paul was facing as he presented his case in Acts 17.
Historians tell us that Athens was the very center of philosophy and religion in the ancient world. They were considered very religious, not only by Paul, but by anyone who knew about their culture, because in Athens men sought to learn about every new god, every new philosophy that came down the pike.
The major streets leading into Athens were lined with shrines, built to every god that every visitor coming to their city proclaimed to them.
To be sure to hit all the bases, there was even an altar to ‘the unknown god’. Now this was not a shrine to honor the ‘God that we do not yet know but would like to’; it was a shrine built to appease any god that they might have missed and did not want to offend.
How do I know this? Because the Bible says, “no one seeks for God”.
So in so many words, Paul says to them, “Since you have confessed your ignorance of the Divine Nature, I’m here to clue you in.” (He wasn’t going to be guilty of complementing them, was he?)
Follow me in your own Bibles. We’re just going to move down through these verses, starting at verse 24, and see how throughout his sermon to the Greeks, Paul focuses on the ONE, PERSONAL, TRUE GOD, ALIVE, OMNIPOTENT, FULL OF JUSTICE, AND ABOUNDING IN MERCY.
In verse 24 He is presented as CREATOR.
In verse 25 He is PROVIDER,
In verse 26 He is APPOINTER
In verse 27 He is MEETER (or AVAILABLE)
In verse 28 He is CONTAINER,
In verse 29 He is FATHER,
In verse 30 He is DECLARER, and
In verse 31 He is JUDGE.
Now I’m basically just going to be doing a running commentary on these verses; I won’t be going back and reading them often, so I invite you to keep your Bible open and refer back to it often as we go along. It won’t be difficult to follow.
Note first of all, that Paul was not addressing men of Israel. This was primarily, if not completely, a Gentile crowd.
They created gods. They liked to have their ears tickled. If you’ll look at verses 20 and 21, it says, “For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; we want to know therefore what these things mean”. (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.)
They liked to hear of different gods and philosophies and they liked to play mix-n-match.
The natural man will always gravitate toward the created god, because the created god does anything man wants him to do. That’s precisely why we must be careful to reevaluate our own theology often. It’s why David said, “Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee”.
It is why it is imperative that we seek a closer, personal walk with God; because left to its own devices, our natural man will always try to twist the truth of the true God in our minds and our hearts, until we’re worshiping an idol of our own making, while convinced that we’re still worshiping the God of the Bible. And of course we end up congratulating ourselves on how intimately we know our God, because when we drift away from the truth of God, our god becomes more like us. And the more our god becomes like us, the more intimately we think we know him, while in reality our god has become a god with a small ‘g’.
So Paul begins by introducing them to the CREATOR God, who made the world and all things in it.
He is not embodied in a piece of wood or a chunk of marble. He is Lord of Heaven and earth, and He does not dwell in temples made with hands; He creates hands and gives them talent to build temples.
He is not served by men; He is not aided by our contributions; He is not made full by our generosities; He is not wizened by our counsel...although... I’m sure that a lot of times our prayers sound to Him like we THINK that He is...
He is not given value by our submitting to Him worship that He already has a right to demand from us, and that we have a duty to render.
He needs nothing. He is Creator, and Owner, and Lord of ALL.
He is not only Creator; He did not create, as the Greeks would say of Zeus, or the Norse would say of Odin, then sit back to watch His creation flounder.
He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things.
He is PROVIDER.
Now look more closely at that phrase. “He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things”.
It is EVER the possessor, who has the power to give. Listen to what He revealed of Himself through the Psalmist.
“If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and all it contains”. (Ps 50:12)
And it is He Himself, no one besides, and no one other than, who gives.
To whom does He give? To all. No one excluded from His mercy and His provision, and no one able to HAVE apart from Him. “He Himself gives to all”, and what does He give? The very necessities of existence. Life in the beginning, breath to continue, and all things to sustain that life.
He is the PROVIDER.
Then Paul reveals this CREATOR, PROVIDER God, as the APPOINTER.
The One who, in His infinite wisdom preordained times, cultures and nations over the whole earth; and He did this from one man.
I am especially drawn to this truth in our day and age, when you can’t even turn on the T.V. and watch a so-called ‘educational’ program that doesn’t bombard you with lies about the world being some 65 billion years old, man evolving from some slimy little one-celled swamp thing...
The kids bring home papers from school that expound this same godless nonsense. It’s in the movies, scientific periodicals; it has infiltrated the world of children’s toys, newspaper articles, T-shirts (read any good shirts lately?) ...until the one proclaiming that the Bible is true, and that God is creator of all things, and that this world is only about 7,000 years old, is the one who is scoffed at and called crazy or foolish for believing such a thing.
(Want to have some fun? One day while you’re at work, tell someone you work with that Noah had to have taken two small or very young dinosaurs on the Ark with him, or they perished in the flood.)
Listen to what FF Bruce said, in his commentary on these verses:
“All mankind was one in origin, all created by God, and all descended from one common ancestor. This removed all imagined justification that Greeks were innately superior to barbarians, as it removes all imagined justification for parallel beliefs today. Neither in nature nor in grace, neither in the old creation nor in the new, is there any room for ideas of racial superiority.”
God, having made the entire human race, has given the entire habitable earth to dwell in, and has even appointed the boundaries of their habitations. Why? Paul says, “That they might seek God”.
Now don’t let me confuse anyone. A few minutes ago I said that the natural man does not seek God; but that doesn’t mean that He didn’t want them to.
And did you hear? God created and provided for, and housed man, for one great cause; that they might seek God.
There, my friends, is scriptural proof that God desires our company. That He is a social God, who wants to be found.
He is MEETER
All that God has done toward mankind from the laying of His divine plan from eternity past, to the accomplishment of His redemptive work on Calvary’s cross, has had as its goal, the calling of mankind to fellowship with Himself.
Nevertheless, men do not seek God. Instead man gropes in the darkness, trying to lay hold of a god small enough to fit in the palm of his blood-stained hand.
Marvel at the patience and love and mercy and goodness of a God, who even in the face of man’s deliberate ignorance and wanton hatred for truth, allows that even while groping in the darkness, some will find Him...even looking in the wrong place.
“Give thanks to the Lord, for His is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting”.
Now, the last phrase of verse 27 and the first of 28 contain a point of theology that it would behoove us all to remind ourselves of often.
We are generally taught from the time we are small, that Heaven is ‘out there somewhere’, and that Hell is ‘down there somewhere’.
‘God is in Heaven, Jesus is in Heaven’.
God is presented to us by these means, as someone who is far off. Even when we begin to learn doctrinal and theological truths, that image remains somewhere in the back of our minds.
Of course, since we cannot touch Him or see Him or hear Him with our physical senses, our natural selves concur with that fallacy. “God is OUT THERE”.
While it is accurate to say that Jesus lives in my heart, in that His Spirit gives life to our spirit and indwells us, and points us to Christ and reveals the things of Christ to us, let’s please try to comprehend that “In Him we live and move and exist”.
“We should never think of God as being spatially near or remote”, writes A.W. Tozer, “for He is not here nor there, but carries here and there in His heart. Space is not infinite as some have thought, but only God is infinite, and in His infinitude, He swallows up all of space. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ says the Lord. He fills heaven and earth as the ocean fills the bucket that is submerged in it. And as the ocean surrounds the bucket, so does God, in the universe He fills. The heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.”
God is not contained; He contains!
Well, Paul finishes this thought and uses as a transition into the next, a quotation from some of their own poetry.
I want to expound on it just a little, because it sheds some light for us on how well-read Paul was, and also what a clever orator he was.
This line, “For we also are his offspring”, is a line from a Greek work of poetry, the name of which I cannot pronounce, so I won’t try.
It is written by a Sicilian named Oratus, and it goes like this:
“Never O men, let us leave him unmentioned;
all our ways are full of Zeus,
and all meeting places of men;
The sea and the harbors
are full of him,
In every direction we all have to do with Zeus,
for we also are his offspring.”
By this very clever insertion of a line dear to their hearts, Paul has made clear his point that God is near, while showing them that even in their ignorance they are capable of being creatures of God; of responses that are valid, as long as and up to the point that they stay isolated from their pagan assumptions.
Truth: In Him we live and move and exist.
Fallacy: His name is Zeus.
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”
Nevertheless, he has hit on a common point of understanding, and he uses it to point them in the right direction.
If we are His offspring, that makes Him our FATHER. Our Origin. Our Genesis. Our Beginning.
We are NONE of these things to Him. We are the creature; He is the eternal divine nature, who salted the earth with the gold that they dig out and form into idols and bow down to.
Who planted the trees that they cut down to carve into images from their finite imaginations.
Who spoke into existence the granite that they chisel into cold, heartless, dead, demonic faces, then foolishly pay homage to them.
He is CREATOR, PROVIDER, APPOINTER OF BOUNDARIES, who wants our FELLOWSHIP, in whom we have our very existence, from whom we came, and He DECLARES.
GOD SPEAKS!
This alone must have piqued the curiosity of Paul’s listeners; for false gods don’t speak. They are spoken to. And philosophies don’t speak. They are as clay, molded and shaped by the minds of men.
Here was a man, telling them that the Creator of all was declaring something.
Well let me interject here, that we often seem to forget that God speaks. When we neglect study of His Word we’re forgetting that the scriptures are God-breathed, and that they are a living thing, and that they make the man of God complete and equipped for every good work.
When we neglect prayer time, we’re forgetting that God has things He wants to share with us about Himself; about His will for us and directions He wants for us to take.
The voice of God is ever-present, as He is; never ceasing. His voice is a calm, soothing, gentle breeze that blows to and fro across the earth, falling like music on Holy Spirit-awakened ears.
He speaks, and how blessed is the one who stops to listen and heed!
Paul tells them that his God is declaring that all everywhere should repent. Now that statement, left as it is, might draw the response that this does not sound like a gentle, soothing voice; it sounds like a commanding, demanding voice.
But if you look at all of verses 30 and 31 together, you find that His declaration is more a cry of final victory; as one who has waited a long, long time to make an announcement of good news.
Verse 30 reveals a patient, long-suffering God.
From the fall of Adam to the close of Malachi’s ministry, as the effects of sin grew stronger and men’s ears grew duller and his eyes more blind to spiritual truth, God shed increasing light on His plan for redemption through the Law and then the prophets...but held back His wrath until the time when the coming of His Holy Spirit to indwell hearts of men and reveal Christ to the world would remove all excuses for ignorance.
This can only be defined as Divine Grace and infinite mercy.
And now, says Paul to his hearers, God calls for men to turn from ignorance, to do an about face away from their present path of rebellion and self-service and unrighteousness and destruction, and place their faith in the One, True Personal, Creator, Provider, Declaring God.
Folks, this is just the message we’re supposed to be making clear to the people around us.
It’s not enough to say “God accepts you just as you are”. It’s not enough to say “Jesus loves you”. It is not enough to encourage men to join the church or adopt a faith, or however, as individuals, we might say it ...all the pithy little phrases that have cropped up in the past thirty years or so do not take the place of personal, one-on-one witnessing and the living testimony of a Christ-like life.
We can wear all the t-shirts and bracelets and put up the “I found it” billboards, and put so many bumper stickers on our car that pedestrians feel like victims of a drive-by-preaching, but it is not enough.
God has spoken, and God has declared that all men everywhere should repent!
Let’s not stand before God and be found guilty of sugar-coating His Word; of minimizing through error or neglect the message that God calls for REPENTANCE.
God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. We have not given the gospel, if we have not made the first point of our message a declaration of the need to repent; to turn FROM sin TO God.
But we shouldn’t feel either, that our message is a harsh one just because it addresses that nasty old sin issue.
After all, we’re asking them to turn TO eternal life. And we know that when they turn, what they will see by the light of God’s Word is that MAN whom He has appointed.
I firmly believe a lot of people have been preached a shallow, no-responsibility gospel. In those cases they have quickly fallen away, or they have sat (in some cases for years) in church, accepted as a believer, comfortable in their ignorance, knowing all the Christian terminology and expected behaviors and responses, involved in all the proper religious ceremonies and exercises, yet have never come to a place of understanding their need to repent...of saying ‘I’m sorry’, to God.
Before I go on to talk about the rest of this final verse, let me share a thought or two to put Paul’s task in modern perspective.
Paul was vexed by the idolatry he witnessed in Athens. We’re told in verse 16 that his spirit was being provoked within him.
Have you ever felt what Paul must have felt then? He had recently preached the good news to the Jews, his own people, in Thessalonica, and he had been turned away with a great deal of animosity. He had then moved on to Berea where his message was widely accepted, but the Jews from Thessalonica had followed him there and stirred up trouble against him, so he ended up having to be spirited out of that region as well.
So picture this. Alone, this preacher goes to Athens and awaits the arrival of his trusted partners in ministry; Silas and Timothy.
He was probably more than a little lonely and discouraged by the rejection of the Lord by his own people. So here he is, alone in this Greek city, and he decides to go for a walk.
It was a modern city, teeming with activity. A center of commerce as well as philosophy, and therefore very wealthy. They even had brick laid for roadways. Nice to walk on and keep your feet clean while you’re enjoying the sights; examining the famous Greek architecture...
...and all along the way, on both sides of the road, are shrines. Altars. Images of false gods, and even one that bears the inscription “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD”.
Have you ever wished that in your workplace or your neighborhood people would show some level of interest in hearing what you have to say; some degree of hunger for spiritual truth (not just spiritual ‘things’, but spiritual truth); while at the same time you are seeing the godless and even anti-God messages screaming out at you from the media and the fields of science and entertainment and the arts; and just felt a little lonely?
If you haven’t, then I hope you will. Because that’s what I think Jesus was feeling when He lamented over Jerusalem’s up-coming destruction for her rejection of Him.
Some time back, Lynn and I watched a program on PBS, where various scientists were interviewed. They talked with a gleam in their eyes about their hopes for science in the future and the wonderful things that man will do with constantly developing technology.
You see, nothing has changed. We don’t line our roadways in this culture with stone images of Zeus or Odin or Venus or Mars or Hercules, but our idol worship is high-tech or hedonistic.
We spend the day worshiping in the temple of man’s invention and worldly gain, then leave it at day’s end to go straight to the church of the body and its comforts.
And while the enemy of our soul uses all the means available to him to scream out his godless message to the masses, those nearest us are floundering and dying while groping in the darkness for a god they cannot define. A God that can’t be held in their hands.
But a God that is not far from them, for in Him they live and move and exist.
Have you ever felt like Paul must have felt?
Well let me clue you in on one part of this message that should strengthen every one of us, and encourage us, even drive us, to stand before people, not counting the cost, and proclaim Him to them.
This God has become a MAN!
In verse 31 Paul said that God will judge the world through a Man whom He has appointed; declared. God has spoken through a Son.
God has spoken to mankind IN a Son. One Man who was appointed for this very purpose - to reveal God to a groping world, to bring them to the light.
Sometimes we may need to be wise in our approach. That’s one reason it’s imperative to hide His Word in our heart; not only to keep our own paths straight, but so that we will be prepared to give an account for the hope that is in us, to those who ask.
To know how to approach whatever kind of audience we find before us.
Paul began telling the Athenians about a Creator, and ended telling them about a Judge.
He began with the UNKNOWN GOD, and ended telling them about a God who became a Man in order to be known.
He began with a group who did not see God as personal at all, and ended with something they could understand with their senses; a Man.
A man appointed by God through whom He would judge the world; and furnished proof that this was His Man, by raising Him from the dead.
We hear it so often we are in danger of growing hardened to the wonder of it, believer.
Our message is the same as Paul’s. It hasn’t changed. It will never lose its saving power, and no matter what the world says, it will never be out-dated or old fashioned.
It is as up to date as tomorrow’s headline, and it has been passed down to us, to proclaim.
God is CREATOR, PROVIDER, APPOINTER, MEETER, CONTAINER, FATHER, DECLARER, JUDGE, and all men everywhere are called to repent and turn to Him, through His appointed One, our risen savior, Jesus Christ our Lord.
My prayer for Christ’s church in these latter days, is that we will clearly understand that message and not lose sight of it as our foundation...and that all else we do - the fellowship, the brotherly love, the physical work of the ministry, community outreach and involvement - will be recognized as useless, if not grounded and built up on that one sure foundation that our Lord, Jesus Christ, is risen from the dead...and is coming back!
“Christ is made the sure foundation,
Christ, the head and cornerstone,
Chosen of the Lord and precious,
Binding all the church in one.
Holy Zion’s help forever,
And her confidence, alone.”
