Acts 17:16-21

This morning we will begin to look at how Paul responded to his world and there we will discover some wonderful truths for our lives as well. So let’s read from Acts 17:16-21. READ

Paul’s arrival in Athens followed on the heals of a typical bumpy ride. As he and Silas found closed doors in Asia Minor, God lead them across the Aegean Sea to Macedonia, northern Greece. In Philippi, Thessalonica and Berea they encountered both positive and negative responses to the gospel. A few weeks ago we looked at the gospel’s positive reception by the noble Bereans, people who listened to Paul, but did not take his word. Their nobility is seen in their response to the gospel, that of study. But while some respond to the gospel with intent desire to examine if its claims are true, there are always those who make trouble, and so Paul is escorted out of Berea, leaving behind Silas and Timothy behind. Paul finds himself now in Athens. 

The Athens of Paul’s day was but a shadow of its former glory, but what a shadow it still cast. Five hundred years earlier Athens attained the highest level of culture in classical antiquity. Few places have ever seen the prominence of sculpture, literature, oratory and politics as this city. It was the home of the philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, of the playwrights Aeschyles, Eumenides and Euripides. The Parthenon stood sentinel over the inhabitants below, signifying the best of what humanity had achieved in the world.

Yet the golden age of Greece rapidly passed away. Three decades of war with Sparta eroded much of its civilization and then being conquered by Rome forced it to submit to foreign domination. In light of its past greatness, Rome granted it freedoms of self government. But by Paul’s day its native population of free men was only 5,000 people with tens of thousands of others who were artists, students and tourists. Works of art and religion dominated the city, a mute testimony to its past greatness. 

What was Paul’s reaction?

What should be the reaction of a Christian who visits or lives in a city which is dominated by a non-Christian ideology or religion, a city which may be aesthetically magnificent and culturally sophisticated, but morally decadent and spiritually deceived or dead? Paul’s response should inform us how we too should respond to our world. Notice first in v16 how Paul responds, both his initial reaction and his measured response.

We should feel for our world     16-17

Are you provoked to respond to our world?

Paul was provoked. As Paul waited for his friends and he toured this great city, he viewed it not with the curiosity of a tourist, but through the lens of God’s Word

What does word mean to say he was provoked? The verb here is used in English as a paroxysm, and in Greek originally was a medical term for a seizure or epileptic fit. It came to mean to irritate or rouse to anger. We see it in our kids as they push each other’s buttons.

What provoked Paul was the idolatry of the city.

His response to this great center of human achievement was that it worshipped its own accomplishments. The brilliance of the city was marred by the misguided object of worship. The city was “full of idols”. Luke uses a word that can be translated as “under idols”, “smothered or swamped” by them. You may think Paul was just overly sensitive, as a strict monotheist, to the culture he was in, but remember he was raised in Hellenistic culture, other towns he had visited likewise had idolatry. But what struck him here was how pervasive the idolatry was in this city. Paul was not alone in his critique as other contemporaries likewise noted the Athenian predilection for idolatry. 

Xenophon referred to Athens as “one great altar, one great sacrifice” ... that “there were more gods in Athens than in all the rest of the country.” Petronius, a contemporary writer at Nero's court, says satirically that it was easier to find a god at Athens than a man.

Paul’s provocation follows the pattern of God’s response to idolatry. The same verb is often used in the LXX to refer to God’s response to idolatry.

When the Israelites made the golden calf at Mount Sinai, when later they were guilty of idolatry and immorality to Baal of Peor, and when the Northern Kingdom made another calf to worship in Samaria, they provoked' the Lord God to anger. God’s anger is often referred to as jealousy, in fact in Exo 34:14 Jehovah states that his name is Jealous.

Jealousy is the resentment of rivals, and whether it is good or evil depends on whether the rival has any business to be there. To be jealous of someone who threatens to outshine us in beauty, brains or sport is sinful, because we cannot claim a monopoly of talent in those areas. If, on the other had, a third party enters a marriage, the jealousy of the injured person, who is being displaced, is righteous, because the intruder has no right to be there. It is the same with God, who says `I am the Lord, that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols (Is. 42:8) (Stott, Acts, 278-9)

Paul responded first with anger, for God’s glory is at stake and what he saw in Athens was nothing more than a glittering morgue, in which the cadavers of worldly wisdom vied with one another in the beauty contest of the spiritually dead. This moved Paul with compassion, which we will see in a moment and study further next week.

But before we move on, it is important to ask yourself, “What provokes you?”

Are you able to see where the topsy-turvy world flies in the face of God’s character? Far too often we are enamoured with our world so that we can not see our own idolatry. I doubt it was the mere presence of statues that upset Paul, but the underlying culture of idolatry.

The Athenians were idolaters, as most people are today. An idolater fabricates his own god in his own image, being sure its worship is comfortable, not overly demanding. The promise of the idols of our age are good things turned to an evil use. We worship our own happiness and contentment as provided for in our vocations or our families. But because of that to be provoked as something as good as family or job seems strange, until we recognize that whenever we substitute anything for God, we are idolaters.

So what should be our response?

Do you seek to reason with the world?

Paul responded with reason. If we stop in v16 we can perhaps imagine Paul as a modern Gideon, tearing down the Asherah poles, righteous indignation filling every pore so that he takes up an axe and whacks away at the great works of art which promote human greatness while ignoring God. Or we might think that a more sedate response would be one of retreat, as the frustration mounts Paul shakes the dust off his feet, too afraid he’ll be infected with false worship if he remains a moment longer. 

Instead he reasoned with them. We saw this term in v2, the word from which we get dialogue. He in rational discourse with those whose thinking was quite irrational, as idolatry turns the world on its head, worshiping creation instead of the creator. He was certainly dismayed at what he saw, but rather than despairing or swearing at the world, he pointed to the gospel.

He reasoned with those in the synagogue, those who knew the foolishness of idolatry. He reasoned with the covenant community, but he did not stop there. He also reasoned with those in the marketplace

He went to the agora, the market place which still remains in Athens to this day. More than just strolling through the produce aisle at Pick n’ Save, the agora was the center of public life in Greece. It was there he looked for “divine appointments”, those happenstance meetings to discuss with them the living God.

What did Paul’s reasoning look like?

We are given a clue in v18. It does not appear that he merely gripped about the decayed moral condition nor point fingers at pernicious pagans. He did not engage in culture bashing, that favorite past time of so many Christians today. While in his sermon as we will see next week, he did not shy away from pointing our errors, he did so with even temperament and sound logic. He did so with compassion and love.

So also for us today. If we are going to be more than survivors in a world that desperately needs to hear a word about a living God who loves them, then we will need to follow the apostle Paul’s lead. We’ll say positive things about the culture when and where we can. We won’t compromise our convictions, but we’ll try to find ways to be positive and affirming.

This hard work of feeling for our world, of seeing where the image of God still shines is important if we are going to know how to effectively present the gospel. Their idolatry was a reflection of their need. It is at that point Paul applies the gospel.

Like the story of the two shoe salesmen who were sent to Nigeria to survey the country for the possibility of building a shoe factory.

The first man came back and said, "Few people here wear shoes so there is little need to build a shoe factory in Nigeria."

The second came back and said, "This is the greatest opportunity we have ever had. Everybody I saw needs a good pair of shoes."

That is how we need to look at our culture when it comes to their need for Jesus Christ and His love and forgiveness. But to feel this way for our world we must know our world.

We should know our world       18

Paul knew his audience?

Paul knew to whom he spoke. Just as we study God’s Word to know what to say, we should then study God’s world to know our audience. In v18 we are given a clue as to Paul’s audience.

There were Epicureans

While we use this term today to refer to anyone who worships his own pleasure, the ancient Epicureans were more complex than that. Founded by Epicurus (d 270 BC), they considered the gods to be so remote as to take no interest in, and have no influence on, human affairs. The world was due to chance, a random concourse of atoms, and there would be no survival after death, and no judgment. So human beings should pursue pleasure, that is, the serene enjoyment of a life detached from pain, passion and fear.

The Epicurean Catechism might ask, "what is the chief end of man?" responding with: "man's chief end is pleasure, the avoidance of pain and being free from the fear of death."

There were also Stoics

Their name came from the stoa, the colonnade surrounding the agora, the marketplace where they taught. Founded by Zeno (d 265 BC), they believed there was one god, that the world was made by him and that we are all governed by fate. We must then pursue our duty by seeking harmony with nature and reason. Despite the pain we may endure, self-sufficiency is the summa bona.

While Stoicism at its best was marked by great moral earnestness with a high sense of duty, it was marked also by a spiritual pride quite foreign to the spirit of Christianity, as the chief end of man is endurance through all through rational thought

So the two competing idolatries which Paul faced are simply the ruling principles of the Epicureans and Stoics: pleasure and pride, chance and fate, happiness and duty.

Do you know your audience?

Do you know anyone like that today? We live in an age dominated by a pleasure first, do what pleased me avoid the pain philosophy. Above all, our contemporaries say, do not take any responsibility that might prove difficult. Enjoy yourself because this life is all there is.

There are Stoics around us, too. They do the best they can. If bad things come, well, they think they must have to be strong and endure it.

Stoics sound like conservative, who tout the goodness of public virtue, who believe personal responsibility will solve all social ills. The Epicureans have that tolerant progressive liberal ring, people that want the easy road, the path of least resistance. Paul critiques both.

When you speak to people at work or in the neighborhood, do you know them well enough to know what is their guiding philosophy? It may not be a well articulated reasoned doctrine, but what are the ultimate concerns they have in life. If you don’t you will have a hard time reasoning with those in the marketplace, at school, around the family gatherings.

Then you may begin with where people are in their thinking, not where they are not. This is what we will see Paul do in vv22ff, as he speaks the language of his audience. But he can only do that when he has listened to them, reasoned with them in their own environment.

The most important first step of any dialogue you will ever have with another person is to listen to them, know what they are thinking. Too often we think evangelism is only telling people what they need to believe, but what we see here and elsewhere in Scripture is first listening to what they believe and then weaving the gospel into their context.

But knowing your audience means that you must know they will not always understand what you are saying. Notice how they responded to Paul

They called Paul a babbler – literally spermologos a “seed-picker”, used by the Greek dramatist Aristophanes in his comedy The Birds, it was used of beggars who live off scraps of food they pick up in the gutter. When applied to Paul it was a derogatory term to describe teachers who, not having an original idea in their on heads, unscrupulously plagiarize from others, picking up scraps of knowledge here and there, thus only a parrot.

Others pigeonholed Paul as a preacher of foreign deities. 

This term was familiar to the Athenians as it was the charge made against Socrates 450 years before. Their dismissal of Paul’s preaching showed they did not understand what he said, as the deities Paul proclaimed were Jesus and the resurrection. As Paul’s message was not about their idolatry, but the answer to all our idolatries, that is, Jesus and his death for us, they heard a male god called Jesus and his female consort Anastasis.

Likewise people may not understand all you say, what you exactly mean and no matter how much you explain and describe they may still stare at you like you have three heads.

We should challenge our world         19-21

Paul was asked to give an explanation for further investigation

The Athenians seemed sincere in their desire to listen further as they brought Paul to the Areopagus to further explain what he proclaimed.

The Areopagus was an aristocratic body which received its name from the Hill of Ares, or in Roman terms, Mars, the god of war. During the height of Greek power, this venerable institution decided all matters of importance in Athens. But the first century, the word referred not to the location, the hill near the Acropolis, but to a body of men who weighed matters of philosophical and religious importance and who meet in the Royal Porch of the Agora.

This was the custom of this city, a custom not unlike our own age of toleration. People are willing to listen, but making a decision is asking too much. Luke’s editorial statement in v21 was a common critique of this city. Four hundred years earlier Demosthenes, the great orator in the First Philippic, expressed frustration at the Athenian love for discourse which never resolved anything. At a time when action was necessary, they shamelessly wanted to talk about the latest news, but never making a decision. They remained, as always, firmly planted in mid-air.

Whether the motivation of this group was ideal or not is not certain. Given the terms used of Paul in v18, they may have looked on him as a country hick, a philosophical hack, and so they were going to grill him at his expense. But Paul did not shrink back from the opportunity. As we will see next week he engaged them with their own rhetoric but nevertheless, pointed them to Christ.

Just as we heard read earlier from 1 Corinthians 1, Paul knew that what he preached was folly to these eminent scholars of the age. Yet that did not dissuade him. The reason is simple, v30 reminds us that Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.

Are you willing to challenge what others believe?

Like Paul before us, we should be willing and able to challenge the fence sitters of our age. There will always be those who are ever learning but never coming to the truth (2 Tim 3:7). The precarious position of gathering facts but never believing, never acting on the truth characterizes our age.  The pursuit of truth is always more enjoyable than being lead by the truth. The philosophers of Paul’s day and our own are much like cohabiting couples, wanting to enjoy the pleasures of sex while avoiding its commitments and obligations. Always window shopping in the marketplace of truth, but never buying. But the worst despot of all is the heartless tyranny of ideas, being a prisoner to one’s own spiritual blindness. For this reason it is important to introduce those with whom we interact everyday, the person of Jesus Christ. Not as a theoretical construct, but a living person with whom they too may know the source of real wisdom, of perfect righteousness, of holiness and redemption. The foolishness of this truth is seen in how we are engrafted into that perfect person. It is all of God’s grace and we receive the benefits by faith.

It is what this supper is all about. It is extending with outstretched hands willing to receive what God has to offer – his food for our nourishment.  Are you willing to tell your neighbors and friends about this savior? Are you willing first to believe it yourself? What will your response be to the good news of Christ?