Acts 17 The Unknown God

Act 17:16-20 While Paul was waiting in Athens, he was upset to see all the idols in the city. He went to the Jewish meeting place to speak to the Jews and to anyone who worshiped with them. Day after day he also spoke to everyone he met in the market. Some of them were Epicureans and some were Stoics, and they started arguing with him. People were asking, “What is this know-it-all trying to say?” Some even said, “Paul must be preaching about foreign gods! That’s what he means when he talks about Jesus and about people rising from death.” They brought Paul before a council called the Areopagus, and said, “Tell us what your new teaching is all about. We have heard you say some strange things, and we want to know what you mean.”

If we let our eyes flick just a little bit before this we see Paul, Timothy and Silas have been ministering in Thessalonia and Berea and then Paul continues on to Athens alone and is waiting for his friends to join him before they continue on to Corinth.

We next read that while he was waiting in Athens he became upset at the level of idolatry and lostness of the people in the city. So much so that he begins to go and speak at the synagogue and the marketplace. Did he intend to minister in Athens? Maybe…. Maybe not… but God stirred his heart – he provoked Paul and Paul had to respond by going to the market to talk to people about Jesus.

In our lives we must allow God to stir our hearts and then in response we position ourselves with lost people, ready and willing and sharing the message of Good News.

Athens is an interesting city…. Though past its glory days it was still a center for philosophy and religion, art and architecture. Idols were on every corner, incorporated into every civic building and part of the very fabric of the city. The people there were renown for their “spiritual thinking” and desire to talk about new things. They had double the feast days of any other city in their time. Paul went to the very heart of the city, not just visiting the Jews in the synagogues but going to the marketplace. The marketplace wasn’t just where you went and brought your produce, but it was where you went to hear the latest news and gossip, to meet with friends, discuss new ideas – it was the pub or student café, the facebook of the past….

Paul had a message for the people of Athens. He saw they were interested in spiritual things but that they did not know the truth about God. He saw they were hungry to really know the truth about God, but they hadn’t discovered it yet… They had statues and idols and alters all around their city… even one to The Unknown God… The Unknown god was not so much a specific god, but a placeholder for whatever god or gods actually existed but whose name and nature were not revealed to the Athenians or the world at large yet.

Paul’s message was that he knew this God and that because of Jesus they could too. Our message is the same as Paul’s - it is that God was in Christ, offering peace and forgiveness to the people of the world. We are given the work of sharing God’s message about this peace with God. We are sent to speak for Christ and God is through us begging the people to hear the truth. We speak for Christ and sincerely ask people to find peace with God. Christ never sinned but God treated him as a sinner so that Christ could make us acceptable to God. (2 Corinthians 5:19-21)

In the Greek it says we are ambassadors for Christ and ministers of reconciliation. You don’t have to be a paid member of a church staff to be a minister. We represent Christ. We speak for Christ. If we read on in 2 Corinthians 6:1 it says we are fellow workers with God, some translations say we are partners with God in the work of salvation. This is what Paul was doing. He was moved and upset by the lostness of the people of Athens. He was provoked to action – provoked to every day go to where the people were, both in the synagogue and also to the marketplace and every day he went there and talked with everyone he met. He went into the marketplace and talked to people about who God is and about salvation, how they can meet peace with God.

We ourselves must allow God to stir our hearts – to provoke us – to open our eyes to the lost condition of the people around us. We are not called to hide away the good news but to proclaim it – to proclaim that God is knowable and near – to be his ambassadors. We are called to make known the unknown God to those around us. Every day we go to our own marketplace – to our schools, or our jobs, or the supermarket – every day we can follow Paul’s example and talk to those around us about Jesus. Paul was just not a minister on Sundays, but he was a minister every day of the week. We must challenge ourselves to live intentionally, to make decisions that position ourselves with people who need to know Jesus and then to use conversation as a means of sharing the Good News.