|
About Jesus Steve Sweetman This Section - Chapters 17 Previous Section - Chapters 16 ch. 17:1-9 ch. 17-10-15 ch. 17-16-34 In Thessalonica (ch. 17:1 - 9)
We
can date this part of Paul's trip around 49 or 50 A D, when Claudius when
emperor of the In
verses 1 and 2 we see that the next major stop for Paul and his companions
was Thessalonica where they found a synagogue, unlike In
some circles of Christianity such reasoning and debate as Paul is doing
here is considered futile and useless.
I don't think this way.
I believe that such intellectual reasoning has its place, as long
as we understand that the Holy Spirit in the final analyses is the one who
changes the heart.
We can help with the intellect, but only the Holy Spirit can speak
to the heart of a person. It's
my thinking that Evangelicals in the past have spent much time preaching
to inspire and have ignored reasoning to educate. Biblical education is
important. We
should note that in this synagogue there would have been what we've talked
about before, and that is God-fearers.
God-fearers were Gentiles who weren't converts to Judaism but they
supporters of Judaism.
They liked the Jews monotheistic religion and the morality taught
by the Law of Moses.
In
verse 3 Paul clearly states that "this Jesus who I am proclaiming is
the Christ", or, the Messiah.
As I have just said, Paul’s logic is clear.
You help these people believe from Scripture what the Christ had to
go through, and then you point to Jesus and tell them that He has gone
through exactly what you have just said.
Verse
4 tells us that Paul was successful in his attempt to win over many of
these people.
Luke specifically says that many Jews, and God-fearing Greeks,
including many prominent women, believed Paul and followed him. Note
the term "prominent women".
In Greek culture, women had more control over their lives than in
Hebrew culture.
This is why there were prominent women in Greek communities, which
we see here.
Paul
would preach the gospel to both Jews and Gentiles, as we are seeing
through the book of Acts.
The Jews struggled with the idea that their Messiah must suffer.
The Gentiles had no problem with that.
However, the Gentiles had a problem with the resurrection of Jesus.
Greeks were strong intellectuals, and a dead person rising to new
life defied good intellect.
The Jews, especially the Pharisees, not the Sadducees, believed in
the resurrection.
If you could get a Pharisee to believe in the death of their
Messiah, you could easily get him to believe in the resurrection.
With
every new convert came jealous Jews and their leaders, and this situation
was no different than any other city Paul had visited, as we see in verse
5. As
in Phililppi the market place plays an important part in the life of a
first century city.
Certain Jews found some bad characters, just waiting for a fight.
They stirred up these bad characters and in turn they started a
riot, hoping to blame Paul for the trouble.
Speaking
of the market place, it seems to be one of Paul's favourite spots to
preach and teach the gospel to the gentiles.
We see this many times.
The market place in the The
Jewish agitators went to the house of a brother in Christ named Jason.
They intended to find Paul and Silas at Jason's house and then drag
them down to the market place where the mob would be rioting.
When the authorities would see Paul and Silas in the middle of the
riot, they would figure they started it.
The Jews hoped then that Paul and Silas would be arrested.
In
49 A D Claudius decreed that the Jews could not assemble in large crowds
because of a riot they hard started earlier.
This might well be why the Jews got the Gentile low life to riot on
their behalf. Verse
6 tells us that Paul and Silas were not at Jason's house so they dragged
Jason down to the market place instead.
From
this point to the end of this section the Jews explained that Paul and
Silas were teaching things against Roman law, mainly that there was
another King, and He was not Caesar.
That would be tyranny.
After hearing this there was even more turmoil among the officials
and the mob.
Thing settled down after the officials made Jason and his friends
post bond in order to have Jason released.
Verse 10 tells us that the brothers sent Paul and his
friends away at night in order for them not to be seen.
They headed south to In 1 Corinthians 9:16 Paul tells us that he was
compelled to preach the gospel. He
said woe to me if I don't preach. I'm
sure that Paul could have declined Jesus' call on his life, but knowing
what Paul went through on the road to Luke tells his readers that the Jews in Verse 15 tells us that Silas and Timothy stayed in In
verse 16 Luke says that while Paul was in Athens
he “was very distressed” over the abundance of idols in this city.
Paul had met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. He
had seen many visions from Jesus as well.
Paul was deeply dedicated to his Lord and Saviour.
No wonder he was distressed when he saw all of these idols.
Christians today need to be distressed as well with the
anti-Christian culture around us, especially as it is invading the church
these days.
The problem is that we are not as distressed as we should be.
We are way too lax in our faith and practice when it comes to these
things. Sin
should disturb us.
Some might say Paul's distress was due to his personality, and
there might be a bit of truth to that.
However, I strongly believe Paul's relationship with Jesus caused
most of this distress.
In
verse 17 Paul went to the synagogue as usual and “reasoned” with both
the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles.
Note again the word “reasoned”.
Yes, Paul preached, but he also entered into a dialogue, reasoned,
or debated, with those who would enter such a debate. Paul
did not stop at such debates in the synagogue this time.
We see him going to the “marketplace” again to reason with
anyone who would listen to him.
The
marketplace in Athens, as well as in other cities, was more than a place where people bought
and sold merchandise. It
was a meeting place where philosophers gathered to discuss and debate the
issues of the day, a place where Paul himself would fit in quite nicely.
The marketplace was truly a marketplace for the exchange of ideas.
Again, you might say that the market place was our modern day
radio, TV, or internet. If
you wanted to hear the latest news, you went to the marketplace.
This is probably where our English term "marketplace of
ideas" originated from.
There
were two groups of philosophers reasoning with Paul in Athens. One
group was known as Epicureans. These men did not believe in a god who was
supreme over all.
In reality they did not believe in any deity.
They tolerated the idea that there might be some gods, but if they
did exist they had no authority in the affairs of men and nations.
Because they did not believe in the divine, these men did not
believe that the soul of men carried on into the next life.
Once one died, he was gone forever.
This resulted in the emphasis on material and physical things in
this life.
The pursuit of pleasure was utmost in their lives.
If one would only disappear at the end of life, he or she should do
whatever pleased them in this life, whether in the pursuit of material
things, the pleasure of sex, or even criminal activity.
If it pleased you to go on a killing rampage, then go ahead.
Life was all about making one happy.
These people were simply hedonistic in both their thinking and
practice.
It seems to me that our western world society is heading in the
same direction today. The
other group was called Stoics, and they were pantheists.
The Pantheists concept of God is that God is everything.
That is to say, God did not create things, but all things are god.
A tree is part of god.
Men are part of god.
Everything in the universe is god, and not his creation.
Their moral life was of a higher quality than the Epicureans.
They stressed the importance of reason.
Reason was ultimate.
What reason could figure out would determine what was right or
wrong or good or bad.
For example if someone reasoned his life to be no longer worth
living it was good for him to kill himself, thus the first two leaders of
this group did just that, and many followed their example. These
groups and others in the marketplace thrived on debating with one another.
They had a good measure of tolerance for each other.
They just loved to sit around in the marketplace and debate back
and forth. They lived for these daily discussions.
So, when Paul came along, they found him very interesting to reason
with. We
should note that there was no opposition to Paul among these Gentile
debaters. They were glad to hear from Paul. They
may not have agreed with him, but they loved the interchange they had with
him. In
verse 18 Luke records two comments of many that were directed towards
Paul. They
are, “what is this babbler trying to say”, and “he seems to be
advocating foreign gods”.
They said these things about Paul because he was preaching that
Jesus rose from the dead.
The term "foreign gods" clearly suggest that Jesus had
not been preached to these men before.
The
words "gods" to me suggest how these men interpreted what Paul
was saying.
Paul was speaking about God and about Jesus.
To these men, that meant they thought Paul was speaking about more
than one god.
They might well have thought that he was polytheistic. These
men thought Paul was simply babbling away about nothing.
Though they enjoyed the debate, most of them did not take him
seriously. Verses
19 and 20 tell us that some of these men took Paul to a meeting of the
Areopagus.
The Areopagus was the supreme council of the city.
Men who were a part of this governing group were very high class
and influential men, and were a part of this council for life.
This was not a trial.
These men were curious to hear what Paul had to say. They asked
Paul if they could know this new teaching that he was presenting.
They understood Paul to be bringing some strange ideas to their
ears, and they wanted to know what it all meant.
You can tell by what Luke says this was not a trial.
Luke tells his readers that all of the Athenians spent their whole
day hearing the latest new teachings.
Once again, in verse 21 we see that these men loved to debate.
These people loved to hear the latest new ideas, and Paul was now
bringing the newest teaching to their ears. The
people in In
verses 22 and 23, when addressing the Areopagus, Paul comments on their
form of worshipping multiple gods.
In verse 23 he notes that these people are very religious, pointing
out the various temples, shrines and statues to all of these gods. Remember,
Paul is not talking to Jews now.
He is speaking to Gentiles, and to Athenians in particular, so, his
words are chosen carefully to meet their needs.
He has no need to speak of the Old Testament Law.
These people know very little about such things, although I am sure
that some had a little understanding of Judaism. Paul
tells these men that he noticed one alter with the inscription to “the
unknown god”. Some have said that in the framework of the sentence we
must note that this god is a specific god.
They just don’t know his name.
They were not covering their tracks by saying that we have all
sorts of gods, and here is another alter to any god that we might have
left out.
They believed that there was another god.
They just did not know his name or who he was. On
the other hand, other scholars have suggested that this statue to the
“unknown god’ was indeed a statue that would cover the tracks of these
Athenians; just in case they missed a god.
Which idea is correct, I don’t know.
What
an opportunity for Paul.
He took this as a means to proclaim who this unknown god was.
He took something that they understood to begin his proclamation of
the gospel, something that all preachers should do. It's
just a simple matter of relating to the people you're trying to win to
Jesus. You
reach them on their level. In
verse 24 Paul says that the God who made heaven and earth and all therein
is the Lord.
By saying this he is implying that this unnamed god is the God of
creation, and thus is above all other gods.
To further things more, this God does not live in temples made by
the hands of men, which their were many temples dedicated to many gods.
This is a point that many evangelicals, especially in the last
generation, need or needed to understand. I
think we as Evangelicals in the past put too much emphasis on the church
building as the “house of God”.
God does not live in our buildings we call church.
He is only their when His people gather together in the presence of
the Holy Spirit. In
verse 25 Paul says that this God “is not served by human hands, as if He
needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and
everything else”.
What Paul is saying here is that the true God, the Creator God,
can’t be properly worshipped by His creation.
There is nothing that we can give God that would be important
enough in His sight as a means of worship.
Humanity is just too lost and too far below whom God is that any
attempt of worship apart from the Holy Spirit is meaningless. Paul
continues in verse 25 to say that God has given us our very life’s
breath and everything in this universe.
How can we give Him something meaningful in return that would
compare to that. We certainly can't give life to God.
Whatever we might have to give Him is all His in the first place.
Of course, we know what He wants.
He does not want our possessions, He wants us. Paul
did not believe in Darwinian Evolution.
In verse 26 he says that “from one man He made all nations”.
Paul is giving these people a history lesson.
He is going back to the creation of all things.
If his audience could understand that the God he serves created all
things, then this God must be far more superior to any other god that
these men would worship. In
our western world today there is a move among some to unite their
Christian faith with other religions.
One such attempt is to unite Christianity with North American
native or Indian worship.
North American natives worship the Creator as they would call him.
If Paul were here today, he would teach that the Creator is in fact
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I really don't know why some Christians want to go backwards in
life and worship the Creator, when they know, or should know, that the
Creator is Jesus.
The
last half of verse 26 has always been interesting to me.
Paul believed that God wanted man to inhabit the whole earth, and
He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they
should live.
This tells me two things.
One is obvious.
God made man to inhabit the whole earth, as is recorded in the
Genesis account, but, Paul goes further. He
says that God has predetermined the extent of where man will live.
That is to say, if God wants man to live on the moon, or on Mars,
then he will, but if not, he won’t.
You might even go as far to say that God wanted man to only inhabit
the whole earth and nothing more.
If God wanted man to inhabit more than the earth, he would have
told man to inhabit the universe.
God told man in Genesis 1:28 “to be fruitful and increase in
numbers, fill the ‘whole earth’ and subdue it.
Rule over the fish … the birds … and over every living creature
that moves on the ground”.
There is no hint here of God commanding man to subdue the universe.
The
reason Paul gives that God created us and wanted us to inhabit the whole
earth is stated in verse 27.
Man was to reach out to God in the process of subduing the earth.
This was to be a cooperative thing between God and man, but Adam
forfeited this cooperative responsibility.
In
verse 28 Paul suggests that it is not hard for us to reach out to God
because “in Him we live and move and have our being”.
What Paul means here is that we are living in the middle of God’s
creation.
Everything in nature was created by God and should be a constant
reminder of God the Creator.
You can see more about this in Romans 1. You
can take Paul’s words one step further.
One of the five divine characteristics of God is that He is
omnipresent.
This means that God is everywhere at all times.
There is not one place in both the natural or spiritual universe
where He is not.
In this sense of the word, we thus live and move and have our very
being in Him, whether we recognize it or not. In
verse 28 Paul quotes from “their own poets” who say that man is
“god’s offspring”.
Paul is saying that your poets and philosophers have almost got it
right. In
one sense we are God’s offspring since He made us in His likeness and
image, which means He made us similar to Himself and a shadow of Himself,
although we are not divine in nature as God is.
We've
got to be clear here in our understanding.
When Paul says that we are God's offspring, that does not mean we
are little gods as the New Age Movement preaches today.
We are like Him, but we are not Him.
Then, when man fell from God's image and likeness, we are clearly
not even closely related to what God originally created us to be.
Verse
29 shows how logical a man Paul was.
This logic is well documented in the book of Romans and throughout
the rest of Paul's letters.
He says that if we are God’s offspring, then “we should not
think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – and images
made by man’s design…” If
this were so then God Himself would be made of gold or silver or stone.
Logic would tell us that God looks more like us than something that
we could make.
So, how can a golden statue be a god, or even represent a god
properly?
At this point Paul’s logic has these men in a corner.
What kind of a reply could they possibly give?
Paul
is building a case and being somewhat philosophical in his attempt, but
now he makes a bold statement. He says in verse 30, “in the past God
overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to
repent”.
What did God overlook in times past?
He overlooked the idea that He can be represented by created
objects.
He overlooked idol worship, but no more.
He now commands “all men everywhere to repent”.
Notice the words “all men everywhere”.
Paul is duplicating himself.
He is making sure that those listening to him understand that not
one person in the world is excluded from repenting.
What he is saying is not for any one group of people.
It is for “all men everywhere”. What
should all men repent of?
They should repent of their worshipping of things made by their
hands. This
indeed should speak to the very heart of these Athenians. They have a
multitude of shrines and objects that they worship. It
should speak to us in the western world today.
Even though we don't call it idol worship, we certainly give
ourselves to the things we have created.
This is really idol worship.
In
verse 31 Paul goes on to say that there will come a day when God will
judge all mankind through the One that He has appointed to make this
judgement.
Paul is saying that this unknown God who has created all things
will bring all things back to Himself in a day of judgment.
We will all have to stand before this God and give account of
ourselves.
This brings a real measure of seriousness to what Paul is saying. Many
of these Athenians as we have noted did not believe in life after death,
and now Paul is saying that there is a final judgement by God at the end
of life here on earth.
This is a very sobering thought.
These men ought to consider with great seriousness what Paul has to
say. Paul
is now in the process of bringing an intellectual debate down to a heart
felt and serious thing that they need to commit themselves to. Paul
says that God has appointed someone to be this judge.
He does not give his name as yet.
I am sure that those listening are beginning to now wonder who Paul
might be talking about.
He says that He has given authority to this one to judge by raising
him from the dead.
Once again, we see Paul speaking of the resurrection, and life
after death.
Would these people understand what he was saying?
They certainly did not believe in any such thing as life after
death. Their motto would be “let us eat and drink and be merry for
tomorrow we may die”. Luke
tells us in verse 32 just how these people took Paul’s words.
Some sneered.
That was to be expected. Yet on the other hand some wanted to hear
more on this subject.
Their curiosity, and maybe the Holy Spirit, was getting the best of
them. Once
again Paul had no alter call, no appeal for salvation.
Some people simply came to believe while he was speaking and became
followers of Jesus. The
one thing we notice concerning Paul's interaction with these people is
that he did not leave them with a pure intellectual debate.
He brought it all home to these men.
He confronted them with their sin, with Jesus, with repentance, and
with judgment.
He brought them to a place where they had to make a decision about
what he was saying.
Luke
tells us that a man named Dionysius believed what Paul said.
He was one of these influential men in
|