The Unknown God

This sermon was preached at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Cherry Log, Georgia on Sunday, May 5, 2013 by Pastor Paul Mims.

Acts 17:16-21
At our hotel in Athens they told us to write down in Greek the name and address of the hotel so that the cab drivers would know how to return us to the right place. As you can imagine it would be hard to communicate with someone who did not know English and find your way around a city where every sign and street name was in a different language from your own. Athens is a magnificent city today and we were excited about exploring it. We wanted to see the place where Paul gave his speech to the philosophers of Athens on Mars Hill. We found that the speech is inscribed in bronze at the bottom of the hill. It read as recorded in Acts 17:22-31:

“Men of Athens, I see that in all respects you are very religious. As I was walking through your city and observing your objects of worship I found an altar bearing the inscription: ‘To an Unknown God’. I hereby declare to you the nature of what you worship as unknown.

The God who made the world and everything that is in it is Lord of heaven and earth and does not dwell in temples made by human hands. It is not because he is in need of anything that he accepts service at men’s hands, for it is he who gives to all men life and breath and everything else. He has made every race of men from one stock, to occupy the whole face of the earth, and he has ordained the allotted periods and the frontiers of their habitable territory. His purpose was that they should seek God, so as to touch him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being,’ as in fact some of your poets have said – ‘for we are also his offspring’. Since then we are God’s offspring we ought not to think that the divinity is like an object of gold or silver or stone, engraved by human art and design.

God has overlooked the period of your ignorance, but now he commands men that all of them everywhere should repent, because he has set a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has provided a pledge to all by raising him from the dead.”

Paul was in Athens by himself. The opposition had driven him out of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. Converts had accompanied him on the two hundred mile journey to Athens and left him there. To help the new churches get stabilized they had left Luke at Thessalonica, and Silas and Timothy at Berea. Here he was, a Christian missionary, alone, in a pagan city. He walked through the Agora, the marketplace where the people of the city came in great numbers. There he talked and reasoned with the Epicureans and the Stoics who were the leading thinkers of the day.

The Epicureans were the “atomic” people of the era. They understood that all matter was made up of “particles” which we know as atoms. They did not deny the existence of gods they just saw them as far removed and non-caring about humanity. In their belief there was no divine control of anything. There was no afterlife and the goal of this life was to be free of physical and mental pain.

The Stoics were just the opposite. They were pantheists and believed that there was a divine providence or principle behind everything that bound the entire cosmos together. They believed that they could discover ultimate truth for and in themselves. The ultimate life was to be lived by the power of the reasoning mind. The goal of their lives was happiness which was found only in the pursuit of virtue which they looked for in the various gods.

Are we much different in our world today? The world’s major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, are making inroads as are a variety of cults, New Age philosophies, occult activities and even traditional paganism. How do we cope with a world that knows or cares so little about the truth of Jesus Christ? Paul left us a helpful model when he visited the world center of pagan philosophy and religion—Athens” (The NIV Quiet Time Bible).

One scholar has noted that “The prevailing philosophies of the West’s post-Christian era – secular humanism’s scientific empiricism and the New Age pantheistic type of post-modernism – are remarkably similar to the Epicureanism and Stoicism Paul encountered at Athens.” (MacArthur).

In effect, the population of Athens through all of these idols and inscriptions to the gods said to Paul:

I. WE KNOW THAT GOD IS THERE BUT WE HAVE NOT FOUND HIM.

Paul was greatly disturbed in his spirit when he saw that the city was full of idols. He reasoned with the Jews in the synagogue that Jesus is the Christ and on the streets with those who would listen to him. Some of the Epicureans and Stoics disputed what he said. They asked each other, “What is he trying to say? He seems to be advocating foreign gods.”

They wanted to know more so they took him from the Agora to the meeting of the Areopagus which was the civil court of the city. The court had become identified with the place. Before this court Socrates had been accused of introducing new gods. Paul got used to this. He appeared before the magistrates in Philippi, the proconsul at Corinth, the Roman governors at Caesarea, the Jewish Sanhedrin, King Agrippa, and perhaps the Roman Emperor. Paul was not on trial here, but was invited to address the civil authorities meeting on Mars Hill.

“We want to know what this new teaching is that you are presenting” they said. Paul begins by saying, “I see that you are very religious. As I walked around your city I saw many idols and an inscription which said, ‘To the unknown God.’ He is the one I am proclaiming to you.”

People are no different today than they were in Paul’s time. We are all created in the image of God with an insatiable desire to know him. Look across the world at the many pagan religions. Behind them all is a search for God. They know he is there – but they haven’t found him yet.

The same is true here in the Bible belt. Many people know that God is real and they even can quote bible verses and tell Bible stories. But they have not found him personally, for themselves, yet. They are religious, but lost. They are spiritual, but empty. We often hear, “I am not religious as far as church membership goes, but I am spiritual.” Of course you are! We are all spiritual beings with a great capacity to know God. But some of us have not found him.

Listen to Michael’s story:

“I had an ordinary middle class childhood in a pleasant Irish seaside town surrounded by loving and supportive parents. I did reasonably well at school and although not particularly wealthy, I lacked for nothing. We even attended church regularly, and although God seemed a rather remote and somewhat austere figure who we should fear, church attendance did give me a good sense of right and wrong and an awareness of the need to consider the needs of others in my personal choices. Outwardly I was comfortable and secure.”

However Jesus himself said that “Life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions”. We live in materialistic society where success is measured by our consumption, our jobs, our cars, and the amount of stuff we own. When we reduce life to the material and ignore the spiritual aspect of our beings, we do so at our peril. What Jesus meant was that the secret of REAL life is much more than scurrying working to buy more stuff – the meaning of life won’t be found there.

Although outwardly happy and content with every material need met, internally where no-one could see, I had an aching emptiness and longed to understand life’s purpose. I remember even at seven years old considering what life was about whilst lying in bed and at eleven sitting in the garden alone on a summer’s evening looking at the stars and being oppressed by melancholic thoughts about the vastness and anonymity of the universe and my place in it!

The turning point came when a Christian friend invited me to his church. The people were kind, genuine and loving and although I thought they were all slightly mad I was attracted to something I knew they had which I lacked which, although I didn’t realize it, was inner peace. A few weeks later it was Easter and the leader of the church spoke on Jesus’ Resurrection. At that moment I knew that I believed it, that it had actually happened and that therefore everything Jesus had said about himself was true.

Christians are often accused of having “blind” faith, but real faith, as the Christian writer Ravi Zacharias says, is the response of trust based on “the prophecies, person and work of Christ, His resurrection from the dead and numerous other affirmations [that] do have points of verification in history”. Although I didn’t know it at the moment, I have since researched the resurrection intensively and it stands the weight of two thousand years of scrutiny as a historical event. Since it was true, I knew I had to act, and that night I kneeled by my bed and asked Jesus to forgive the wrong things I had done and take control of my life.

From that moment my life has changed; I came to experience a deep sense of emotional peace and an inner completeness which can only be described as the lights coming on in my heart or the jigsaw pieces falling into place. I have come to realize that a fulfilled life is one that has the will of God as its focus and not the appetites of the materialist culture we live in today. If you feel an emptiness inside or a purposelessness to your life – ask Jesus to reveal himself to you – I have experienced personally that he alone can meet those inner needs; nothing or nobody can do that but Him.” ( From Life 93.1 FM, Cork, Ireland).
Paul said to the Philosophers on Mars Hill:

II. I HAVE FOUND HIM AND YOU CAN TOO.

“You can know him as your CREATOR” Paul said to them. He is the Supreme Being behind all that is. He even made you in his own image. This sounded strange to their ears because they were engrossed in pantheism and the idea of only one God seemed absurd to them. Paul also told them that God was so great that he could not live in temples made with hands, but he could live in the temples of their hearts. You need him for he gives you the very breath that you breathe and everything that you need for life. (vv.22-25).

You can know his PURPOSE for your life. Paul said that he made every nation of men and set the times and places where they would live on the earth. He did this so that you would seek him. Reach out in faith and you will find him for he is not very far from you. (vv.26-27).

You can know him in WORSHIP. Paul quotes from one of their own poets and makes a spiritual application of what he said. The poet was Aratus who lived in the first half of the third century B.C., and may have been writing this to Zeus: “In him we live and move and have our being. We are his offspring.” (v.28). We are the true God’s offspring and should know that such a Divine Being is not like any image that man can make in gold or silver or stone with his own craftsmanship. (v.29).

You should know that JUDGMENT is coming. God has overlooked your ignorance of him in the past, but now that you have heard of him he commands you to repent for he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by a man he has appointed. The proof of this is that he raised him for the dead! (vv.30-31).

The response from these intellectuals was that some of them sneered at such a teaching. Others said, “We want to hear more about this.” A few of them became believers. One of them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, and a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. (vv.32-34). No church was established there during Paul’s time, but later on Athens became a strong center of Christian faith.

There are always those to whom God speaks and they respond. There is a folk hymn that is identified with our Appalachian area even though the author is not known:

“What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul,
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul?

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul,
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of Life
To lay aside his crown for my soul?”

You may not know God, but he knows you!

PRAISE BE TO HIS NAME!