Easter Sunday - Acts 17:22-34

Introduction:

If you have your Bibles let me invite you to open with me to the book of Acts 17.

We will begin reading in verse 22 here in just a moment.

If you had one opportunity to stand before a group of people to explain the gospel of Jesus Christ…, where would you begin?

What if that group of people had no familiarity with the Bible, with God, with the historical life or teaching of Jesus?

Where do you begin to describe the most important message int he world?

This is the situation the apostle Paul finds himself in as he stands before the Areopagus council in the city of Athens.

Paul’s teaching in the synagogues and in the marketplace of the city of Athens has grabbed the attention of the city’s council.

They have taken Paul and brought him to the council for this purpose, that he might explain what he has been teaching.

It is a remarkable thing that we have in our Bibles the summary of Paul’s words to these authorities in the city of Athens 2,000 years ago.

Where would you start with an attentive audience who needed to hear the most important message in the world?

it is such an occasion that we turn our attention this morning:

Acts 17:22–34 ESV

22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ 29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

Lets Pray

The city of Athens was a religious city.

Last week we talked bout the context of the city…,

and we noted that there were well over 70,000 objects of worship in the city, not to mention the massive temples dedicated to a variety of different deities.

In his opening words to these Athenians, Paul acknowledges the religiosity of the people.

They are worshippers.

Paul had observed their many objects of worship.

And he even found one altar with the inscription “to the unknown god.”

The inscription reveals the perspective of his audience.

They worshipped a vast plurality of deities…

but they themselves acknowledged their own ignorance to some degree.

They acknowledged that they might not know all the right deities, or the names of the deities,

whom they were supposed to be worshipping.

So it was a logical step to create an altar to the unknown god

after all they wanted to cover all their religious bases.

They wanted their crops to grow and their business to do well and their families to be healthy and they wanted whatever gods were out there to ensure that.

But Paul wants to start his message on this place of recognition…

this place of acknowledgment

Truth #1 Humanity is Religious but Ignorant

When I say religious,

I do not mean righteous.

I simply mean that humans are worshippers.

Primarily worshippers of self,

and whatever might guarantee the life we want.

We idolize whatever version of the good life our culture propagates, and we worship whatever we think will help us achieve that good life.

We are creatures who are naturally unsatisfied with the way life is.

We are creatures who are discontent with the brokenness of our world,

the pain, sickness, heartache, and death in our world,

We are creatures who want things,

we are in need,

we feel a sense of incompleteness,

We feel as if there must be something more.

There must be a greater purpose,

a meaning to life,

an ultimate joy,

a life beyond death.

We are not by our own human nature satisfied with being naturalist

we are not satisfied with believing a world narrative that says we are just a ball of random accidental atoms

atoms that by random chance assembled together to create life, to suffer, and to die, and to dissolve Into eternal nothingness.

There is something about humanity that reacts to that narrative,

There is something in us that says that can’t be right.

After worshipping every pleasure this world had to offer Augustine was converted to Christianity and he famously penned this prayer to God…,

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” - Augustine

We can’t help but to some degree be restlessly religious.

But that doesn’t mean we are righteous.…

The Athenians made for themselves objects that would represent the gods they did not know

They worshipped those objects in hopes that their longings would be satisfied.

They were indeed religious but ignorant.…

but lets not just hurl stones at the Athenians.

This is the condition of all mankind.

We all share this condition.

We either were living in this ignorance, or we currently are living in such ignorance.

It is an inescapable ignorance

unless there really is a God that we long for…,

and unless that God actually and truly reveals himself To humanity as he really is - the supreme being over all of creation.

This is the reality of our position .

We as creatures are not in the position to create for ourselves our own gods.

From our finiteness we cannot define, or describe, or create he who is infinite.

Recognize this this morning.

From your vantage point as a creature…

you can know nothing about God unless God reveals himself to you.

Our creator cannot be the product of our assumptions,

the result of our opinions,

the fabrication of our imaginations.

If there is a God who made us and all the physical world,

that God by definition must stand outside of us and beyond us

and if we are ever to know anything about him…, he must reveal it to us.

He must stoop from his infinity to make himself known to the finite.

Creator must step into creation to reveal himself as the one who is totally other than anything that was made.

Our natural temptation as limited and sinful creatures is to create a God for ourselves in our image on our level whom we pretend to serve, all in hopes that he might actually serve us.

Humanities sin nature expresses itself in this way.

We create gods for ourselves that will serve us,

gods we can manipulate,

gods we can carry with us to do our bidding,

gods who have rituals for us to perform in exchange for the life we want.

We want gods who approve of our sin rather than confront it.

Humans are religious but ignorant,

and not just ignorant.

We human beings are religious, ignorant, and we are arrogant.

We need God to reveal himself to us if we are to know him and the true meaning of reality itself.

We need God to inform us and to humble us.

We need the Creator to draw near to his creation.

Once Paul establishes agreement on their ignorance of God.

He transitions to correct their very limited and small and corrupted understanding of the true God.

Acts 17:24 ESV

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

Truth #2 God is Bigger AND Closer Than We Think

Let’s take the points one by one.

Paul emphasizes this

God Made the World and Everything In It

This is so essential for any gospel presentation.

Every human being must come to terms with the vastness of the created world we live in and the existence of THE glorious creator who stands above it all.

You exist and that is remarkable thing.

Why do you exist?

How do you exist?

Not only do you exist…

But you exist in an unfathomably large and complex universe

all sound logic and even science itself suggests that the material world must have a beginning…

It must have a first cause.

And that first cause of all things must be fundamentally different from any physical thing we can observe.

That first cause has to be of an a being that has no beginning.

That first cause has to be eternal.

That first cause is the creator of all that is.

To really consider the existence of an eternal God is staggering.

And the vastness of creation is supposed to cause us to marvel at the creator.

We went on a family vacation a couple weeks ago and I had a moment sitting on the back of our cruise ship looking out across the water at sunset.

I had a moment where I just felt the reality of how small my vantage point really was.

From my vantage point I could look in any and all directions and see only water In that moment of time…, and only the surface of the water at that.

I am so small that my eyes are not capable of seeing beyond the curvature of the earth to any land at all.

Did you know that a human being standing at sea level is only capable of seeing about 3 miles to the horizon.

Yet when we stand on a beach we marvel at the three miles of ocean surface water that we see.

Yet this is who God reveals himself to be to the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah asks the rhetorical question.

Isaiah 40:12 ESV

12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?

Creation screams that there is a very big, powerful, holy creator standing behind the magnitude and the majesty of creation.

A creator who obviously does not and could not be limited to temples made by human beings.

A creator who obviously does not and can not need humanity for anything at all.

A creator who obviously cannot be controlled by humanity or manipulated by humanity…

Christian, you may need to be reminded this morning….

God does not need you.

You personally are not necessary for him to accomplish anything at all.

Rather, the opposite is true.

You very much need Him for everything.

Acts 17:24–25 ESV

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Last week I challenged our church to fulfill God’s mission,

to spread his message,

to labor in evangelism

and discipleship

and church planting….

NOT because God needs us…,

but because the God who meets all of our needs both now and for eternity is worthy of proclaiming, and obeying and serving.

He is the source of our very life.

He sustains the breath I am using to preach this sermon.

Everything good I have every experienced or will ever enjoy flows from God.

He doesn’t need me.

But I need him.

And he made me that way,

He made me to need him because God who may not need me, but who wants me to rely on him in for my needs.

Truth #2 God is Bigger AND He is Closer Than We Think

He does not need humanity…

But he did create humanity for a reason.

He created humanity for relationship with him.

Acts 17:26–28 ESV

26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

God made humanity for a special purpose.

The book of Genesis tells us that humanity was made unlike any other creature in the universe.

Genesis 1:27–31 ESV

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Humanity was made to reflect the very image of their creator,

while enjoying all the good gifts he gave them.

We were made to enjoy his world and reflect his rule over the earth,

his relational nature,

his wisdom,

his love,

his creativity,

his glory to the ends of the earth.

We were made to be his children,

his offspring, who would depend on him and honor him as God our Father.

In him we live and move and have our being.

He is bigger than our wildest imaginations can take us…, but he is more personal than we might think possible.

The sin of humanity though, is that we reject him and we replace him.

Paul articulates the sin of humanity with crystal clarity in Romans 1.

Romans 1:19–25 ESV

19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Romans is just a more detailed articulation of what Paul warns about to the Athenians.

Acts 17:29 ESV

29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

In other words, you don’t get to decide what God is like,

or what he should be like,

or what he should say, or what he should do, o what he should accomplish through you.

You have to humbly submit yourself to whatever he reveals about himself

We are not god.

WE cannot create god or control god.

but our sin is such, that we want to be god,

or we at least want to create our own god that will serve us the way we would like.

It is a sin we are all guilty of…,

and it is a sin that God will judge.

Truth #3 God will Judge the World for Its Idolatry.

Acts 17:30–31 ESV

30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

There is a lot here in these two verses.

The one true God that deserves our worship and affection…,

has fixed a day in the future where he will judge not just the Athenians but the whole world.

He will judge the entire world in righteousness.

In other words…, he will do what is right.

He will distribute the due penalty for human rebellion.

As a just judge does, he will unleash judgment on idol worshippers who refuse to repent.

Those who refuse to turn from self worship, from false god worship,

from idol worship,

will in the end be judged by the true God they refused to believe in.

This is gospel truth.

This is essential truth.

If you want to understand the significance of the Christian message…

You have to understand the reality of coming judgment on a humanity that will not submit themselves to worship their creator.

The fact that God does not simply judge the whole world right now…,

is only a fact of grace.

The fact that this sermon has not been cut short thus far…. by the fixed day of God’s judgment...is a gift of grace to those in this room who have yet another day breathing God’s air to repent and to believe in the one true God.

Judgement is coming…,

and the world will be made new again, and no enemy of God will remain….

but notice who judgment will be coming through.

Thus far, Paul has only laid the foundation for the good news message…

He has only articulated the nature of God himself and the sin nature of humanity..

he has yet to get to the actual good news.

In verse 31 he is making the transition.

He identifies a person through whom righteous judgment will come.

A man whom God has appointed. …

One who has authority to judge the world in righteousness....

One whom Paul says rose from the dead….

In fact,

Paul bases everything he has said on the assurance that God has given according to the testimony of this resurrected man.

Acts 17:31 ESV

31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

This man apparently faced death itself.

He faced the curse of sin.

He faced the judgment that is due humanity.

He died.

And he then, with no help from us., God defeated death by rising this man from it.

This man experienced and overcame the very punishment that all of humanity deserves.

And this is what we gather to celebrate most fundamentally this morning.

Truth #4 Our Assurance is Found in the Resurrected Man

How do we know who the one true God is

and how can we be sure we will escape the judgment of that God.

….We know God

and we know how to escape the judgment of God….

because of the testimony of Jesus, the one who rose from the dead.

Jesus, the eternal son of God,

came to earth,

was born as a baby,

lived the perfect human life,

one that perfectly reflected the image of God for the glory of God,

and then sacrificed himself as an offering to receive the due penalty of sin…,

to overthrow the power of death for all who would repent and believe.

John 3:16 ESV

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Why would we believe something so wild?

Why would we bank our lives on this message?

Because he lives!

Jesus worked miracles

, and taught with divine authority,

and walked on water,

and fed the thousands,

and cast out demons,

and prophesied his own death,

and promised to get up from the grave three days later…,

and he did.

He is alive, and he is coming back to judge the earth in righteousness.

Those who repent from their idolatry and trust his saving work will live.

And those refuse him will be judged.

Our Assurance is Found in The Resurrected Man .

Now there is a whole lot more to say about Christianity and the beautiful workings of the gospel message.

There is a whole lot more to understand about the divinity of Jesus

and the humanity of Jesus,

and the teachings of Jesus

and how to follow Jesus…

Either Paul’s sermon as recorded here in Acts 17 is only a summary of what Paul taught…

OR

Paul aimed to just stir up further conversation

OR

the mention of resurrection totally provoked Paul’s listeners and derailed the rest of the time there at the Areopagus.

I think verse 32 could lead us to believe there was at least a pretty serious interruption once Paul made the claim that a man named Jesus had resurrected from the dead.

Acts 17:32–34 ESV

32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

These verses represent the choice before all of us.

Truth #5 We Have Two Options: Believe and Join God’s People Or Make a Mockery of the Message

When some heard about the resurrection of Jesus they literally made fun of Paul.

They determined that that message is ridiculous.

Its impossible.

Its silly.

That is not an uncommon response.

But lets remember their alternative.

Their alternative was to worship a multitude of made up gods that they created out of gold and silver and stone.

They rejected the claim of a real historical resurrection attested to by hundreds of eye witnesses that was consistent with thousands of years of Biblical prophecy and promises.

But they accepted a kind of mythology that they had always known of made up gods who thought act acted and spoke much like humans.

Don’t let the atheist or the agnostics of our culture mock our faith in the resurrected Jesus who reveals to us the very plan and purpose and character of God. …

while they go on believing that the whole created order exploded out of randomized particles of nothingness…

That there is no meaning to life or love or morality.

The claims of Christianity are not silly

They have to be reckoned with.

Some mocked them.

But some actually listened to the message.

Some wanted to hear more.

and you have to love how the author describes what happens.

Luke writes, “Some joined him and believed.”

You have to love that combination.

We know from the comprehensive teaching of Scripture that we are saved by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus to accomplish our salvation…

But that faith leads us to not only believe, but to join God’s people in God’s mission.

Even Dionysius the Areopagite believed and joined Paul.

He was one of the guys sitting on the council while his colleagues who ridiculed Paul.

he had everything to lose by associating himself with this babbler of resurrection.

yet he believed and he joined Paul in the work of sharing the message of this Jesus.

We have two options when it comes to easter Sunday and the claim of Jesus’ resurrection., not three options, not four options.

Two legitimate options:

We can believe and join or we can make a mockery of Jesus.

What we can’t do is say we believe,

and then go on to live our lives without repentance as if none of these things are true.

If God really is bigger than we think and closer than we think…, it changes how we live our lives.

If Judgment is really coming… it changes how we live our lives.

If Our only hope is found in the resurrected man… it changes how we live our lives.

It did so for the apostle Paul, for the council member Dionysius and it has done so with countless people in this room.

When we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus…,

we celebrate the fact that we too have experienceda spiritual resurrection of sorts already.

To believe in jesus the resurrected one,

is to experience a spiritual resurrection ourselves as we look forward to the day where our physical bodies are resurrected to enjoy eternal life forever and ever.

WE have been changed, brought from spiritual death to spiritual life by the power of the resurrected one.

Praise God that verse 23 doesn’t have to scare us who believe because of the assurance we have in resurrection life.

Acts 17:31 ESV

31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Conclusion:

Acknowledge your Spiritual ignorance and arrogance

Repent from Idolatry,

Believe in Jesus

Join God’s People

Rejoice at the good news of God.

Lets Pray