The Unknown God Made Known

Acts 17:22-28 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.’

About eleven or twelve years ago, when I was Bible college, in order for me to obtain my degree, I had to enroll in and complete a course that I wasn’t particularly thrilled about, that course was called, “Introduction to Christian Philosophy”.

Now, when I first started that course, the professor described philosophy as, the study of thought. I sarcastically thought to myself, “Well, geez! This sure sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun!”. And indeed, it was a challenging course to complete, but I walked away from that course with a great appreciation of the discipline of philosophy.

Really, at its core, philosophy is the use of reason in understanding things, it is the process that is involved in figuring things out, particularly deep things.

Now, if you have a starting point from which you start at and work from, the discipline of philosophy can be something very enjoyable. This is especially true when you have an eternal starting point. So, when you start with God and then seek to understand why things are the way that they are, you will find some amazing discoveries.

But, if you don’t have an eternal starting point, the discipline of philosophy proves itself to be increasingly frustrating, depressing, and always pointing to nothingness.

If you do not believe in the existing of an eternal Being Who is actively at work in the world and in life, then the conclusion that you will always come to is that there is no purpose at all whatsoever, you become a nihilist, one who believes that there is no purpose, meaning, or value to life.

This is the dilemma of the atheistic philosopher, but even for the philosopher who does believe in the existence of God or, a god, who does not hold to the belief in the existence of the God Who makes Himself known in the Bible eventually comes to the point to where they say, “Well, there probably is a God, but He can’t possibly be known”. And so, they’re back at square one, trying to find truth and ultimate meaning apart from an eternal Being.

The philosophers in throughout the narrative that we are working through this month, those who regularly met at Mars Hill were invariably in one of these two camps. Some of them outright denied the existence of anything non-material. So, they didn’t believe in any kind of spiritual force whatsoever. Thus, they always found themselves coming to the conclusion that there is nothing and that ultimately nothing, no purpose defines everything.

But there were others who did believe in the existence of gods, but they felt as though it was impossible to really know those gods and therefore, they knew that finding purpose in their gods was futile.

Well, as we begin the exposition of our reading for today, what we see is Paul’s response to the leading philosophers and academics on Mars Hill when they asked him to explain orthodox Christianity to them. And as we will see throughout our exposition today, that Paul begins to explain his philosophical convictions by declaring the God of heaven and earth and Who He is.

And throughout his communication with the Mars Hill philosophers, what we see Paul doing is what you might call, meeting them where they’re at, starting from their current understanding.

We see this right away in verse 22 and 23 of our reading, where we read:

Acts 17:22-23 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.

Now, remember that in our sermon from last week, we spoke of how Paul observed the religious perversity in Athens, particularly the seemingly endless number of shrines to idols throughout the city and how it provoked his spirit, how it, bothered him greatly. And here, Paul addresses that very issue.

He said that as he was passing along through the city, he observed all of their objects of worship, leading him to the conclusion that they are in every way, very religious.

Now, in the Greek, this term for “religious” could be used as either “devout” or “superstitious”, but the latter is probably better here in light of what Paul says in verse twenty-three.

But, we need to really focus on “in every way” which signifies that the Athenians were superstitious “in every way” when it came to their religion, attempting to ensure that they left nothing out of their religious devotions, but covered all bases. So, you may say that Paul was telling the Mars Hill philosophers that he had observed that the citizens of Athens were devoutly superstitious.

And he says that he came to that conclusion because he says that as he was walking though the city and observing the various religious shrines, he came upon a particular shrine that had the inscription, “to the unknown god”.

Now, this is much more interesting than it probably appears to be, because as Paul would later write in his epistle to the Romans, God has so clearly manifested Himself to every human being so as to leave all people without excuse when they refuse to properly worship Him.

Now, there are countless ways that God makes Himself knows, but right now, let’s briefly talk about three specific ways that God makes Himself known.

God makes Himself known first, through creation. You look at the created order, you look at everything around you and you are forced to come to the conclusion that everything is… created. And if it was created, then there must be a Creator.

The second way that God makes Himself known is through everyone’s built-in conscience. How is it that we are all born with an innate sense of right and wrong? The only explanation can be that God Himself put it there.

And the third way that God makes Himself known is through the scriptures. In this book, God has revealed not only a great many details about His character and His attributes, but also everything that is necessary to be made right with God and to properly worship God.

Now, not everybody is able to make use of the third option, not everybody has the opportunity to read the Bible, but everybody can see creation and everybody has a conscience, and it is for this reason that man has a natural urge to worship. The problem that man has though, is that he naturally refuses to worship God as He truly is, but he still feels the natural draw to worship, and so, instead of worshipping God as He truly is, he turns to perversions of God and worships that as God.

R.C. Sproul said it best, when he said, “The sin of man is not atheism; it is religion, which is how we distort God’s revelation of Himself. We shape a deity in our own image and make houses for Him with our own hands, and serve and worship the creature rather than the Creator, exchanging the glory of God for a lie.”

But what is so remarkable about this is that no matter where you go, no matter what culture or society you find yourself in is that not only will you see people worshipping, but in addition to the idols or the ideas that they bow down to that there is also a “Big God” out there somewhere Who they don’t know anything about, but they know that He is the biggest One out there.

And as the Athenians had their altar to the “unknown god” so was it an altar to the “Big God” Who they don’t understand. They knew that there was something out there, Someone out there, they just didn’t know Who or what it was, and so, to be safe, they made an altar to a God Who is unknown to them.

And now, Paul stands before the philosophers at Mars Hill and he says that he speaks of this God, the God of heaven and earth, the God Who they do not know and now he is about to make Him known.

In verse twenty-four, Paul says that this “unknown god” is in fact “the God Who made the world and everything in it”. So, saying that He made everything Paul proclaims that this God literally made everything! That every last part of creation was made by Him and thus everything has its origin from Him.

But look even closer at what he says here in verse twenty-four: “The God Who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth”.

Let’s stop right there and look closely at what Paul is saying. “Lord” here properly means “Yahweh”. “Yahweh” is the personal name of the only legitimate God, and what “Yahweh” means is “to be”, which also means, “I AM”. So, Paul says to those at Mars Hill that the God Who he makes known to them this very day is the God Who ever is, Who never has been or will be, but ever is.

And Paul says that because this God ever is, because He is indeed “the Yahweh”, then it naturally follows that He does not live in temples made by man, no temple, no house can contain Him.

Neither is He served in the sense that He is needful of being served, as though He ceases to be truly God if there are none to serve Him. While the foolish theologies concerning false gods stated that these gods neededto be served, the reality is that the true God needs not to be served, it adds nothing to Him. And being Yahweh, He Who is, we of course know that He requires nothing.

But rather, the contrary, for as Paul says there at the end of verse twenty-five, the true God is the One Who “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything”. He created, He sustains, He doesn’t need us, we need Him!

And in verse twenty-six to the end of our reading, Paul goes on to say that this God can indeed be known as He has made Himself able to be known, first by saying that God, “made from one man”, that is, God made, starting with the first man, Adam, “every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth”.

In this, Paul says that the only true God has made all things and all people, every kingdom on earth throughout its entire history and has thus “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place”, meaning that God not only made everything, but also determined which kingdoms would rule, when they would rule, how long they would rule, and over what they would rule.

And he says that this was and is accomplished so “that they should seek God”, that is, long to find the One Who they instinctually know is, the One Who they instinctually know is the I AM. That they would seek Him and perhaps find Him when and if He reveals Himself to them.

But though this is the case, “He is actually not far from each one of us”, indeed, the evidence of Him is all around, and thus these philosophers who so vigorously sought the truth failed to see the truth right in front of them.

Paul says that even the poets and the philosophers that those on Mars Hill looked up to spoke concerning the Lord, one of them being Parmenides, who confessed that it is in the most high God that all people exist and continue to exist. He didn’t anything about this most high God, but he nonetheless instinctually knew that there was such a God Who was the cause and sustained of all things.

And also, Aratus, another poet and philosopher who was admired particularly by the Stoics as he said, “we are indeed His offspring”, confessing to a “Yahweh” of sorts.

And so, here, Paul was exposing three false Greek ideas: (1) God was unknowable; (2) God lived in man-made temples; (3) God was not involved in human affairs.

And Paul says to these Mars Hill philosophers, 1. Nature reveals it to you, 2. Your natural conviction that there is an eternal Being reveals it to you, and 3. Many of your own philosophers reveal it to you.

And indeed, it is this God that the apostle Paul reveals. It is this God that you and I are charged to reveal today! Reveal Him!

Amen?