The Unknown God
Notes
Transcript
Culture
Culture
Is culture good or bad?
What are some good things in our culture?
What are some bad things?
How does God want us to interact with culture?
Today’s message will focus on how we engage the world around us. How do we connect to the good in our culture? How do we draw out the light that has been covered by darkness.
Pray
Read
16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.
18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?
20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.”
21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
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.
Athens
Athens
Athens represented a culture steeped in beauty and expression. It had a spectacular language that had been developed from the phonetician alphabet. The city, by the time of the Christian church, was a well established cultural center. Even the powerful Roman empire learned from and adopted much of the Greek culture into it’s own expression.
It was also very religious:
16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
Witnessing in Athens
Witnessing in Athens
17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.
18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?
20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.”
21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
Not much is said about his time with the Synagogue because it was likely similar to his interactions in other Gentile cities.
Who were the Epicureans and the Stoics?
Who were the Epicureans and the Stoics?
The Stoics believed in law—the law of nature and the law of conscience or duty. To them God is the immanent all-pervading energy by which the natural world is created and sustained. He is also the world reason or ‘*Logos’ which manifests itself in the order and beauty of the world. To the Stoics the good man is the wise man, and his wisdom consists in conformity to nature, i.e. in living according to the law of the universe embodied in the Divine reason. This ‘life according to nature’ was open to all men, even to slaves.
F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1555.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Epicureanism
The system of philosophical ethics founded by the Greek thinker Epicurus (342–270 BC). Epicurus held that the senses, as the one and only source of all our ideas, provided the sole criterion of all truth. On this basis he reasserted the materialistic atomism of Democritus and denied immortality. He did not reject the existence of gods, but refused to concede their interference in human affairs. The goal of human conduct he sought in pleasure, which he equated with freedom from pain and from fear.
The called him a babbler. Greek is literally seed-picker but implies a person who grabs whatever concepts please them without a coherent structure.
Paul would be faced with the full force of greek cultural thinking.
At the Areopagus
At the Areopagus
Connect
Connect
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.
Clarify
Clarify
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,
Confront
Confront
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.”
Counsel
Counsel
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.
Witness in your culture today!
Witness in your culture today!
What arena has God placed you in? Where or to whom has he called you to proclaim the Gospel?
Ask yourself these four questions:
How can you connect?
What can you clarify?
What must you confront?
How will you counsel?