Acts 17 (Bible Study) - (Greece) (Copy)
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When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. 4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.5 But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.[a] 6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” 8 When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. 9 Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.
In Berea
10 As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.
13 But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. 14 The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. 15 Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
In Athens
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
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Acts of Jesus through the Apostles
Introduction
Paul’s arrives in Greece and first in Thessalonica. Paul spoke about two things: a) the good news about Jesus, and b) the resurrection.
1. Acts 17:1-9. If Paul’s great burden is to win the Gentiles (cf. Eph.3:8) why does he first go to the synagogue? What are the implications for our efforts to spread the gospel?
Luke tells us that Paul’s “custom” (v.2) was to go to a synagogue first in any town. Why, if his great burden was to evangelise the Gentiles (cf. Eph 3:8)? As v.4 says, some Jews were converted through the synagogue-mission, but in contrast “a large number of God-fearing Greeks” believed. By now a pattern is emerging. As in Pisidian Antioch and Phillipi, it is the God-fearing Gentiles who are the key. They are more receptive than the Jews and the pagan Gentiles. They seem to be more spiritually open to the message of grace than were the Jews. Further, their belief in the God of the Bible made them more open to calls to surrender and obedience than were the pagans. Thus the Bible-believing Gentiles were key to church planting for Paul. Because they were, “easier” to share the faith with than others, and they had personal relationships and connections to both believing Jews and pagan Gentiles.
What do we learn for ourselves? First there is a basic theological principle. This shows us that God not only prepares individuals for the gospel (cf. Lydia, Acts 16:14), but also prepares groups of people.
Second, there is an important practical principle of balance here. Paul gave priority to reaching the God-fearing Gentiles, yet only as the strategic entry point for reaching the whole city. He did not concentrate on one group because he liked them better than others.
2. Acts 17:1-9. What was Paul’s strategy in Thessalonica and Berea? What was the reaction?
The strategy Paul used follows the pattern we have seen before. In one sense, this shows us his pattern with Bible-believers. On three Sabbaths he went to the synagogue and did intensive Bible study with the hearers. His evangelism was heavily based on the Bible, but it was not just monologue. In Thessalonica, he “reasoned,” “explained,” “persuaded”, and in Berea he led the hearers to carefully “examine” the Scripture. This means that Paul did not preach in an authoritarian “don’t ask me any questions” mode. There was give-and-take, a willingness to field questions, an effort to help the listeners discover truth for themselves. From the Old Testament he taught that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Jesus did this in Luke 24:13-27 and Luke 24:44ff.
In another sense, we see Paul’s pattern with every audience. First, he makes the case for why they should believe (v.2-3a) by appealing to an authority they trust (the Bible). Second, he lays out what they should believe in v.3b by “proclaiming” Christ. Having “proved” Christ, he then “proclaimed” Christ, laying out, probably, the story of his life and work. Third, he called them to commitment (v.4). These three basic stages we have called “case, content, commitment”, but here the three are represented by three verbs that all begin with “p”: “proving, proclaiming, persuading”.
The negative reaction to Paul’s preaching has a two-fold source: one psychological and one political. The psychological one is “jealousy” (v.5), which can be best understood against the background of the earlier chapters of Acts. The Jews were accustomed to seeing themselves as having a privileged position due to their faithfulness to the law and their history. The gospel, however “levels” and brings everyone into the kingdom on an equal footing.
We must be careful not to think that 1st century Jews were unique in this! Throughout history, the most moral and respectable and community “pillars” have had a) a high regard for religion in general, but b) a deep distaste for the gospel of grace.
The political issue is intriguing. The opponents claim that Paul’s gospel was seditious. They heard Paul speak of Jesus’ being a king and of Jesus coming kingdom, therefore, they accused him publicly of defying the power of Caesar in the name of another sovereign (v.7). Commentators point out that in the sentence “they have caused trouble all over the world” (v.6) the Greek word translated “caused trouble” is anastatoo, which means “incited revolution” (see how it is translated in 21:38). The perceptiveness of this charge lies in the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ does undermine and relativize the Christian’s loyalty to any political regime. Therefore, it was a dangerous accusation because it was half-true.
John Stott: “The ambiguity of Christian teaching in this area remains. On the one hand, as Christian people, we are called to be conscientious and law-abiding citizens, not revolutionaries. On the other hand, the kingship of Jesus has unavoidable political implications, since, as his loyal subjects, we must refuse to give any ruler or ideology our supreme homage and total obedience which are due to him alone.” (p.273)
Introduction to the Athenian mission:
The city of Athens was the intellectual capital of the Graeco-Roman world. Before the rise of the Roman empire, it was the leading political and cultural centre of the Greek world. It remained the centre of learning for the Empire after it was conquered by Rome. In this passage, we meet Stoics and the Epicureans, representing two schools of philosophy of that time. The Epicureans did not deny the existence of the gods, but they considered them completely remote from the world and life. Therefore, they saw history as being random, and life as being without any meaning. After death there was nothing. As a result, this philosophy counselled that people should pursue whatever brought them pleasure and fulfilment.
They saw no need to do anything that entailed discomfort, pain, or self-denial. The Stoics believed in God as the world spirit (a form of “pantheism”) which fixed the fate of everyone and everything. They counselled the pursuit not of pleasure but of duty, and to courageously accept and face whatever that fate was. Paul’s mission to Athens is instructive because it shows how he approaches the pagan “cultural elites” of his day (who were not very different from our own). The “Areopagus” was a council of the greatest philosophers, opinion-leaders, and influence-brokers. It was roughly like the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. It did not have governing authority, but it controlled matters of religion and culture.
3. Acts 17:16-21. From what motives did Paul operate (what did he see and feel when he first saw Athens)? What do we learn from this?
1. First, what Paul saw. Paul walked about the city of Athens, which was full of architectural marvels, but he looked at it with spiritually sensitive eyes. He was struck by how filled the town was with idols. He was, in a sense, seeing the town through God’s eyes, because the Greek word (see below) that describes his reaction to idolatry (“greatly distressed”) is the same one used to describe God’s reaction to idolatry in (Is.65:2-3). In other words, Paul tended to look at life through a Biblical “filter”. He was so sensitive to God’s Word and thus to God’s attitudes and ways and heart that he could not help participating in God’s response.
What do we learn? (a) First, we learn that we also should try to look at our city through God’s eyes. It is too easy to become indifferent to the familiar. We need to imagine how the love and holiness of God would react to the things around us — then our heart will function like his.
(b) Another thing we learn is that we too should become acquainted with the idols of our city. We will not be able to share the gospel effectively unless we know the false “gods” of the people we are trying to reach. For example, there is an old saying about three cities of the U.S.A “In Boston, they ask ‘what does he know?’ in New York, they ask ‘how much does he make?’ but in Philadelphia, they ask, ‘what family is he from?’” This quip (attributed to Mark Twain) is really an analysis of each city’s particular idols: education, wealth, family pedigree. The idol of one city is not the idol of another.
(c) Third, we should not be surprised that this intellectual center is absolutely filled with idols (v.36) and religiosity (v.22). This is always the case. The people who seem on the surface to be the most unbelieving are always very religious after all. Idolatry is promoting created things, goals, relationships, pursuits into absolute and ultimate values and then replacing God with them or worshipping God in accordance with them. Anyone seeking to address the unbelieving elites must identify their idols, which will be the major barrier to belief in God.
2. Second, what Paul felt. We saw that he was “greatly distressed” (v.16) by the rampant idolatry. The Greek word is paroxymo; it describes a deep mixture of both anger and sorrow. You don’t have to know the Greek word to see that Paul was driven to bold witness by a very complex feeling. It was not simply anger-disgust on the one hand. If he was only infuriated by their rebellion, he would have simply washed his hands of the place in disgust, or preached with such condescension and disdain that they would have given him no hearing. However, that is not what he did. It says he “reasoned” (v.17) which means he did not simply “declare”, but entered into an engaged give-and-take dialogue with people. He did not simply declare their judgement and condemnation. We also see his gentleness in the way he gives them credit, almost a compliment, for their religious activity: “I see that in every way you are very religious” (v.22) His discourse is very civil.
However, on the other hand, his feeling was not simply one of compassion and mercy. Idolatry outraged him. In his speech he accuses these highly sophisticated and intellectual people of “ignorance” (v.29) — nothing could have been more insulting to them! And then he declares the final judgement of God (v.31). So Paul’s feelings that drove him were “complex”. Why? On the one hand, he saw the idolatry in the perspective of God’s holiness as rebellion — and thus he was outraged and indignant. But on the other hand, he saw the idolatry in the perspective of God’s love as slavery — and thus he was moved with compassion for the people who were enslaved in ignorance and darkness.
What do we learn? Paul felt outrage because of the holiness of God and compassion because of the love of God. If either of these kinds of feelings are missing from our witness, our effectiveness will suffer greatly. We will either be people characterized by force and authority in our tone OR by warmth and affection in our tone — but not both. Paul evidently was characterized by both. The two “sides” of God’s nature (his holy law and his love), and the two “sides” of the gospel (that we are hopeless sinners and loved children) together should create this “complex” feeling in us. As John Stott wrote:
“We do not speak like Paul because we do not feel like Paul because we do not see like Paul. That was the order: he saw, he felt, he spoke. It all began with his eyes. When Paul walked around Athens, he did not just ‘notice’ the idols. The Greek verb used three times (16,22,23) is either theoreo or anatheoreo and means… to ‘consider’. So he looked and looked and thought and thought until the fires… were kindled within…” (Stott, p.290)
4. a) How did Paul reason in the marketplace? (v17-18)
(b) How does he gain the interest of his hearers in v22-23?
a) We are not told many details about what Paul said in the marketplace, we are only told that he spoke about two things: a) the good news about Jesus, and b) the resurrection. This gives us some idea about how he “reasoned” there. He did not argue that Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Scripture. Instead, he argued first, for the deity of Christ and second, for the historicity of the resurrection. One does not have to assume the infallibility of the Bible to argue for those things. A popular modern example of the former is to look at how C.S.Lewis argued that Jesus is either “liar, lunatic, or the Lord”. There are many popular examples of the latter, that point to the many eyewitness accounts of individuals who saw the risen Christ. So here we get a very brief but telling idea of what Paul pressed on people in the agora.
b) Paul first gains interest by making a very courteous remark about the Athenians religiosity. He saves his strong words about the “dark” side of this religiousness — namely the idolatry — for later. He leads off by collecting the good things he can say and the sincere compliments he can pay and using them in the introduction. A compliment aimed your way is always interesting to you!
Second, Paul makes use of an altar built “to an unknown God” (v.23). This is another important element of gaining interest — it is moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Paul begins with something they know about, something familiar to them, something they themselves do.
Third, Paul very subtly appeals to the Athenians admission of ignorance about the divine. Some people have insisted that, when Paul refers to this “Unknown God” altar, that he is affirming that all religions really worship the same true God. This cannot be the case, since later in the sermon Paul tells them to turn to Christ or be judged! Paul sees the altar as the Athenians acknowledgement of the limitations of their religion. The reason they made such an altar was because they had a deep sense that they were missing something in their religion, that they had not really broken through. Paul is saying, “That God that you know you have missed, that you have not been able to discover — He is the one I will reveal to you today.” It’s a brilliant approach.
5. a) What six principles does Paul lay out to show who the true God is? (v24-31) (b) Is Paul’s sermon Christ-centred? (c) How does Paul’s message fit this audience (NB the intro to the Athenian mission)?
a) Paul has to distinguish the true God from the polytheistic gods and idols of the Greek pantheon. He does so by telling them five things about God:
(1) That God is the Creator of the world (v.24). “who made the world and everything in it”. This is a very different that the limited gods of the Greeks (many of whom were born and created themselves), and from the all-pervasive God of Eastern religions, who is identical with the life force in all things. Rather this is a God who existed before the world and brought it into being.
(2) That God is therefore transcendent and not dependent on us or the world or anything in it (v.25). “He is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything” contrasting God with idols, and Greek gods, who need our worship. This is Paul’s warning that the true God cannot be “domesticated” as idols can. In a real sense, God cannot be placated or manipulated, because he needs nothing.
(3) God is also Lord of history. (v.26) “He determined the times set for them and the exact places that they should live.” and personally involved with us (v.28) “For in him we live and move and have our being”. God is transcendent but he is not remote. He is behind all history and is close by and involved with us.
(4) That God made us for fellowship with him. (v.27) “God did this so that men would seek him … and find him.” This is tremendous, he desires to have a relationship with us. This is not like the western gods who only want loyalty, not loving communion; nor the Eastern “pantheistic” god who can only be sensed and experienced but which is not personal and cannot be spoken to. This is a personal yet all-powerful God. This also implies a very high view of human beings!
(5) That God cannot be worshipped via idols and images. (v.29) Paul teaches if God is this great, then he shapes us and we worship him as he wants to be worshipped. We cannot shape him and worship him as we want it to be done. “We are his offspring” — he created us. Today people are in the same tradition as those who made their own statues to worship. Today people say, “I like to think of God as”, or “each has to work out what God is for himself” ie idolatry.
(6) That God has made Jesus Christ Judge of the whole world. (v.30-31). Finally, Paul comes to Christ. He says that the resurrection proves that he will return to judge the world.
b) Some people are disappointed that this sermon is not more Christ-centred. But we must remember that Paul had already laid the groundwork in the marketplace about the deity of Christ and the historicity of the resurrection. Here, Paul has shown that there is a God of love who seeks our fellowship (v27), yet a God of justice who punishes (v30) for trying to manipulate him and rebel against him through idolatry (v.24-25,29). The work of Christ satisfies the justice of God with the love of God.
c) We have been noting all along how Paul’s message fits the audience. They lacked a Biblical doctrine of God, so he had to work on that first before the facts about Christ could make sense to them. We should also notice that the “two sides” of God’s nature that Paul taught cut against both the Epicureans and the Stoics views. The Epicureans saw the gods as personal, but remote and uninvolved with human affairs. They were “happy hedonists”, teaching that life consisted of following your desires. The Stoics on the other hand saw God as a kind of life force controlling everything, but not a personal being to know and obey. They were pessimists, teaching that life consisted of following your duty. To the Epicureans, Paul said, “God is near and he is a Judge — you cannot do anything you want!” To the Stoics, Paul said: “God is personal and Savior — you can know hope and freedom!” He was telling the Epicureans not to make an idol of pleasure, and he was telling the Stoics not to make an idol of duty.
