Acts 17
McGeeCHAPTER 17THEME: The second missionary journey of Paul continued (Paul in Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens)
Acts 17:1
REMARKSIn this chapter we continue with Paul on his second missionary journey. In chapter 16 we were with him when he crossed over into Europe, a memorable, significant, revolutionary crossing. It brought the gospel to the ancestors of many of us, who were by no means a superior people. Actually, God chooses the weak things of this world just to let the world know that it is all because of His sovereign grace and not because of merit. We thank Him for sending the gospel over into Europe. We went with Paul first to Philippi where he received some rough treatment. Yet, a little church came into existence in that town. When we study the epistle to that church, we will find that it was closer to the apostle Paul than any other church or any other group of believers. Now he continues on his journey. I hope you will follow this on the map. You will notice that he goes to Thessalonica and Berea, still traveling westward into Macedonia, then south to Athens. Thessalonica will be his next significant stop for missionary activity. PAUL’S MINISTRY IN THESSALONICAAs we have noted before, Paul used the synagogue as a springboard to get into a city or a community. This would lead him to the devout Jews of the city, and some of those Jews would believe. Never did all of them believe, but some of them did. In fact, most of them would reject him, and this would push him right out to the Gentiles. Then some of the Gentiles believed. This is how a church would come into existence, a local church composed of Jews and Gentiles. Amphipolis was also called “Nine Ways,” which suggests its importance both strategically and commercially. Most cities are built on the pattern of a square, but this was like a roundhouse, and the wall around it was round. It was an important station on the Via Egnatia, a Roman road which was the prominent thoroughfare through that area. It was five hundred miles from the Hellespont to Dyrrhachium on the Ariatic by this road. This would be the highway which the Roman army would use. This was the route the traders would travel. And now here come some missionaries on this road going to Thessalonica. Apollonia was another town on this same Egnatian Road. Thessalonica was thirty-eight miles west of Apollonia on the Egnatian Road. It was inland but it was a seaport because three rivers flowed into the sea from there. It was a prominent city of that day, another Roman colony. Cassander rebuilt it in about 315 A.D. and it is thought that he named it after Thessalonica, the stepsister of Alexander the Great. There are some warm springs there and the earlier name of the town was Therma or Therme. Cassander was one of the generals of Alexander the Great, and he took over the rule of that area after the death of Alexander. At the time of Paul, however, the city was a Roman colony.
Acts 17:2
Paul followed his usual custom of first preaching in the synagogue. He was there only three Sabbaths, which means that he could not have been there longer than a month. In that limited period of time he did his missionary work. Believers came to Christ, a local church was organized, and Paul taught them. In that brief time he taught them all the great doctrines of Scripture, including the doctrine of the Rapture of the churchwe know this from his First Epistle to the Thessalonians which was the first Epistle that Paul wrote. Paul had quite a ministry there in one month’s time! Now note his message. He was “opening and alleging"that is, from the Old Testament Scriptures"that Christ must needs have suffered.” He preached the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, showing that this was necessary, as set forth in the Old Testament. Friend, you will not find a message given in the Book of Acts either by Peter or by Paul in which the Resurrection is not the heart of the message. Today we find so often that the Resurrection just doesn’t seem to be the heart of the message. What we talk about today is the Crosseven in fundamental circles. But, my friend, we have a living Christ today. Someone has put it this way: “There is a Man in the glory but the church has lost sight of Him.” The Lord Jesus Christ is yonder at God’s right hand at this very moment. That is very important. It is one thing to talk about the historical death of Christ nineteen hundred years ago and His resurrection on the third day, but the question is: How are you related to it? That was Paul’s great theme in the Galatian epistle. Is it meaningful to you that Christ died and that He rose again? Are you related today to that living Christ? How has this been meshed and geared into your life? Today we have conservatism in the church and we have liberalism in the church and, very candidly, neither group seems to be getting through to Him. Why not? Well, because every Sunday should be an Easteron the first day of the week He came back from the dead! It is important to mention the resurrection of Christ because we are talking about the Man in the glory. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t seem to be the emphasis. Pastors don’t emphasize it because seminaries don’t emphasize it. Take down any theology book and study itStrong’s, Shedd’s, Thornwall’s, Hodge’s, and you will find that all of them have a long section on the death of Christ. That’s very important; thank God they have a long section on that. But they have a short section, just a few pages, on the Resurrection. I think they missed the boat there. I think they should have put in a long section about the resurrection of Christ. That was the basis of New Testament preaching. I’m emphasizing this because it is very important. Paul was in Thessalonica only three Sabbath days, and the resurrection of Christ was his message. Notice their reception of Him.
Acts 17:4
Some of them believed. That always happens when you give out the Word of God. Some of them believe. Also some of them won’t believe. The minority believe; the majority will not. When Dr. Luke says “of the chief women not a few,” he is using his usual understatement and means that a large number of prominent women came to the Lord. How wonderful!
Acts 17:5
Unfortunately, we also have some “lewd fellows of the baser sort” in our churches today.
Acts 17:6
Now don’t put that down as an oratorical gesture or hyperbole. When they said that these men were turning the world upside down, that is exactly what they meant. When Christianity penetrated that old Roman Empire it was a revolution. It had a tremendous effect. Today we don’t see much revolution except in the wrong direction. It’s too bad we can’t have a great revolution of turning back to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Word of God. Our country is a country filled with hypocrisy. We pretend that we are a Christian nation. We pretend that our leaders are Christian, that all the politicians are Christians, that everyone is a Christian. Friend, we are one of the most pagan nations this world has ever known. Christianity today is mostly a pretense. We need to recognize that we need to get back to the Word of God and to the living Christ. How important that is!
Acts 17:7
Remember that this was a Roman colony, which was operated according to Caesar’s dictates. “They had taken security of Jason” means that he had to make bond.
Acts 17:10
PAUL’S MINISTRY AT BEREAYou would think that all this would dampen the enthusiasm of Paul, that it would slow him down. It didn’t slow him down one bit; he is still going. He goes to Berea, which is a town down closer to the coast.
Acts 17:11
These people were reasonable. They searched the Scriptures, and there came into existence a church in Berea. We don’t hear much about that church. It is interesting that the strongest churches arose where the persecution was the greatest. One of the troubles today is that the church is not being persecuted. In fact, the church is just taken for granted. The average Christian is just a person to be taken for granted. It wasn’t that way in the first century.
Acts 17:12
Here goes Dr. Luke again with his diminutive “not a few.” Why doesn’t he say a great crowd of men and honorable women believed? When he says, “Not a few,” he means it was a multitude.
Acts 17:13
Paul continues on his way without the other members of his team.
Acts 17:15
PAUL’S MINISTRY AT ATHENSPaul goes to Athens. He will wait for Silas and Timotheus there. He probably had said to them, “You go back to check on the believers in Thessalonica and see how the church is progressing there, and check on the believers in Berea; then join me in Athens.”
Acts 17:16
Athens was the cultural center of the world. In fact, when one thinks of Athens, one thinks about culture. Yet it was a city filled with idolatry.
Acts 17:17
When I was in Athens, I went down to that market. It is right at the foot of the Acropolis. I can imagine Paul walking up and down there. He was a tentmaker, you know, and I think he sold a few tents while he was there. While he was selling the tents, he was talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. The people began to get interested.
Acts 17:18
The philosophy of the Epicureans was more or less hedonistic. The Stoics, a group who believed in restraint, were what we today call stoical. The Epicureans believed that you go the limit, and in that way you could overcome the flesh. They thought that you should give the flesh all that it wants. If it wants liquor, drink all you can hold. Concerning sex, believe me, the Epicureans could really join in the “new morality,” which was nothing new for them. By contrast, the Stoics believed that the body should be held under control. Philosophers of both groups come to Paul to hear what he has to say. Paul has been doing a lot of talking and they call him a babbler. His subject is something new to them. Jesus and the idea of resurrection are to them “strange gods.” I hear people say today that Paul got his idea from Platonism. They say he didn’t really believe in the bodily resurrection but in a platonic idea of a spiritual resurrection. It was more or less the influence of an individual permeating through society. This is the life after death. One still hears that type of thing today. It is found in liberalism, and it is nothing in the world but old Greek philosophy. But these Greeks, philosophers as they were, didn’t quite understand Paul. I think Paul was a little too deep for them. Philosophy had gone to seed in Athens at this particular time. However, they wanted to hear him.
Acts 17:19
The Areopagus is a very peculiar formation of rock on top of which the Parthenon and the buildings connected with it stand. Frankly, it is a very lovely setting, beautiful buildings and beautiful statues, but a city wholly given over to idolatry. It is up from the market place of the city and Paul is brought there to speak. Probably every preacher who visits there reads Paul’s sermon from the top of Mars’ Hill. When I was there another preacher began to read it, and since I didn’t like the way he was reading it, I went way over to the other side of the rock. I sat with my Bible and read it silently. It was a thrilling experience. Now these Greek philosophers say to him, “May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest is?” They want to know more about it. They are completely in the dark. They are worse off than the Galatians or the people in Philippi and Thessalonica. Why? Because they think they know something. The very hardest people in the world to reach with the Word of God and the gospel are church members because they think they don’t need it. They think the gospel is for the man on skid row and for some of their friends. Some church members can be mean and sinful and yet not recognize they really need a Savior, not only to save them from sin, but also to make their lives count for God.
Acts 17:20
In this same way America is going to seed today. Have you ever listened to the talk shows? They are boring to tears. Everyone is trying to come up with something new. Each one is trying to say something novel. They try so hard to say something smart, something sophisticated; yet it is the same old story. Athens tried the same thing. There must have been quite a bunch of loafers back in Athens. They didn’t workthey didn’t do anything. They just talked, propounding new theories and new ideas. The human family seems to reach that place of sophistication. They think they know something when they don’t. They don’t know the most important fact in the whole universe. There are those who say that Paul failed on Mars’ Hill, that he fell flat on his fact at Athens. I totally disagree with that. I believe this was one of the greatest messages that Paul ever preached.
Acts 17:22
He begins his message quite formally, “Ye men of Athens.” Then he says, “I perceive …ye are too superstitious.” The word superstitious is wholly inadequate to say what Paul really means. He is saying that he perceives they are in all things too religious. The Athenians were very religious. Athens was filled with idols. There was no end to the pantheon of the Athenians and the Greeks. There were gods small and gods great; they had a god for practically everything. That is what Paul is saying. They were too religious. I sometimes hear people ask, “Why should we send missionaries to foreign countries? Those people have their religion.” I suppose that when Paul went down to Athens, somebody said, “Why are you going down there? They have religion.” I am sure Paul would have answered, “That’s their problem; they have too much religion.” A preacher friend of mine said many years ago, “When I came to Christ, I lost my religion.” There are a great many folk in our churches today who need to lose their religion so they can find Christ. That is the great problem. Some folk say, “People are too bad to be saved.” The real problem is that people are too good to be saved. They think they are religious and worthy and good.
My friend, we are to take the gospel to all because all men are lost with Christ, which is the reason Paul went to Athens. The Athenians needed to hear the message of the gospel. Notice that in Athens Paul did not go to a synagogue. He had no springboard in Athens. He begins his masterly address to “Ye men of Athens.” After he makes the observation that they are too religious, he continues:
Acts 17:23
“I …beheld your devotions.” He saw their objects of worship. He noted their altars and their idols and their temples. In fact, that very beautiful temple called the Parthenon was a temple built to Athena, the virgin goddess of the Athenians. There were idols all around. Paul said, “I observed all of this, and amidst the idols I found an altar inscribed to the unknown god.” Now an altar to an unknown god could mean that the Athenians were broad-minded. They didn’t want to leave anyone out. If someone had come to Athens and said, “How is it you don’t have an altar to my god?” they would have answered, “Well, this altar is really to your god.” That way any stranger could come to worship at the altar to the unknown god, believing it was built for his god. Or it could mean that they recognized there was a God whom they did not know. Many pagan folk recognize that behind their idolatry is a living and true God. They know nothing about Him, and they do not know how to approach Him. They have traditions that back in the dim and distant past their ancestors did worship Him. This could have been the case with the Athenians. Paul uses this as the springboard for his message. He says he wants to talk to them about this unknown God. He says he wants to tell them about the God whom they don’t know. Perhaps that is not as diplomatic as his first approach. After all, the Athenians thought they knew everything. This crowd of philosophers met in Athens and talked back and forth, as philosophers do on college campuses today. And now Paul begins to talk to them about the God they do not know. Who is He? Well, first of all, He is the God of creation.
Acts 17:24
God had made very clear all the way through the Old Testamenteven when He gave to Israel the pattern for the tabernacle and the templethat He did not dwell in one geographical spot. Solomon acknowledged this in his prayer at the dedication of the temple: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?” (1Ki_8:27). These men in the Old Testament recognized that God the Creator, the living God, could not live in a building that had been made by man. Man lives in a universe that God has made. Why does man get the idea that he can build a building for God to live in?
Acts 17:25
Here is a masterly stroke by Paul. He tells them, “God doesn’t need anything from you. You built an altar to Him; you bring offerings to feed Him"they wanted this unknown God to know that they were thinking of Him. Now Paul says, “God doesn’t need anything from you! God is on the giving end. He gives you life. He gives you your breath. He has given you the sun, the moon, and the stars. He has given you all things.” These Athenians worshiped the sun. They said that Apollo came dragging his chariot across the sky every day. Paul says that the sun is something that God has made, and it is a gift for you. The Creator is the living God. He is the One who has given you everything. By the way, He gives you salvation also. He not only gives you physical things but also gives you spiritual gifts.
Acts 17:26
So much has been made of this “one blood” business that I think we need to dissipate any wrong notions here. A better translation is, “He made from one every nation of mankind.” God has made one humanity. This verse is not talking about brotherhood. The only brotherhood which Scripture knows is the brotherhood of those who are in Christ Jesus. Perhaps I should amend that by saying there is a brotherhood of sin. We all are sinners. Paul’s statement that God “hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” is fascinating. Not only is He the God who created the universe and who created human beings, but it is interesting to note that he also put them in certain geographical locations. My doctor is a cancer specialist, and he has told me to stay out of the sun here in California because I am a blond. There seems to be even a medical reason why God put the darker races where the sun shines and put the light-skinned races up north where there is not so much sun. So some of us who are blond and light-skinned need to be very careful about too much exposure to the sun. God is the One who has determined the geographical locations for His creatures. I guess some of my ancestors should have stayed where they belonged. Maybe I’m kind of out of place here in California, but I’m glad to be here and I try to be careful about protecting myself from too much sunshine. Now that is just a little sideline as an illustration. God has put nations in certain places. It is interesting that the thing that has produced the wars of the past is that nations don’t want to stay where they belong; they want someone else’s territory. That has been the ultimate cause for every war that has ever been fought.
Acts 17:27
This phrase “feel after him” has the idea of groping after Him. Man is not really searching for the living and true God, but he is searching for a god. He is willing to put up an idol and worship it. Man is not necessarily looking for the living and true God, but he is on a search.
Acts 17:28
He does not call them sons of God but the offspring of God. He is referring to creation and the relationship to God through creation. By the way, this is not pantheism that he is stating here. He is not saying that everything is God. He says that in God we live and move and have our being but that God is beyond this created universe. Paul quotes to them from their own poets. One of the poets he quoted was Arastus who lived about 270 A.D. He was a Stoic from Cilicia. He began a poem with an invocation to Zeus in which he said that “we too are his offspring.” Cleanthes was another poet who lived about 300 A.D. He also wrote a hymn to Zeus and speaks of the fact that “we are his offspring.” Paul means, of course, that we are God’s creatures.
Acts 17:29
In other words, he says we ought not to be idolaters. He has shown God to be the Creator. Now he will present Him as the Redeemer.
Acts 17:30
There was a time when God shut His eyes to paganism. Now light has come into the world. God asks men everywhere to turn to Him. Light creates responsibility. Now God is commanding all men everywhere to repent. He has presented God as the Creator in His past work. He shows God as the Redeemer in His present work. Now he shows God as the Judge in His future work.
Acts 17:31
When God judges, it will be right. Judgment will be through a Judge who has nail-pierced hands, the One who has been raised from the dead. Paul always presents the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is a declaration to all men. It is by this that God assures all men there will be a judgment.
Acts 17:32
Do you know why they mocked? Because Platonism denied the resurrection of the dead. That was one of the marks of Platonism. It denied the physical resurrection. When you hear people today talking about a spiritual resurrection but denying the physical resurrection, you are hearing Platonic philosophy rather than scriptural teaching. Paul taught the physical resurrection from the dead. So when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.
Acts 17:33
Some critics have said that Paul failed at Athens. He didn’t fail, friend. There will always be those who mock at the gospel. But there will also be those who believe.
Acts 17:34
There was quite an aggregation of converts in the city of Athens. When Paul went to a place and preached the gospel, he had converts. He didn’t fail. He succeeded. Wherever the Word of God is preached, there will be those who will listen and believe.