The Known God (Acts #24)

There is a comedy sketch I have used before where a young man explains to his housemate that their flat is magic. Put dirty clothes in the basket, and the next day they appear clean, folded, and stacked on your bed. Leave plates, cutlery, pizza boxes, anything at all on the coffee table, and by morning it has simply vanished. He has been testing how far he can push it. He genuinely believes the furniture is enchanted.

Of course it is his girlfriend. She has been doing all of it, the entire time, and he has never once noticed.

That is precisely what has been happening to a great many people spiritually. Throughout history, humans have not realized how much God has been doing behind the scenes for them. And today Paul addresses exactly that: God is more active in your life — in you, through you, around you — than you realize. Even if you are not yet a God-fearer.

How Paul Ended Up in Athens

To find our place, go back briefly. At the end of Acts 15 Paul sets out with Silas to revisit cities from his first journey and encourage those churches. In chapter 16 they reach Lystra and meet a young man named Timothy, impressive enough that they invite him along. Then the language shifts to “we” and “us” — Luke himself has joined them. Now there are four of them.

They hit obstacles: one direction closed, another blocked, until they sense God calling them to Macedonia. They sail, and the first city is Philippi, where three very different people find freedom in Christ and become the foundation of that church.

But Paul was never called to settle in one community and pastor it. He was called to keep traveling, keep preaching, keep planting. Which brings us to chapter 17.

Verses 1–9 are the founding of the church in Thessalonica — so when you read 1 and 2 Thessalonians, this is who Paul is writing to. He goes first to the synagogue, as always, and reasons with the Jews across three Sabbaths that Jesus is the Messiah. Some believe, including Gentiles and women. Others do not — and rather than simply disagreeing, they form a mob and turn violent. So this brand new church has to send Paul and Silas away for their own safety.

Verses 10–15 take them to Berea, about forty-five miles south — a day and a half of walking. And they do exactly the same thing: synagogue, reasoning, some believe. Then word gets back to Thessalonica, those same opponents travel down to cause trouble again, and once more a brand new church has to send Paul away.

This time he goes far — roughly 250 miles south to Athens, nearly two weeks on foot. He leaves Timothy and Silas behind to settle things and tells them to join him once it is safe.

A City Full of Idols

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. 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. — Acts 17:16–17 (ESV)

He does what he always does — the synagogue first. But Luke makes a point of the marketplace, and that is because of what Athens was.

Athens was not merely the leading city of Greece; it was one of the leading cities of the entire Roman Empire. This was where they debated the best way to do education, the best way to govern, the best way to live. Those philosophies did not stay in Greece — they still echo in our nation and our culture today.

Paul knew that if the gospel could penetrate Athens, it would travel everywhere. So he is in the marketplace daily, debating and discussing Jesus. And it works — they are intrigued. Some mock him and call him a babbler. Others are curious, because they loved new ideas. So they invite him to speak at the Areopagus.

“Areopagus” simply means the hill of Ares — the Greek god you likely know better by his Roman name, Mars. Mars Hill. But there was also a council of about thirty men known by that name, and evidence suggests they had moved their meetings to a royal portico. So we cannot be certain whether Paul is standing on a hill addressing a crowd, or standing before a council of thirty. Either way, here is what he says.

Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 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… he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything… 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, for “In him we live and move and have our being.” — Acts 17:22–28 (ESV)

He ends by saying that the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man He has appointed — and has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.

Some scoff. But some believe — Luke names a man and a woman, both prominent, and others besides.

I want to take Paul’s address on Mars Hill and consider what it means for us. To do that I need to speak to three different audiences. Identify which one you are in — and if none of them is you, listen in anyway, because one day one of them might be.

Audience One: You Follow Jesus, and You Are Deeply Tempted

Two things for you.

First: the things of this world are not evil in themselves. We look at certain things and think that is bad, when often it simply isn’t.

When Paul walks into Athens and sees statues of Greek gods everywhere, he does not run out of the city shrieking about how evil it all is. He knows they are wood and stone and metal. There is nothing wrong with wood. Nothing sinful in stone. Gold is not evil. Can these things be used in sinful ways? Absolutely. But in themselves they are not wrong.

The same extends to music, film, fashion, food, relationships, literature, money — we could go on. None of it is inherently anti-good. It can be misused, but it is not itself sin.

Second: avoid the things that pull you away from God. Paul could walk through Athens and not be tempted in the slightest to worship those idols. But when he writes to the church in Corinth, he deals with exactly this issue — animals sacrificed to idols and the meat then sold in the market. For some believers who had come out of those cults, eating it felt like worshiping their old gods, and it pulled them away. His counsel was: avoid it. Say no. Don’t indulge.

I know that feels unfair. The person next to you can watch a particular show and be fine, and if you watch it you find yourself angrier, or treating people badly, or struggling with lust, or sinking into depression. You cannot watch it without it pulling you from God.

And when that happens we feel weak. The opposite is true. When you are strongly tempted, the weakness is giving in. The strength is in the no — letting the Holy Spirit give you power not to give in. So struggling in an area someone else doesn’t does not make you weak. It means God is working in you there, and wants you to surrender it.

Maybe a day will come when you mature past it and no longer need to say no. Maybe it never comes. The point is keeping your focus on God — which is what Paul was doing in himself, and what he longed to see in the Athenians.

Audience Two: You Follow Jesus and Want Others To

A parenthesis first: if you follow Jesus, you should be in this audience. Some of us think I know God, but I’m not going to push my agenda on anyone. God loves you — and He loves them, and He would love to use you to help them understand that love. So please listen in.

Know your audience. Early in chapter 17, in the synagogue, Paul reasons with Jews from the Jewish Scriptures. That makes sense — a Jewish man, a Jewish room. But on Mars Hill he does not scatter his address with quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures. He begins with something they already have: I was walking around and saw an altar to an unknown god. Then: let me tell you about this God. And to point them to the one true God he quotes their poets. He knew his audience.

When Leanne and I lived in Denver I worked as a worship director for a small church plant that could barely pay me, so I took other jobs. One was delivering flowers — a great job, since nine times out of ten people are glad to see you at the door.

All of my coworkers but one were women, and only one of them was a Christian. Another was an outspoken agnostic who did not hide her views at all — she dabbled in new age ideas and would happily tell you what she had done over the weekend, what she had taken, what she had watched. The cruder the better.

One day I came in from a delivery to find my Christian coworker trying to start a spiritual conversation with her. And her brilliant method was to play a Christian song on her iPod — one that imagines how various cartoon characters might worship God, doing the voices. The trouble is that the song takes a swipe at a particular crude cartoon. And that cartoon was the agnostic’s favorite show.

I walked in and could immediately tell she was not reading the room. The agnostic was not having it, was visibly uncomfortable, and was pulling further and further away by the second.

My coworker’s heart was entirely in the right place. She simply did not know her audience.

How do you get to know yours? Ask questions — get to know them as a person. Then listen. And watch: observe how they approach life, how they do things, what they value.

Use the things of this world to help people see beyond this world. If a popular song lends itself naturally toward Jesus, use it. Same with a film, or a show everybody is discussing, or a scientific discovery, or an archaeological find that supports the Scriptures. Learn those things and use them. Just don’t get weird about it — don’t do what Jon Acuff calls a Jesus juke. If it comes naturally, use it.

Don’t get caught in tangents. Stick with Jesus. The moment you move into spiritual matters you will hear but what about… — and the what-abouts are endless and always changing. Political scandals. Foreign conflicts. The latest public controversy. Science. Sexuality. Abortion. Evolution.

Many of these are genuinely important. But take the tangent and the conversation leads somewhere else entirely, away from Christ. And imagine you take it, you debate, and you win — you convince them completely, they concede they were wrong, they adopt your view — and nothing has changed spiritually. What have you actually accomplished? Perhaps a friend, or another vote. Long term, their eternity is unchanged.

Back in verse 18, Luke mentions the Epicureans and the Stoics — two schools that came after Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The Epicureans believed enlightenment came through pleasure, so they pursued it, assuming more pleasure meant more happiness. The Stoics believed roughly the opposite: that giving in to your passions imprisoned you, and true contentment came through freedom from emotion and appetite.

Paul could have gone down a dozen tangents with them. He doesn’t. He never says the Epicureans have this wrong and the Stoics have that wrong. He uses all of it to drive toward Jesus.

When someone raises a what-about, try this. Ask questions — why does this matter so much to you? What happened? What convinced you? Sit and learn; that is part of knowing your audience. Then say honestly: that really is important. But for me the topic of Jesus is even more important — because we have been debating this issue for a year, a decade, a generation, and it will fade and be replaced by some new one everybody is passionate about. The question of Jesus has run through all of history. And for a great many people, understanding who He is and what He did reframes how they approach every one of those other important topics.

Audience Three: You Are Not a Follower of Jesus Yet

If you are reading this at all, I suspect that indicates an openness — much as the Athenians were willing to hear Paul out. You are not ready to put your faith in Jesus. You are still sorting it out. But you are open.

If that is you, pay particular attention to the quotation in verse 28. Paul quotes a poet from Crete, Epimenides, and the fragment we get is this: in him we live and move and have our being.

God is far more intimately involved in your life than you realize. Even if you are an agnostic working in a flower shop.

Genesis 1 gives us creation; Genesis 2 tells the same story in narrative form. And there we see God create Adam — not merely forming a body, but breathing life into him. What awakens Adam is the breath of God, and what sustains him is the breath of God. In Him we live and move and have our being.

This means God is not what the deists describe, or what the Epicureans of Paul’s day believed — someone who started things and then stepped back. He is far more involved than you would ever imagine. Colossians 1, which we read earlier in the service, says that in Christ all things hold together. Your DNA is held together by God. The air you are breathing is given to you by God. It is God who keeps the earth turning so the sun appears to rise in the east.

Theologians call this common grace — God’s grace toward humanity. He does not give it because He is indifferent to sin; He gives it because He cares for us as His creation. Which means He gives air to the kind and the cruel alike. He holds together the DNA of the newborn and of the murderer. He lets the rain fall on the honest and the thief. That common grace is given to everyone — including you, even if you do not follow Jesus.

But there is hard news in it: common grace is not saving grace. One day common grace ends — it ends when you breathe your last. And if you have not moved from common grace to saving grace, you will spend eternity separated from God.

So how do you move from one to the other? Paul says it right there on the Areopagus: God has been patient, overlooking our ignorance, but now He calls all people to Himself — and the way is to repent.

To repent means recognizing: I have been doing this wrong. I have been living for myself, for pleasure, by my own will. I have been my own leader. I repent of that, and I want to follow Jesus. It means turning and giving Him everything — no longer rooting your identity first in your marital status or your job or anything else, but first and foremost in Christ.

The Unknown God Is Very Knowable

The God the Athenians labeled unknown is in fact deeply known. He gave you life. He sustains it. He keeps everything moving. He has extended common grace to you — and He knows that common grace ends, and He does not want you separated from Him. That is why He sent His Son, the only human who ever lived entirely without sin, who therefore had no debt of His own to pay, and who went to the cross to pay ours.

And for those of us who have followed Him a while and find ourselves pulled hard by the things of this world — more infatuated with our phones than with His grace, more drawn to what stirs our anger than to His peace — remember what you have been given. The Holy Spirit is not only a seal marking you as His. He is the same power that raised Christ from the dead. If that power now lives in you, then you have the strength you need to say no.

Don’t try it on your own willpower. Rely on Him, on His people around you, and on the Scriptures that keep teaching you who He is.

Because He knows you. He is far more actively involved in your life than you realize.