Biblestudy: Acts (Part Eighteen)

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Given 24-Jan-89; 61 minutes

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On Paul's second evangelistic campaign, he preaches in southern Turkey and western Greece. He tries to go north but is prevented, likely because northern Galatia had Israelite Celts he was not sent to. Paul preaches in Thessalonica, reasoning in the synagogue and declaring Jesus as the Christ. Some Jews stir up trouble, accusing them of acting against Caesar. In Berea, the people are more open-minded, examining the scriptures daily. But Jews from Thessalonica come and stir up crowds, forcing Paul to leave. In Athens, Paul faces Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. He speaks at the Areopagus, appealing to the "unknown god" and arguing against idols, proclaiming the resurrection. Some mock, others want to hear more. Paul departs Athens and comes to Corinth, the most important Gentile city he visits. Corinth is very wealthy but decadent. Paul arrives in weakness and fear after troubles elsewhere.


transcript:

In Acts 16, we had gotten the apostle Paul started off on his second evangelistic campaign and this one took him down the southern end of Turkey and then on into the western end. Remember I was telling you that every time he tried to turn north and go into other areas, he was turned back. He said that Satan stopped him.

What I was going to read to you from a commentary was the admission in this commentary that in the northern part of what was then the province of Galatia, there were Celts living there, those people who later worked their way up to Norway and into Scotland and Ireland. And in this commentary, which was Tyndall's Commentary on the Bible, said that these were Israelitish people and that the apostle Paul was not sent to those people. He was sent to other peoples and those other peoples were primarily the Gentiles and also then Israelites who were living in the cities that were mainly Gentile. But every time he tried to get up into areas where the bulk of the people were Israelites, he got turned aside in some way. So he could not go into Northern Galatia.

But he continued working his way west, got over into Asos, which is on the very western end of Turkey and there he had that vision of a man of Macedonia saying, "Come on over." So he then hopped on a ship, went over to Neapolis, which is the port city for Philippi. Then they went up into Philippi and he began preaching the gospel there. I mentioned to you that Mr. Armstrong said that he felt that that was in 50 AD. It was one 19-year time cycle from the time that the gospel began to be preached.

The first convert there was a woman named Lydia. Apparently there was not a large enough Jewish population there for them to have a synagogue because it does not say that he went into a synagogue. Instead, it says he went by the riverside where prayer was made and there he had the opportunity to talk to Lydia. And very quickly she invited him to stay with her and her house, then, became the center of operations while they were in Philippi.

He also ran into the young woman who was possessed of a demon and that proceeded to start a riot whenever he cast the demon from her and the city was in an uproar. The apostle Paul and Silas were thrown into prison. There was an earthquake late at night and the Philippian jailer was converted out of that.

Then it was revealed to the people in the city that the apostle Paul and Silas were both Roman citizens and they were very quickly biting their nails, wondering what to do with these two men that they had beaten very unfairly. The did not even give them a trial, never inquired as to whether they were Romans, and they were in trouble if the apostle Paul chose to prosecute. But he did not choose to prosecute, which is very interesting. He did choose to make them come out to the prison and let him out personally and thus was able to throw somewhat of a warning into them that they better be careful about the way they treat these Christian missionaries or they might find themselves in trouble, but they had to leave. It was the better part of discretion for them to get out of Philippi. And they did do that.

So we get into chapter 17 and we find them on the road now to Thessalonica.

Acts 17:1 Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews.

Why they did not stop in these other places I do not know. Nobody seems to know but it was a fairly long journey. It was about 30 miles, I believe, from Philippi to Amphipolis and then it was about another 35 miles from Amphipolis to Apollonia and then another 40 miles on to Thessalonica. So whether those cities were just mentioned because it was one day's journey, I do not know. But if it was one day's journey, that was a long walk in one day. Maybe they used horses. I do not know. But at any rate, he finally made his way to Thessalonica.

Now Thessalonica was a pretty good-sized city. There was, according to the commentaries, about 200,000 people in Thessalonica. It was the major city of Macedonia. It was the capital of the area, the commercial center of the area. And it was set astride Via Ignatia, which was the main east-west road that ran all the way from the Adriatic Sea across northern Greece, then Macedonia, and then it picked up again in what is today Turkey, and went all the way over into Antioch. So a lot of traffic through this area.

Acts 17:2-3 Then Paul, as his custom was, went into them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, "This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ."

This is Paul's basic approach to preaching the gospel. It was, on the one hand, proclamation. Now by that, I get it that he stood up in the congregation and he preached a sermon and he proclaimed to them the Kingdom of God and that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. And then interlocking with that, he sat down later and had, I guess what you would call personal Bible studies in which he argued with them. We do not like to use that word, but it was pretty strong, he argued with them here. They softened it by saying that he reasoned with them. In other places it says that they argued. And you know that the discussions must have been pretty heated if they were willing to beat on him with rods and things like that. They just were not sitting around twiddling their thumbs and just kind of having a philosophical discussion about this and that. These people got hot under the collar about these things. Of course, it is easy to get hot under the collar about religion, is it not, for many of us anyway.

But again, to the Jew first and then also to the Greek. And I think one of the major things that he was trying to get across to these people is this: the Jews were looking for a Messiah. They knew that it was about time. They could read Daniel. And the Seventy Weeks prophecy is in there and they had their thoughts regarding it. But the Messiah had come and gone and they missed Him. And one of the major reasons that they missed Him is because of their preconceptions regarding what the Messiah would be like. And of course, the major misconception was they missed entirely that the Messiah was going to come and that He was going to live life as a human being, that He was going to suffer and die for the sins of the world, and be resurrected and then come again. And it would not be until the second time that He would come that He would establish His Kingdom on earth.

What Paul had to do with these people was prove to them that the life of Jesus Christ fit the Scriptures. And so that meant that he had to understand Christ's genealogy and be able to show to those people that Jesus indeed was descended from David and that He was in line to be the King. In addition to that, he had to show that He was born in Bethlehem, the City of David. He had to show that He grew up into manhood in the land of Naphtali, you see, in Nazareth. He had to show then the things that Jesus preached were in conformity with what the Messiah would preach. He had to show them from the Scriptures that the Messiah was intended by God to suffer and die for the sins of the people.

And you see, all along the way, just as we do today, we have our conceptions (misconceptions is more like it), and so we tend to resist those things. And the Jews of course resisted very strongly. These things were things that they had believed for centuries regarding the Messiah and they were not about to give them up very easily.

Now, the second thing that was very difficult for them had to do with the positions of grace and law. And grace included within it the diminution, at least to them anyway, of personal works. That was something also that was very difficult for them to accept. And it was this kind of proclamation that caused the death of Stephen and the persecution of the church around the area of Jerusalem. It was also what was responsible for the council that was held in Acts the 15th chapter.

So the apostle Paul had to be prepared to reason these things with these people and it was not something in which he could have a tract or an article written off at the local newsstand, go down and get Xerox copies and hand it to people and say, "Here, read this between now and the next Sabbath." Everything had to be communicated verbally and so there was a lot of face-to-face confrontation, things that we are spared today because this blizzard of paper that Pasadena sends out prepares the way for us. And television does as well. And before that, it was radio. And so he had to do all of this face-to-face and it was a lot more exciting! You get run out of town, you get beaten and have people screaming at you, nose to nose. Well, that was the way it was done then.

Acts 17:4 And some of them were persuaded and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas.

So there was some success there and it is very likely that these women were Gentiles. It is hardly likely that Jews were in a position to be leading in a city in which they were in a very minority position. So it is likely that these ladies were Gentiles. It is also, though, very likely that they were proselytes of the Jews, of Judaism. And so in a sense, they were well on their way to conversion before the apostle Paul ever came along. But they very quickly saw the truth of what he was saying and were converted.

It says that they joined themselves. It means that they formed a group around the apostle Paul that was separate from the synagogue.

Acts 17:5 But the Jews who were not persuaded, becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, and gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.

Here we go again. And it is interesting that the thing that seemed to precipitate it was envy of the success of the apostle Paul and Silas.

Thessalonica was what the Romans called a free city, which meant that it was self-governing. Now, there was still a Roman governor who was over things. But if it had not been a free city, they would not have been allowed to rule themselves in the way that they did. Now, the Romans actually permitted them to hold elections. The general Greek system was a democracy and the Thessalonians were allowed to elect what we would call today a council or an assembly. And so they brought Jason as we are going to see in the next verse. They could not find Paul and Silas and so they did the next best thing. They took Jason, who was their host there in the city, and they dragged him before the council.

Now, they could have done that without the disturbance. They had the right as citizens to do that, but they created the disturbance, I am sure, in order to make their case stronger. They were the ones that were making the uproar. It was not the Christians. The Christians were probably trying to protect themselves, you know, holding their heads or something. But the disturbance would make it look as though the Christians were the ones that raised the things they were not doing it at all. The Jews were doing it.

Acts 17:6 But when they did not find them [that is, Paul and Silas], they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, "These who have turned the world upside down have come here too."

We know they did not literally turn the world upside down. It simply means that these people cause trouble everywhere. Just a colloquialism, I guess you would call it, for something that would mean that now the news was getting around. So here they were in Thessalonica and these Jews already knew that there had been trouble elsewhere. Now, where had that trouble been? Well, there are two likely places. It was either Philippi or Rome. Paul never made it to Rome until after a church was already formed. And as we go through here, we are going to see that it is highly likely that somebody else went to Rome and already started a congregation there by this time. The apostle Paul did not get there until many years later. And actually converts were coming from Rome over into Greece, maybe on business travels or whatever.

But it is very likely that Priscilla and Aquila, who are going to show up in the next chapter, were converted in Rome. And then they got chased out of Rome because of an edict of Claudius and so they went over to Corinth and started a business there and that is where Paul met up with them. They were already converted when he got there. So the news was getting around and it is very likely it came either from Rome or it came from Philippi or perhaps in what is present day Turkey.

Acts 17:7 Jason has harbored them [this is their accusation], and these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king—Jesus."

Here is the heart of the accusation that they hope to pin on these people. Now, there is some measure of truth in the accusation that Jesus is a king and He is the King of a kingdom. That is what the Gospel is all about. It is about the Kingdom of God. However, they construed it to be an attack on the emperor because the legal religion of Rome was emperor worship. That does not mean that the only legal religion of Rome at the time was emperor worship because the Jews had free access to their synagogues in Rome. And Rome's general policy in the areas that they governed was to allow the people to continue to worship according to their religion as long as it did not disturb the peace. And so when Rome gave that permission, then that religion became a lawful religion. Christianity was not yet really a lawful religion in Rome.

One of the things that I mentioned to you when we were laying the foundation for this book is that it seems as though it was Luke's intention to show that regardless of the disturbances, Rome never declared Christianity illegal and so it had the legality that it needed to operate. If Rome had declared it illegal, then it would have stopped the preaching of the gospel. But I am sure what happened is that God continued to hold the door open until the work was done in that area and then He closed the door to the preaching of the gospel in those areas, at least for a while.

At any rate, that was the heart of their accusation. And that is, that it was an attack on the emperor.

Acts 17:8-9 And they troubled the crowd and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. So when they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

Here is what happened there. At first, the accusation alarmed the council, city fathers, the assembly. However, the Jews could not present enough evidence to support their case. First of all, they did not have the troublemaker, Paul or his assistant Silas. All they had was Jason. And so there was no real case. In addition to that, the city fathers were able to see that the evidence that they presented was awfully scanty. And maybe they were even (though this is not included), able to have evidence presented otherwise that it was the Jews who were doing the rioting and creating the disturbance. So what they did in effect is what we would call today, they threw the case out of court.

Now see, here again is a case where a government having the opportunity to persecute, backed away from it. And Luke is saying, "Look, we operated legally within the framework of the law."

They made Jason, though, post bond and that bond or that security evidently was to ensure that the apostle Paul would leave. If the apostle Paul did not leave, then he lost his bond. Well, in verse 10,

Acts 17:10 Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went to the synagogue of the Jews.

Undoubtedly they left at night to avoid any further trouble. They did not want to run into any more Jews and create a disturbance. So they went at night to Berea, another 45 or 50 miles away. And in this case, Berea was not sitting astride this road. So they went off the beaten path. They got out of the mainstream so to speak and went to this place and straight to the synagogue again.

I will tell you, you have got to give that apostle Paul and Silas some credit. People could kick him in the teeth and he would get up smiling. You know, we would get awfully offended, I think, if we got the rejection that he got. Most of us could never be door to door salesman because we cannot face rejection. We go knock on the door and we are hoping the people will not kick us in the teeth. But nothing seemed to hold him back.

Acts 17:11 These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

For all eternity, the Bereans are going to be praised. They were fair-minded, noble-minded, and I think what it means is that they were open-minded to the extent that they were tolerant of listening to something new without getting angry, upset, and super defensive. But on the other hand, that even though they were open-minded and tolerant, they did not take his word without proving it. They did not fight with him like the Jews did in all these other places.

You know, it just makes you wonder, why? Why this one place stood out like that. What kind of a spirit was there? What kind of an attitude was there in the whole city that this group of people would have this open-minded approach to things? It is just so interesting. Maybe because they were off the beaten path, they were not so full of themselves. They were not from the big metropolitan area like Thessalonica. But they were maybe just plain folks who were open-minded about things.

Also something that is interesting to me there is that they had Scriptures available to them. How many scrolls were there? I do not know. But there was enough there that they could read, enough that they had access to the Scriptures in order to check things out. And they met with him daily. It was not just something that they did on the Sabbath either. So very interesting. So apparently,

Acts 17:12-13 Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. [even, apparently, the unpersuaded Jews caused them no problem] But [here come the bad guys again] when the Jews from Thessalonica heard that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds.

You know, I wonder if the apostle Paul ever thought about this: whatever you sow you reap. I mean, he was the bad guy in the beginning. He was getting it back in spades! Everywhere he went somebody was on his case just like he had been on everybody else's case a little while before that. And there seems to be a law in the universe that evens things out. I do not even know how to describe it. Sort of like a law of compensation so that those who do those who do bad, get theirs. If they do not get it theirs from the people, they did get theirs from somebody else. So that it makes that law that whatever you sow you reap (or that principle) to be true. Eventually, it all comes home.

At any rate, the Jews showed up in Thessalonica and learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea.

Acts 17:14-15 Then immediately the brethren sent Paul away, to go to the sea; but both Silas and Timothy remained there. So those who conducted Paul brought him to Athens; and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, they departed.

Here is what happened. Paul left and went to Athens. That is very clear. Timothy apparently remained in Berea. Silas went to Macedonia up to Philippi. Now, both of those men later met up with Paul in Athens. Then we find they were sent right back to where they came from and then they came back again only this time they met him in Corinth. Well, that is an awful lot of walking, an awful lot of riding, an awful lot of something.

Now, this was done within a fairly short period of time. When we get to chapter 18, I will tie all these things together because once we get to chapter 18, we can begin to tie the book of I Corinthians in with the things that are going on in that chapter. And we will begin to put some of these things together because it is right about in this time that the apostle Paul begins to write his epistles. And I Thessalonians was probably the first one that was written and that he probably wrote it from Corinth. In the next chapter we are going to get the Corinth.

Now, why did he write it? He wrote it because Timothy came back with a message about things that were going on in Thessalonica and things that need to be addressed in their understandings or misunderstandings of the things that he said earlier. But we begin to be able to tie the epistles together with the story flow because pretty soon he is going to start writing.

Acts 17:16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.

Well, in Athens, we are going to see Paul's approach to a city that was really pagan. I mean, it was as pagan as you can get practically. And it was pagan, but it was cultured. We will get a little bit of more of that later.

Here we are going to begin to see, then, the way Paul approached them and he did not approach them in the same way that he did the people in Thessalonica or Philippi or anywhere else that he had been before.

Acts 17:17-18 Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, "What does this babbler want to say?" Others said, "He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods," because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.

What they had there in Athens was a blend of, well, superstitious idolatry along with we will call, enlightened philosophy. In Paul's address here, he touches on both of them. Now, the two major groups were the Epicureans and the Stoics.

The Epicureans felt that it was unnecessary to seek God because God was not paying any attention to man, you know, that He was off doing His thing, but it was not really necessary to seek to please Him. Now, as a result of that, they were really unafraid of God and they were unafraid of His judgments. And yet on the other hand, they were the kind of people that would attack what they considered to be superstitious beliefs in the gods. The Epicureans were essentially monotheistic, like they believed (this is a generality) that there was one God, but He was not paying any attention. It was one God, the Creator.

The Stoics on the other hand, were polytheistic. You know, you could kind of worship whomever it was that you want. Now, the rest of their religion was pretty sensible. They tried to be real rational in their thinking that there was an essential unity of all of mankind and that it was mankind's responsibility to make very strong attempts to try to get along with one another. And also they felt that there was a kinship with God, you know, that man was related to God.

Now Paul has to touch on these things or at least he feels that he does. And so he approaches them from the basis of their philosophy and also on the basis of their idolatry. So the speech here has three basic sections.

Number one is this: that the God, you see this unknown God that he begins with, is Lord. That He does not need a temple. You have to understand that they were standing in a place that was surrounded by temples. Now, He not only does not need a temple but in the strictest sense, He does not even need a ritual of any kind in the worship of Him.

The second thing that he touches on is that man is God's creation and that man needs God. That begins to smack right against the Epicureans pretty hard.

The third thing that he touches on is that man and God are related and therefore idolatry is irrelevant. Not only irrelevant, it is downright foolish.

Now, Athens had been the cultural center of the world but by the time that the apostle Paul got there, it was living on its reputation. I will tell you how small it had become by the time the apostle Paul there got there. It was very likely that the population of Athens was only about 10,000 people, whereas the population of Corinth was 700,000. I mean, it was a major city, but Athens was nothing more than a village. But it was a village with a tremendous reputation and tremendous buildings in it. Even today, you can see the glory that was once Athens. But by the time the apostle Paul got there, the place was practically a ghost town filled with this magnificent statuary and buildings, marble everywhere, but it was living on its reputation.

Here is a little bit of background about Athens. It was founded by a man named Theseus and he was supposed to have slain the Minotaur. Did you ever hear of the Minotaur on island of Crete? And also he conquered the Amazons, those famous women warriors. At any rate, he named it in honor of the goddess Athena. And it reached its peak under Pericles who ruled from 495 to 429. A 66-year reign by Pericles. And it was during Pericles' last 15 years before he died that most of the magnificence of Athens was built, all the marble buildings, the Parthenon, and so forth.

Now, it attracted intellectuals from all over the world. And in fact, it attained most of its eminence at the expense of its allies. There was a tremendous brain drain going on for several hundred years and all these brains were coming into Athens because of the reputation that it earned under Pericles. But gradually this began to agitate, irritate, the other cities that were in league with Athens and eventually a war erupted. It lasted for about 25 years and it was called the Peloponnesian war in which many of the cities that were formerly associated with Athens sided with Sparta.

Sparta is in south central Achaia and Athens was up in the eastern and northern part of Achaia. But Sparta and its allies won the war. And Athens began to go into quite a long period of decline. In 338 Philip II of Macedon conquered it. But all he succeeded in doing in conquering it was to spread its culture all over the world because his son Alexander the Great then went on his conquering binge and he took Athenian culture with him wherever he went. But Athens itself was still going downhill.

In 146 the Romans conquered it and they loved everything Greek and so they spread it even further. And even though Rome was the great city in the Roman Empire, they continued to funnel a great deal of their, say, intellectual wealth into Athens. And it continued to be the philosophical and cultural center of the Roman world. However, it was going down very fast.

And so by the time the apostle Paul came on the scene, it had lost its wealth, it had lost its empire, and only had a population of about 10,000 people. So Paul was confronted with a veritable forest of idols and temples and that got his dander up. And so he decided to speak to these people. He challenged them and then,

Acts 17:20-21 For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean." For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

That tells you a lot. There were not very many people working. You cannot exist very long when there is nobody working.

Acts 17:22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious."

Well, he was surrounded by idols and temples.

Now the Areopagus was the council or assembly of Ares. Ares is the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Mars. And so they held their council on the hill of Ares, at the top of the hill, or Mars Hill. And this is where they normally held a court for the operations of the city. Now, this does not appear to be any kind of a legal proceeding at all but rather an opportunity given to Paul to explain the message to those who are in control of affairs to determine whether or not he would have access to preaching in the city. So though it was not important in the way of being a legal proceeding, it was important in that if he was going to do any kind of work there, it was necessary for him to have their permission to do that.

Acts 17:23 For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I found an altar with the inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

The Greeks were pretty superstitious. And I guess the reason that they had any kind of a statue like this was just in case there was a god that they missed. They would not offend him in any way because there was an altar for him.

Acts 17:23 Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you.

So Paul is going to preach to them beginning in what he feels will be a common ground. They do not know the God that he is worshipping and so it is almost like this is an altar to the unknown God, the God that he is worshipping. It is not really, but he wants to begin with something that they can relate to.

Acts 17:24 "God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.

He is talking here, of course, about God the Creator, but he is employing words that would fit right into the Greek speaking world, something that they were kind of familiar with. And his first ploy is to let them know that this unknown God is so great He could not be contained in a temple. What this has to do with is concerning the nature of the God that Paul is worshipping. Now, you have to understand that it is very likely that all we have here is the essence, the outline of what the apostle Paul said. We do not have the whole message and it is very likely that he filled in here with a great deal of material in order to make more specifically clear exactly what it was that he was getting at, but it gives us the sense.

He is talking here at the beginning of his message about the nature of God. Now, he could compare that very easily to the nature of those idols which were dead. Well, his God is alive! He made everything; He was not created, He is Creator. That is the approach at the beginning.

Acts 17:25 Nor is He worshiped with men's hands [Something that a man could make. God has no need of being supplied with anything that man can do with his hands. That is part of His nature.], as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

See, they had to care for their gods. They probably had to chase the pigeons off. They probably had to wash them, keep them all polished up. But our God, He cares for us.

Acts 17:26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the bounds of their habitation.

Now, verse 26 is important from another area. And that is, he was getting at a belief that the Greeks had and that is that they originated from the soil of Greece. See, that was their idea and Paul is straightening that up. No, that is not true. You came from Adam and Eve just like everybody else, that couple that this God created. Not only that, this God is in control of history. The Greeks with all of their wisdom felt that they were in control of things and that they determined when nations would rise and fall and it would be determined by the intelligence, the intellect of men and our ability to control technology. No, it is God who does those things and that there are divinely appointed periods for nations to flourish. And God is also the One that sets their boundaries and when God is finished using them, then they sink from the scene and other nations rise and God's purpose is carrying through; showing the power of God to determine the destiny, not only of individuals, but also of nations.

Verse 27 shows a purpose:

Acts 17:27 so that they should seek the Lord, in hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.

Now, he is showing them that what God did in verse 26 in the way that He created the families of men, in the way that He created and brings to power nations and peoples and set their boundaries, that God did it in such a way so that there would be a witness that mankind would be able to seek Him. But even Paul admits that they are groping for Him, that it is a mystery but it is not a mystery any longer, see, because Paul is there revealing this God and now he is telling these people, you do not have to grope for Him anymore. The mystery is revealed.

Acts 17:27-28 . . . He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.'

Both of those were quotes from Greek poets. Now, they did not apply at all to God the Creator, but rather they applied to Zeus. But Paul knew enough of their poetry to lift the line out and apply it to the true God. Also in verse 28 he is showing a relationship between God and men and it was something that they could not honestly and truthfully deny because their own history showed it. We can deny anything that we want to.

Acts 17:29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God [That was another quote from a poet of theirs, he is continuing to show this relationship and we are not divine offspring, but we are in God's image and likeness.], we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, or something shaped by art and man's devising.

Now, if they were thinking that would have been a real thrust right to the heart. Because there he was, standing in the midst of this forest of idols and he was telling them, "Look, you dumb idiots, you're supposed to be so smart. Those things can't breathe, they can't talk to you. They're not writing epistles to you at all. They're not teaching you the way to go. You have to care for them and yet you're supposed to be so smart and yet you're bowing down to something that you have to make with your own hands and carry from place to place." I can see why they would get upset if he really expounded on this and drew it a lot clearer than it is actually here.

Acts 17:30 Truly, these times of ignorance [ooh! All these smart men, all these intellects] God overlooked, but now commands men everywhere to repent.

He is saying that God has made some allowances in the past that He is not going to be doing now because He has appointed a day. This is why we cannot dilly dally around. There is a sense of urgency in what Paul is saying here, a sense of imminency.

Acts 17:31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained [meaning Jesus Christ].

So he is saying there is a day of judgment going to be conducted by God's agent whom He from the dead, as the next line says.

Acts 17:31-32 He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead." And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, "We will hear you again on this matter."

Now, this is interesting in light of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The Greeks believed in the immortality of the soul, but he did not approach them from that standpoint because man is not immortal. That would not have been true. They believed in reincarnation, some of them did. He did not approach them from that standpoint at all because that is not true either. But he approached them from the resurrection of the dead and that they objected to because they had never heard of such a thing, or if they had, they did not believe that it was possible to be done. He could not get past the ignorance that was produced by the misconceptions of the past.

Acts 17:33 So Paul departed from among them.

They had nothing but scorn then.

Now to them, the body was evil, a dualistic approach to things, and they could not perceive of a bodily resurrection in which a body would be pure.

Acts 17:34 However, some men joined him and believed, and among them was Dionysius the Areopagite. . .

That means that he was a part of the council, the council of the city fathers there that were hearing what he had to say and believed.

Acts 17:34 . . . and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

So some were convicted. But we find in,

Acts 18:1 After these things Paul departed from Athens [apparently the apostle Paul did not receive permission to preach in Athens] and went to Corinth.

So, on to Corinth. I think what we will do here is we will just give you a little bit of a background of it and then the next time we will come back and start in verse 1.

Corinth was undoubtedly the most important of the Gentile cities that Paul visited on his evangelistic campaigns. Now, eventually he got to Rome and Rome was the city but Paul's evangelistic campaigns there were very limited because he was in prison (or he was under house arrest might be a better way of putting it) for two years while he was there and then he was released and apparently went on to other places. During his first imprisonment there, he did not do anything except see people at home. The next time he was there, he was put to death. So Corinth stands as the most important city that the apostle Paul ever went to, to conduct any of his evangelistic campaigns.

Now, it had a very long history, and where it was situated it was kind of right in the center of everything that was Greek. Its history stretches all the way back to the eighth century BC, long before Athens, a couple of hundred years before Athens. And even then, it boasted a population of 200,000 free men and 500,000 slaves, men and women. It was quite a place. However, by the fifth century BC, it began to decline and its decline was precipitated by the rise of Athens. It began to drain away many of the people who were formerly in Corinth and some of the other cities around there. And it took away much of the strength of the leadership that was there.

However, in that Peloponnesian war that I mentioned to you that began in 431 and went on to 404, Corinth sided with Sparta and they were victorious. However, it was disastrous for both Sparta and Corinth and the decline continued. In 338, just like Athens, it was defeated by Philip II and he began to build it up though, and once again it became the leading city in the area. In 196 the Romans came through and they captured it. And about 50 years later, the Corinthians led a revolt against Rome and that was a no-no. The Romans defeated them and they absolutely leveled the city. They plowed it under, scraped it into the sea.

But it is a hard place to keep down. And the reason it was so hard to keep down is because it was so strategically located. And so Julius Caesar in about 46 BC decreed that it should be rebuilt. Two years later, the construction began and by 27 BC, it was the capital of Achaia. Achaia was the southern part of what is today Greece. Now in Paul's time, it had a population of about 200,000 people which makes it 20 times larger than Athens was. It was a commercial center. It is right in the middle of everything there, roads leading into it. It was not too far from the ocean. And as a result of that, it was a commercial city. It had a very large population of Jews, and very wealthy.

Now, along with the wealth went a great deal of decadence as well. The decadence was mostly in the area of sexual immorality and Corinth was known throughout the ancient world by the term "to corinthianize," which meant to be sexually immoral. Now, it was the center of worship for the goddess Aphrodite and in her temple there were 1,000 sacred prostitutes. Can you imagine that? 1,000 of them? And they were sacred, which is interesting. This temple sat on the highest spot in the city, of course, the high place. There were also temples there to the God Melchart, which is interesting. That was the the god of the Phoenicians and he was the god of sailors, a commercial center. There were a lot of them there. Also, there was a temple to the god Apollo and a temple to the god Esculapious who was the god of healing.

It was also the site of the Pan Hellenic, which means "all Greek Isthmian games," similar to the Olympics. The only thing was these were held every two years. And it is interesting that Paul in I Corinthians 9 uses an athletic metaphor that he undoubtedly got from the Isthmian Games.

Now, in I Corinthians 2, we are going to go there just briefly to provide a little bit more background.

I Corinthians 2:1-3 And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God, for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.

You might remember in the vision back there in chapter 16 that he was directed to go to Macedon, but he went there and things did not go too well. In Philippi, he was beaten and jailed and he had to leave the city. In Thessalonica he left the people in trouble. He did not get beaten there or anything but Jason had to post a bond for him. And so he left the church there in trouble. In Berea, the next stop, he had to leave because things were beginning to heat up because the people, the Jews, had arrived from the Thessalonica. Then in Athens, maybe the most difficult of all to take because he was treated there with scorn and contempt and just given a polite dismissal from the city. He did not even have the opportunity to do much preaching there.

And I would say that the apostle Paul, by the time he got to Corinth, was pretty dejected. That is why I read that there. He came in weakness, with fear and trembling. Undoubtedly, here he was going to one of the greatest cities of the Roman Empire, and he was wondering what worse thing could happen here. Everything is going bad. Why had God allowed matters to fall out so badly? He was undoubtedly sick, emotionally sick with anxiety and depression.

Now, in addition to that, he was probably still suffering from the effects of the beating that he took in Philippi and this also could have contributed to his depression. And it might have been that it was here that he was praying so fervently that God would remove the thorn in his flesh because that too was written to the Corinthians in II Corinthians 12.

So that is the background. You have a man for whom everything seems to be going wrong and he is on the verge of preaching in the most important city that he has been to yet. Anxiety, depression, feelings of weakness. How are things going to turn out here?

JWR/aws/drm





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