Acts 17:22-29 (NIV)
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 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. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
“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 hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“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 man’s design and skill.”
Paul realized that the group he was speaking to, despite their pretentions of intellectual superiority, were actually ignorant of the true God, of the true history of the world and of God’s revelation to humanity through it. Paul had been appalled at the multitude of altars and idols in the city, but he had studied them to find an opening rather than merely turning away from them.
One altar had intrigued him because it was an altar “to the unknown god”. In addition to the many Olympian gods and goddesses who had temples and altars in the city, this altar was intended to ensure that any unknown god or goddess did not get offended and wreak havoc on the city. Paul used this altar as a launch pad for his presentation because he was truly bringing them information about the true God, a God that they had long ago lost any knowledge of.
Paul began at the beginning. The unknown God was the one who had created everyone and everything at the beginning of time. This God was vastly different from the Greek gods, who were really just humans drawn large, with faults, and shortcoming, and even temper tantrums, just like people. They were not omnipotent, just very powerful, and they could only be in one place at a time. In contrast, the true God created everything and fills everything continually. He has no form that can be represented in wood stone, or precious metals, and His presence cannot be contained in a shrine or temple. He is entirely self-sufficient and is therefore not dependent on the offerings of food and drink brought by His devotees.
This God, unknown to the Greek intellectuals, but well-known by Paul, had created all nations from a single man, Noah, the ninth descendant of the single couple from whom all humanity had descended. And, after the tower of Babel, in His sovereign will God had determined where every subsequent branch of humanity would live.
The true God’s presence so permeated His creation that it could be truly said that “in Him we live and move and have our being,” as some of the Greek’s past poets had intuited and recorded. Thus, rather than receiving leftovers of the Greek’s worship, after they had worshiped the gods that they could identify by name, this God, the true God, was well-deserving of their primary, their only worship.
Father, Paul wasn’t done yet, but he had started at the beginning and had laid a solid groundwork for the gospel which was to come. I have heard many teachers talking about how Paul’s technique of starting where His listeners were, is a technique that we should all emulate. And I agree. But it strikes me that, in order to get there, Paul had to care enough about the people he had targeted to not assume that he knew where they were, but to really get down and look, and listen, and pray until he truly knew. Then he could reach out effectively. Help me, Lord, to care that much about the people all around me who need You today. Amen.
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