missionary journey. We read of his first missionary journey, chapters 13 and 14. Now we have the Apostle on his second missionary journey, going through and continuing in that journey from chapter 16. Here now the reading of the Word of Almighty God, inspired by His Holy Spirit. Acts 17, the whole chapter starting at verse 1. Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead, and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas, and of the devout Greeks, a great multitude, and of the chief women, not a few. But the Jews, which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, these that have turned the world upside down are come hither also, whom Jason hath received. And these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city. When they heard these things, And when they had taken security of Jason and of the other, they let them go. And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea, who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore, many of them believed. Also of honorable women, which were Greeks, and of men, not a few. But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came thither also and stirred up the people. And then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea. But Silas and Timotheus abode there still. And they that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens, and receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timotheus, for to come to him with all speed, they departed. Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some said, what will this babbler say? Others some, he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus saying, may we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears. We would know therefore what these things mean. For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything. seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation that they should seek the Lord. If happily they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring. For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is likened to gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked and others said, we will hear thee again of this matter. So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit, certain men clave unto him and believed, among which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. May the Lord add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his most holy word. A few comments on Acts chapter 17, the continuation of the apostle Paul's second missionary journey. Verse one, we see the apostle in Thessalonica through verse four. We see him preaching there, and many converted, both of Jews and of Greeks. Now a few interesting notes here. Amphipolis, amphi means both, and polis is a city. It was a city surrounded on two sides by the ocean, that's why it was called Amphipolis. Thessalonica was a city named after Philip of Macedonia who had conquered Thessaly. He conquered them, Nike, that's the word at the end of Thessalonica, and Thessaly is the people he conquered, the city of the conquest over Thessaly. Here we see the gospel conquering at Thessalonica. Now Paul goes to Thessalonica and immediately he goes into the synagogue. It says this was his manor or his ethos is the Greek word. He went to the Jew first and then to the Greek. That was his methodology. It describes for us what he did when he went to the synagogue of the Jews. Notice there in verse 2, it says that as his manner was, he went and he reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead. Here we see the apostles' methodology. What was it that he did? He reasoned. That's the main verb. Then it gives us two participles. Those are verbal adjectives. They're verbs that describe the main verb. He reasoned. Well, how is it that he reasoned? He opened and alleged. Those were the two subsidiary or descriptive methods by which he reasoned. Now this word, reasoned with them, is dialegata, dialogue we get in English from this. Lagos is reason or rationality, and dia is all the way through something, like cutting it all the way through and making it two, in other words. So he reasoned thoroughly with them. Then it says to describe how he reasoned. It was out of the scriptures. That's the first thing. The source was the Bible. And then it opened, that's what he did with the Bible. He opened it up. He did work on explaining the texts to the people. What do these texts say? Then he alleges, which is something they would do in their courts of law. They would make allegations. They would make it plain, in other words, to the sight of the people how the case that they made is correct. Here's the scripture, he reads it. Then he opens up the text and explains it. Then he makes allegations that are clearly related to the work he did in reasoning from the scripture. This is the methodology of all faithful preaching. It must open the understanding and then build doctrines on top of that understanding and opening of the text. This is what he did. But notice, what is it that he alleged? He alleged a couple of major points. In fact, a summary of the gospel. Christ must needs have suffered. Now this word needs means it can't stop. It's morally necessary is usually how that verb is used. Often it can mean something that is predestined or determined beforehand by fate. In other words, God has decreed it to be so, or something that is necessary by the order of nature, for example. So when it says he must needs have suffered, what sort of necessity is this that he would suffer and rise again from the dead? Well, of course, God decreed this. We find this elsewhere in the book of Acts, even that God determined beforehand that he would be crucified by lawless hands. But also it is necessary by God's nature that he is a righteous God. and that if he is going to forgive sins, he's not gonna do it without some payment being made and satisfaction of his justice. That's why Jesus must die and rise again so that we may have a complete salvation. It's also necessary by the nature of man. Man is a sinner created in God's image, but fallen in sin. Therefore, he deserves death because of his sin. So there must be a death of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is necessary. And these are the basic teachings of the gospel. This must be the case. Verses five through nine though, not all were persuaded by the apostles' reasonings, were they? Some of them are called unbelieving Jews. Now there is a word for those who do not believe. This is a different word. It means those who are not persuaded. They haven't been won by your arguments, Paul. And these unpersuaded Jews resort to violence, as we will see from our study of 1 Samuel. This is how their father Saul was, unpersuaded and therefore violent. It says that those who are not persuaded raised a persecution. They even went to the polytarchs, we see there in verse six, the rulers of the city. And what was the claim that these unpersuaded Jews made about the apostle Paul? Notice in verse seven, he said that Jason, they say that Jason has received these men and these all do what? Contrary to the decrees of The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem that the Jews all care about? Is that what they said? Caesar. All do contrary to the decrees of Caesar about which they didn't care, against which they would fight, of which they would cast off if they could. Now they pretend to care. Why? Because they're hypocrites. Because they're liars. They are of their father, the devil. therefore they say that they do contrary to the decrees of Caesar. Now it's interesting, Christianity is actually inconsistent with the decrees of Caesar, that is correct. The accusation that we believe that Jesus is King, that he is Lord, and that therefore we cannot worship the state, we cannot worship Caesar, we cannot call him our God and our Lord is accurate. And the blood of the martyrs testifies to the factuality of this statement that we cannot submit ourselves to lawless civil government. That's true. But the way that the Jews use it is not true. And, as a matter of fact, Christianity can coexist with all sorts of lawful forms of civil government, just not with tyranny and lawlessness. Also, these decrees of Caesar, just as a sidelight, the Jerusalem Council issued decrees in Acts 15 and Acts 16, the same word. It's an authoritative dogma is the Greek word, dogmata, decrees. These are authoritative binding resolutions. The apostle Paul escapes from this persecution. He goes then to Berea. We see the care of the disciples for the apostle at Thessalonica. They send him away and he goes to Berea, close by to Thessalonica. We see the noble Bereans and we see the ignoble or the wicked and vicious savage Jews who follow them on their way. They go after them to dog them, so to speak. Notice verse 11. It says that they were more noble at Berea and how is that? What is it that made them more noble? It says, they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Now this is noble and is to be imitated by us. The Thessalonians were not as noble, they were not as receptive in other words, they were not as diligent in searching out the Bible. But the word here for readiness of mind means that you have prepared yourself beforehand and are eager and ready to receive something. And it might be considered the opposite of searching the scriptures daily. In fact, the verb there for searching the scriptures daily is, Freyberg says, the process of evaluation. to examine, to question, to study carefully, as the sifting of evidence in a courtroom hearing, cross-examination, investigation, or interrogation. Does that sound like you just received blindly what the person says? No, but they had a readiness of spirit to receive the word preached and a critical evaluation of it based off of the one standard that we have for faith and for life, the Bible itself. So they have the twin graces, readiness to hear, but also going back to the source, the fountain of truth, God's holy word, the Bible. This is how they were noble. They were not on one ditch of credulity where they receive everything he says without thinking. Nor were they unbelieving and saying, I'm not gonna listen to him. I'm just gonna critically evaluate. Oh, you don't believe this part here of the Bible. No, they had both a willingness to receive and a evaluation by scripture. And this is an example for us. The Lord Jesus Christ commanded the Pharisees, search the scriptures. For in them you think you have eternal life and there they which testify of me. We must search the scriptures. And because they did this, because they were ready to receive and because they critically evaluated, verse 12 tells us the result. Therefore, many of them believed. Unlike at Thessalonica, not as many believed because they were not ready to hear and they didn't use scripture properly as the sole standard of truth. But here faith comes by hearing. They heard the word preached. and they heard it with readiness of mind. They carefully studied the scriptures, and that is what we are to do when we hear the word of God preached ourselves. As I said, these savage Jews come and chase them away, seeking to destroy them and undo the work of the gospel. And so they go again. This time, Paul is taken to Athens. Timothy and Silas remain there in Berea. Paul is conducted though, and while he's there in Athens, it says verse 16, that his spirit was stirred in him. This is the Greek verb paraxuno, means that something cuts you or is made sharp. It is stimulated, spurred on, urged or irritated, provoked or aroused to anger, exasperated or burning with anger, as we'll see with Saul later. Saul burns with anger against his son Jonathan unjustly and against David unjustly as well. But here notice the anger stirred within the apostle Paul is a godly anger as we'll see with Jonathan later on. This is the proper grief, anger, and zeal for the glory of God. And why was it that he was provoked? What cut him so deeply was that the whole city, it says, was given to idolatry. The word here is katedolos. under idols. Kata is being under something or under its dominion. The idols ruled the city. It was said of Athens, it was easier to find a god than a man in Athens. All these idols. Notice some of the philosophers that the Apostle Paul meets with. He goes to the synagogue, he reasons there, and then he meets certain philosophers in the marketplace or the stoa. It says here that he met with the Epicureans and the Stoics. They encountered him. And what we'll find in his sermon is he is in a very punchy way, is fighting against the Epicureans and the Stoics. He's contradicting their beliefs. And he does so, as we'll point out here, a few of the major points. Epicureans believed that the universe was a concourse of random atoms that were floating down from eternity and they kind of came together and poof, they formed into human beings and the cosmos and all the animals and all the things we see are basically some kind of process of evolution, some pantheistic machine that by chance produced all the order and all of the beauty. Now they also believed that the highest good, because there is no God, there are no gods out there, there is no higher authority, that the highest good is the pleasure of the mind or the body, whatever you can get out of this life to please yourself. And it often just meant the pleasures of the body, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and then the pride of life. Those are the things they cared the most about. So we'll see how he contradicts them. What about the Stoics? The Stoics were likewise somewhat pantheistic. They believed that the universe had a soul and that every little part of the universe and man included was part of this pantheistic whole. They had a very strong doctrine of providence. The historic process was becoming something great and would lead to great things until everything was purified by fire and purged and all became one great whole God. So these Stoics are famous for their indifference to the things that occur in this life. They did not believe there were good and bad things, whether physical or moral, but they believed that the best thing you could do was to try to hold yourself steady in the midst of all the waves that would surround you. So a very strong doctrine of providence, perhaps even fatalistic, you might say. All right, that being the case then, verse 19, the apostle is taken by some of these philosophers who hear him and they want him to go before Mars Hill. Athens was divided into five parts. One part was the part or district of Mars. The principal part of the district of Mars was a hill where the temple of Mars sat and the Areopagus met or the Senate of Mars met there to judge of religious cases. They say that the apostle brings strange things to them. This is the word for a foreigner, xenos. The things you bring are foreign. We want you to go before our religious judges. They will hear your case and they will make a determination whether we should accept your strange gods or whether we will reject your strange gods. Now they thought he had two gods. Notice there at the end of verse 18, they thought he had strange gods because he preached unto them Yesu and Anastasia. Those were his two gods, so they thought. Yesu is the healer, they might think. There's a word in Greek that might mean healer. And then Anastasia is one you die and you are lifted up. So we have the healer and the lifter. These are your two gods. So they're confused. They want to know, what is this that you're talking about? So they bring him for evaluation, these strange and foreign ideas. Notice verse 21, the ethos of the Athenians. What sort of customs did they have? What did they all spend their time doing? Nothing else it says, but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Ah, what's the latest? What's the newest doctrine somebody came up with? Oh, what's the newest fad? How should we dress? What should we eat? What do you hear about the fashions of the East or further West? New things, very similar to our culture, which is addicted to novelty of new things. Demosthenes, a senator or a statesman, an orator of Athens, he chided them with the same thing. People always want something new. You can't be stable and rooted. You always need something to tickle your sense of imagination. Notice the Apostle Paul, when he's brought before Mars Hill, he says that they are too superstitious. Now for the heathens, sometimes this would be a compliment, actually. It could be used in a complimentary way. Oh, you grovel and flatter your gods. Wow, you're too superstitious. I wish I were that superstitious. But here the Apostle Paul is using it as an insult. Remember his spirit was provoked because he saw them under idols, the whole city under idolatry. He said, I perceive, when he saw the whole city given over to idols, he perceived that they were too superstitious. You flatter your gods, you grovel in that sense. This was not a compliment, a mild insult, you might say. He says, verse 23, why he considered them to be too superstitious. He found an altar there to the unknown God. Now some report that the Athenians had a plague that lasted and lasted and they couldn't get rid of it. They asked Mars to help. They asked Athena to help. They asked all these gods to help and none of them helped. And so finally the people said, well, Why don't we build an altar to the one that we don't know about? Maybe there's one out there we haven't tried yet. Let's put an altar out there and maybe he'll hear us. to the unknown God. Paul says, yes, there is a God that you don't know. And you have this altar, this devotion to this unknown God, and you do it in ignorance, without knowledge. You don't know what you're doing. But what does he say? I will declare him unto you. Now the verb declare means to point something out distinctly to the mind so that you know it because of the words that were spoken. You're in ignorance, groping around in the darkness. I'm going to shine some light. In other words, I'm going to declare with my words, who is this God that you don't know? This is what he's going to do. He starts in verse 24. He says God that made the world and all things therein seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth dwelleth not in temples made with hands. This is offensive. to the Stoics, excuse me, to the Epicureans. They did not believe, remember, the universe to them was a concourse of random atoms by chance. You're telling us that God made the world and all things in it, he's contradicting them. He's picking a fight with them. There is no eternal matter. There is no evolution. There is no chance. God had a purpose and he made everything. He's Lord therefore of heaven and of earth. Notice there in verse 25, he says that God does not need man. He's not worshiped with our hands. There's nothing he stands in need of. Why? Because he gives to us life. And what else? Life and motion, okay? He gives us being, he gives us all things, the breath that we breathe, every single thing that we stand in need of, God provides for us. This again would have been offensive to the Epicureans who believed there was no higher power, there was no creator God, there was no providence by which all things came to pass, no. Now, the Stoics may have had a similar doctrine that in the great divine machine, we're all like little cogs. So in him, we live and move. That kind of sounds similar to them, to their notions that we receive everything from the hand of God, although they would have placed us as the same as God rather than as creatures under God. So again, offensive to them. He says in verse 26, that God made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. That was not what the Athenians believed. They believed they were created from the ground like Adam. And this is offensive to them to say that, no, you're just like everybody else. You're from one common stock. He brings them down off of their tribal pedestal and say, no, you're like everyone. What else? Verse 26, the doctrine of providence again, the determination of the boundaries and habitations of people. God's providence rules over history and geography. Even when kingdoms expand, even when states shrink, when nations or empires go away, God is ruling in all those things. Again, a very powerful doctrine of providence. Why did God do this? Why did God make all things? Why did He cause us to have life and breath? Why did He rule over the rise and fall of nations that they should seek the Lord? That is God's purpose, that is built into the process of providence that men would seek God and repent of their sins, worship Him alone and obey His commandments. because he is what gives us motion, he is what gives us life, and he is what gives us being. And therefore he concludes, if this God is the origin of which we are the copy, if we are the offspring of God, as some of your own poets have pointed out, he says, how should we think about this God? Like gold? Like silver? Or stone? Something carved with your imagination? Is that how we should think about God? Of course not. Perish the thought. Think of it this way. Man was created as God's image. These rocks and stones are inferior to us. Now, should we look downward for God or should we look upward to God? Is he greater than us or lesser than us if we are his offspring? It's common sense. It's the light of nature. He is greater than all. We look up to him, not down to the works of our hands. And now he says, in light of the judgment of God, God looked over and winked at all of this time of your ignorance. He now commands you Athenians and all men everywhere, turn from your idols, repent of your sins, come to Jesus Christ. This is the Jesus and the resurrection he had explained to them and they misunderstood. Now he's making it plain and actually even one of the Areopagites, even one of his judges is converted by this sermon. Notice our Lord, he says, will judge the world in righteousness. There will be no complaint that God is being unjust on the day of judgment. It will be the right law that he's applying. It'll be the actual facts of the case and no one will be able to say, I wasn't heard properly, it wasn't fair. No, complete and total justice and thus far the explanation of Acts chapter 17.