The Unknown God: Paul in Athens

The New Testament talks about Paul and his travels more than anyone else. In this episode, I talk about who Paul was and why he traveled so much. There are so many stories about Paul in the book of Acts, it is like a big adventure story. Shipwrecks, jail, big crowds, and huge success, Paul saw it all. One of most interesting stories is when Paul goes to Athens. It tells so much about him and how he worked. He was very flexible and he looked for any story that would work with the crowds. Everything he did was always about spreading the message of Jesus everywhere. Join me to hear about this fascinating story. 

Acts 17:15 Those who escorted Paul led him as far as Athens, then returned with instructions for Silas and Timothy to come to him as quickly as possible.
16 While Paul waited for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to find that the city was flooded with idols. 17 He began to interact with the Jews and Gentile God-worshippers in the synagogue. He also addressed whoever happened to be in the marketplace each day. 18 Certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged him in discussion too. Some said, “What an amateur! What’s he trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods.” (They said this because he was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) 19 They took him into custody and brought him to the council on Mars Hill. “What is this new teaching? Can we learn what you are talking about? 20 You’ve told us some strange things and we want to know what they mean.” (21 They said this because all Athenians as well as the foreigners who live in Athens used to spend their time doing nothing but talking about or listening to the newest thing.)
22 Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, “People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way. 23 As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown God.’ What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you. 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn’t live in temples made with human hands. 25 Nor is God served by human hands, as though he needed something, since he is the one who gives life, breath, and everything else. 26 From one person God created every human nation to live on the whole earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us. 28 In God we live, move, and exist. As some of your own poets said, ‘We are his offspring.’
29 “Therefore, as God’s offspring, we have no need to imagine that the divine being is like a gold, silver, or stone image made by human skill and thought. 30 God overlooks ignorance of these things in times past, but now directs everyone everywhere to change their hearts and lives. 31 This is because God has set a day when he intends to judge the world justly by a man he has appointed. God has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection from the dead, some began to ridicule Paul. However, others said, “We’ll hear from you about this again.” 33 At that, Paul left the council. 34 Some people joined him and came to believe, including Dionysius, a member of the council on Mars Hill, a woman named Damaris, and several others.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hello, and welcome to the Real Bible Rob teamcast. And today I'd like to introduce you to Paul. If you haven't heard of Paul, he is the most important of the apostles. Apostles means sent out, those sent out to preach about Jesus and spread the good news, the gospel, all over. And um he was the one that took it, not just from being just about Jewish people uh who were the people in Israel and where uh Jesus was. And Paul was the most important apostle to send it all around all of the Roman Empire at the time. And he traveled many times. Now we think he traveled four times. Uh and if you look on the back of most Bibles, so if you have a Bible that has maps in the back, you can see the the four different journeys that we know about that Paul took. And um and it's really fascinating. I always looked at those um when I was, you know, got my first study Bible and kind of looked at it, and I go, what's the big deal? I don't understand this Paul guy. But the more I've looked into it, I realize that it's just like a big giant adventure story. Uh, and you really hear about this story in the book of Acts. Now, Paul wrote a lot of letters, and uh, we talk about those letters all the time, and and there are a lot of them are in the New Testament. But um, the story about Paul, and so you can kind of get an idea from the letters what he was doing, but if you want to just hear the story about Paul and how he worked through everything, you read the book of Acts. Um, the last uh maybe uh two-thirds of the book of Acts um is is really all about Paul. And uh um it there's shipwrecks, there's he's thrown in jail, he gathers big crowds, um, he has huge successes um and in converting people and starting up churches, he gets into a lot of fights. It's really pretty interesting. So, but today to kind of talk about the character of Paul, so we've learned because of these stories and because of all his letters, we we probably know more about the personality of Paul uh than any other character in the New Testament. And you go, Well, that's kind of funny. I thought the New Testament was all about Jesus, and it certainly is. And Paul talks about Jesus constantly, but um, because Paul was doing that ministry for so long in so many different places, we can kind of see Paul in all these different ways. We can see him uh being really joyful, uh, we can see him being really depressed, we can see him being really successful, and we can see him failing. So, in that, you can kind of see, you know, when he gets angry, for example. There's a lot of uh in the New Testament where Paul gets really angry, but the one thing about Paul that you really see throughout everything is just how smart he is, he really uh adjusts and and changes uh the way he does things in order to be successful, to spread the gospel. Everything about Paul is always about um preaching and showing people who this Jesus guy is. And um, you know, his mission was a little different than anybody that today, because almost everybody in the world, certain almost everybody in the world, certainly who has a cell phone, you know, has um uh, you know, certainly a smartphone, has heard about Jesus in the world today. So nobody's uh so you can say, well, maybe we're trying to introduce Jesus in different ways, but in Paul's day, nobody heard about Jesus. So it was like everything was really fresh and just starting all over. And so if Paul didn't do this and go around, then nobody would really know about uh Jesus or Christianity or anything like that. So that's kind of exciting to see, too. But I think one of the stories that tells you the most about the character of Paul and how smart he is, is in Acts 17. And this is when Paul goes to Athens. Now we know today that Athens is um the capital of the country of Greece, um, in sort of the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, and uh, you know, across the sea from Italy and near Turkey and all of that in that area. So um, if you have a chance, look at your Bible and look at those maps in the back to see where Athens is. And it was very much in the middle of where Paul was working. He was working a lot in Turkey, what we call Turkey today, um, and uh and in Greece. Um and Athens is kind of in the middle of it all. So here he comes and he um is taken to Athens on one of his trips, I believe it's a second trip, and um he goes there with some of his um helpers, people like Silas and Timothy and others. And when he goes there, he runs into kind of a wall because a lot of uh different than a lot of other cities around, Athens had a very long history, um, more than a thousand years of history of really smart people. And these are like the philosophers. Now, you've probably heard of Aristotle and Plato and Socrates. You may have heard uh about the plays, you know, um Greek plays, especially if you're in um in high school or um in college, though you kind of uh if you're and you're in a literature class, a lot of times you'll read about these Greek plays, or you'll read about these Greek things like um the Odyssey or the Iliad or something like that. So you could see that Athens is just the center of all of this knowledge, you know. Um it it's like you know, maybe like New York City is today, or London, or some other big uh country where lots of smart people get together and do things, maybe like San Francisco, for example. Um, so that's that's the way Athens was, it was a center of knowledge. So he comes into Athens, and there are these philosophers. They're called uh now there are two kinds that are mentioned. They're called Epicurean uh philosophers and Stoic philosophers, and they're starting to talk to Paul, and they're starting to, and Paul was starting to get to be known perhaps, because um he, you know, he maybe he was making trouble in Athens, or maybe he was starting to get some converts, and these philosophers go, What's up? What's up with this Paul guy? What what what are you doing? Now, Paul it says in um verse uh um in verse 16. So this is Acts 17, 16, he says, Well, Paul waited for his friends uh to come and meet him in Athens, he was deeply distressed to find that the city was flooded with idols. And um, so you know, uh in ancient Greece, you know, they had all these statues and they had all of these temples and things like that. And he he goes, Well, I've never seen anything anything like this, you know. Paul said, you know, I'm sure he saw temples and and statues in other cities as well, but boy, in Athens, it was a lot more. And um, so he uh started to talk to the Christians and the and the Jewish people there about what's going on with this. So he was trying to figure out how do I work with these people? These people are are nuts, they have all these temples and and gods and stuff like that. How will my message, how will the message of Jesus ever get through to these people? And um so but these philosophers, you can imagine, they were very, very uh, you know, they had their nose in the air, right? They were very arrogant, and uh they they knew more than anyone else. Uh and they would say, Oh, this Paul guy, when they learned about him, what an amateur. What is he trying to say? And then, you know, he seemed, and then um other people said, Oh, he's a proclaimer of foreign gods. Now, that would be very threatening to him, you know, and so they decided that they would bring him, they would capture him, they would arrest him basically, and then they would drag him to a place called Mars Hill. And Mars Hill, so if you know anything about Athens, even today there's this place called the Acropolis, and this is where the Parthenon is, and a lot of these really old temples sit on top of a big mountain there. It's a really uh fun place to visit. If you ever get to go to Athens sometime in your life, do it. It's really cool. And you're up on this big hill there, um, where these ancient temples are. So you can imagine what it looked like to Paul. He must have been overwhelmed with um the beauty of this place. Well, right across uh from the Acropolis, this main hill, there's another hill next to it, and it's called Mars Hill. Uh in Greek it's called the Arapagus. And this Mars Hill place is where they used to bring people to question them. So you there's a part of it that's kind of dangerous for Paul. Maybe if Paul said the wrong thing, maybe he would get in trouble and be arrested or you know, killed even. I don't, you know, I don't know. But it was he was brought by force to Mars Hill to answer for what he was doing. He was agitating, making a lot of stuff there. And um, so Paul had to be very clever. First of all, he had to get out of there, you know, alive. But the other thing he needed to do is be able to get through to them and tell him, tell them the gospel story to tell them about Jesus and why Jesus is so important. So he thought you could think, imagine that he thought hard about how to do this because these people, these people thought they knew it all, right? What is this country guy, this amateur, this foreigner gonna tell them, right? That's what they thought. Well, so what he does, he says, on uh at the council on top of Mars Hill, he says, People of Athens, I can see that you're very religious in every way. So he compliments them. He goes, Wow, see how religious you are? Oh, as I was walking through the city and I was looking at all of these temples and objects of worship, I could see that you worship many gods, right? And then he goes, I even found one temple, one altar in a temple that said on it, you know, kind of carved into the stone. It says, to an unknown god. And he goes, huh? And what you worship is unknown. So now I'm gonna tell you who this unknown God is. So you can imagine these uh, you know, know-it-alls with their arms crossed, all of a sudden, they uncross their arms and they start listening. They go, Does this man, this foreigner, know who that unknown God is? And he goes, Well, I will proclaim it to you. God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth. And he doesn't live in temples that are made by human hands. No, nor is this God one that requires us to serve him. So this is super interesting because what the Greeks believed is that you go to the temples with your um your baskets of of fruit and um and milk and offerings, and you give it to serve those gods. But he says, No, this God's different. This God is um uh is the one who gives instead of receiving, he's the one that gives life and breath and everything else. From one person, God created uh every human nation that we live on, the whole earth, having and and talked about their times and and uh the way everything is. God made the nations so that they would seek him, and that he might even reach out to them. And you and so this God, this unknown God that you don't know, I know him. And this God is everywhere, and not just here in Athens, but everywhere. And we are his offspring. In other words, we come from this God. So therefore, as God's offering, we have no need to uh, you know, make a God out of gold or silver, like an idol, right? Or stone um made by any human. We don't need to do that because this God, this unknown God, is unlike any of the other gods that you're worshiping here. And uh and God has made it uh given us proof of who he is by raising the one man that he appointed, it says, you know, basically the one the son of God. So he doesn't say that here, but he says there's one one God that he or one person on earth, and of course he means Jesus by this, that he will judge the world with. So you can see how interesting the story is to these philosophers. They go, Who the heck is this guy? And who is he talking about? And he goes, but God has given proof to this to everyone by raising this one guy, Jesus, from the dead. Now, when they heard about this resurrection from the dead, some of them, some of these philosophers who didn't believe in resurrection, um, made fun of Paul, ridiculed him, but others said, We'll hear from you about this again. And at that, Paul left the council. So just because Paul told such an interesting story, he kind of saved his own skin. He was he was able to leave, he caused enough interest in them so that they were open to listening. And like I said, maybe they had their arms crossed at first and they opened. Now, some of the people thought he was nuts, right? Thought he was crazy. But there were enough people that were interested that they did this with Paul. Now, um, so what do we learn from this story? Now, we of course we don't really know. We know that some people, uh, that some people joined them and came to believe, it says, and um uh there were several others, it said, and it names a few names, like Dionysus and Demarius and some other names. So at least some people were like convinced pretty quickly, right? But you can imagine, and we don't know how important these people are, they may have been very important. Oh, we don't know. Um, may have been very influential so they could tell other people about it. We don't know. But the thing is that uh Paul not only saved his own skin, but he planted the seed, he planted some ideas in these people so that um in later times that people could spread around and tell this story about this the unknown God, and that this unknown God uh brought his own son uh and raised his own son from the dead. So this story is so interesting because Paul knew how to tell a story, Paul knew how to make it so that they would listen. And this is kind of true for in in for us as well. We have this idea because we're so smart, because we have such great information. We have books and we have uh you know TV and we have websites and we have podcasts, and we have a lot of smart people. We we, in fact, we're the most uh able of any people in any time in the world history to be able to get any information we want at our fingertips on our phones and our computers and all of that. We know everything, right? Well, isn't that like the Athenians, the people in Athens? They thought they knew everything, they were the center of the world, and then here comes Paul to uh get them intrigued. So this is interesting too. You have to understand where Paul's coming from. So who was Paul? So Paul was a Jewish man who we read about in Acts, who was um uh a Pharisee, so he was a very strict religious leader, and but he was also a Roman citizen. So Paul had lots of ability to go around all of Rome safely because he was a Roman citizen, and that gave him some uh status, right? He was able to uh move around now. Um, and sometimes when he got into trouble, like thrown into jail, he would say, Hey, I'm a Roman citizen, you can't treat me like that, right? And so he would use that. But and at the same time, he was a Jewish leader as well, and we're told that in the earliest time that or early before this, Paul was going around and persecuting Christians, in other words, trying to push the Christians down, trying to push away Jesus, and it took um a road. We he was on the road to Damascus, we're told, uh, earlier in Acts that he became blind. He was uh the he got a vision and he said, Why are you persecuting my people? God said. And so then Paul was blinded and astounded, and his whole life changed. And this um person, Paul, we see how energetic he was. So he was energetic against Jesus and against the Christians at first. He made this big dramatic change, conversion, and then he started being just as energetic and in fact a lot more energetic um in spreading Jesus' uh life, word, uh, message around everywhere. So Paul is this very interesting person because he was Jewish, so he could speak to Jewish people. He was a Roman citizen and knew a lot about um people who weren't Jewish, and he could speak to them too. There are very few people like Paul in this way, and also he was able to get the um, you know, get the money and the support from people. There's a lot of stories about that, about he how he was able to get people together. So he must have been a great leader, and um so uh what caused this to happen? So you can see how clever he was. So you could think, well, this Paul guy being Jewish, you know, very strict, and being um a follower of Jesus, you know, very, you know, wanting to stay true to what Jesus said, that means that he must not be flexible, right? That he um has a certain belief and he will not uh Um, be flexible. But what we see actually, and you see it in this story, that Paul was very smart and he was very flexible. He would change the way he talks about Jesus, and he uh changed uh his message a lot and many times, and he did this, and he goes, This is you can imagine when he goes into Athens and he sees all these idols, he is very distressed, it says. He goes, This is impossible. I'm not gonna be able to do anything here, but he figured out a way to do it. Isn't that amazing? And you'll you see this throughout Paul's life, is that he will do it again and again. One of the ways, and I spoke about it in um the last episode, I talked about Phoebe and how Phoebe was super important to Paul, and how other women were really important to Paul's ministry as well. So, one of the ways that Paul showed how smart and flexible he was was at the way he worked with women. Because in this time, you know, in Paul's time, and especially because Paul had this Jewish background as a Pharisee, he probably found it hard to work with women, or he didn't think of women being the kind of people that could go and do amazing things because they need to be at home. They're not like a man, you know, they're not strong like a man, right? Much more than we think, because we believe that women are equal and they can do amazing things, right? But back in Paul's time, 2,000 years ago, um, a lot of these uh Roman people and a lot of these Jewish people didn't think that women were equal to them. The men didn't think they were equal to them, and you know, really not very uh not very supportive. So you go, well, wait a minute, that's the way Paul must have thought. Well, we don't know what Paul thought, but we do know one thing about Paul when it comes to working with women, is he sought them out, he found them, and those women supported him in many ways by giving money, by reading the letters, by running house churches, um, by teaching. Uh, we hear stories about Priscilla teaching the other disciples the correct way, the other apostles the correct way to preach and stuff like that. And wait a minute, a woman doing that? Uh, we hear about one uh woman who may have been an apostle herself, Yunia. So we look at these people and go, well, wait a minute. So Paul was flexible and smart in everything he did, he probably put away some of his negative feeling about women to work with them. He put a he put aside, he set aside his negative feelings about the people in Athens so that he could find a way to get through to them. And I think that's such a great lesson for us, too. So when we have somebody that is mistreating us or putting us down or treating us like we don't matter, we can just be patient. We can look to Paul and we can realize that, you know, maybe through prayer, maybe through study, maybe through just some good hard thinking, that we can find a way to win them over, to show them that no, we are smart. And we're not saying we're smart just by saying we're smart and you're not. No, we're saying we're showing that we're smart because we're uh saying asking them good questions. And we're we're saying, Well, you believe this too, don't you? Well, let me tell you uh about how you can believe differently. That's exactly what Paul did. I go, what a great lesson. And so the other thing I want to say about Paul is that some people, uh, and you'll hear this a lot, they'll go, Well, you know, well, I like Jesus, but I don't like Paul. And and you have to be careful about that because um they had different purpose. Jesus, of course, is the Son of God, the Messiah, um, in um in Israel, in uh Judea, in though that those places with his disciples. Um, he is the focus of those stories. Paul, on the other hand, is reaching out and doing all of the practical stuff. He's going out and trying to build churches in Jesus' name. So Paul is gonna receive some bad feelings from people, and they that happens today that people will go, well, you know, Paul is doesn't like women. Well, you know what? Look at the look at the stories. Paul likes women and works with them. Uh Paul is um filled with rules and really mean. Well, no, you can see that Paul is flexible and not filled with rules, and he does other things. So whenever you hear anything bad about Paul, I just say, go ahead and read a little bit more, and just realize he was amazing, wasn't perfect. He learned, and we we can see that in these stories too. He changed tactics, he changed the way he did things, but still he was an amazing man, and we have so much to learn from him. There's so many things that he said that help us to understand who Jesus was and to understand um and to be part of this movement, and that's exciting. So uh with that, I want to just say thank you so much for listening. I hope you get a chance to see Paul in a little different way. Um, maybe you can read a couple of the stories in Acts. This is Acts 17, but there are many others. Um, you can read that and just read it kind of like an adventure novel, you know, because it reads a lot like that. Um, sometimes uh you can get kind of tripped up about the the funny names and the places. But you know, if you are uh, you know, you've read The Lord of the Rings or you've read other adventure type things where they will show you a map um of of an of a world that you know these characters are going through. Well, we have maps of that too. So if you, like I said, go to the maps in the Bible or any you can go and just look up um and search for Paul's journeys and you can see, and these are real places, you can go visit them today, you can go to Athens and see where Paul uh was on Mars Hill, you can go to Ephesus, which is super important for Paul. You can go to Rome, you know, and you can see where where Paul, you know, uh at the end of his life was in Rome. You can go to Antioch, you can many, many cities, Jerusalem. Um, and it's really fun. Uh, if you ever get a chance to go to these places, uh, you can really uh you can just see who Paul was and where he was. So, with that, I say thank you so much for listening and God bless you.