Acts 17:16-34: Engaging Our Post-Christian Society

Acts 17:16-34: Engaging Our Post-Christian Society

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Acts, and today the next passage we come to is Acts 17:16-34. It says,

16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. 22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ 29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

If a building is on fire and people are inside, those people have a very limited amount of time to get out of that building. Every moment is precious and can mean the difference between life and death. So it’s critical that people get out as quickly as possible. And if someone’s outside the building and sees or suspects that someone inside is having difficulty getting out—maybe the person inside is a child or very elderly—then the person outside might very well choose to risk their own life by entering the building and trying to rescue the person inside. 

Likewise, the Bible tells us that a fire of sorts is raging throughout this world and that people across the planet are in a very desperate situation. They’re in mortal danger and have no ability or wherewithal to rescue themselves. The Bible says that they’re dead in their sins and under God’s condemnation. So the house that they’re in is on fire. And we who are Christians have an opportunity to help them. In fact, we have not only an opportunity but also a God-given mandate to help them. Essentially, we’re the firefighters. It’s our job to help those in need. Of course, it would be a lot more comfortable for us to ignore the burning house and form our own little Christian huddles that are as far removed as possible from the rest of the world and its problems. But that’s not really an option for any Christian who takes their missionary calling seriously. 

And that’s certainly not the way God’s acted toward us. God didn’t leave us in the burning building but instead loved us so much that he sent his own Son on a rescue mission to save us. As John 3:16 so famously says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus could have stayed in the perfect paradise of heaven, but he didn’t. Instead, he entered the brokenness of our world and suffered the worst of that brokenness in order to rescue us from our sins. And he now calls us to join him in his rescue mission and orient our lives around entering the building, as it were, and helping others escape from the desperate situation that we ourselves were once in by sharing the message of Jesus with them. Hopefully we have a heart to do that. 

And, here in our main passage of Acts 17:16-34, we see Paul doing this very thing in the city of Athens. Athens, of course, had a rich history as the intellectual and philosophical center of the world. Several hundred years earlier, it had been home to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus. In addition, the city also boasted a lot of magnificent architecture including the Parthenon and numerous other pagan temples. That also means, of course, that idolatry was pervasive in the city. In fact, scholars tell us that in the first century there were three times as many statues of various pagan deities in Athens as there were people. There were approximately 10,000 people and around 30,000 statues.  

So we probably shouldn’t be surprised at what we read at the very beginning of our main passage in verse 16: “Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.” Notice that word “provoked.” Paul’s “spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.” It was a distressing sight for him—to see visible evidence of the lostness of that city and how far people were from the One True God. Paul was grieved. And I think we’d do well to pause right here at the outset of this passage and ask ourselves whether we who are Christians have that degree of compassion for those who are far from God. As we read the news headlines and see the brokenness of the world in which we live and how far people have strayed away from God, are we grieved? Do our hearts ache for those without Christ? Do we have a heartfelt burden for them—to the point that we’re willing to enter the burning building, as it were, by engaging the people around us with the gospel? Hopefully that’s our desire.

Yet the question arises of how we can do that most effectively. You might say that we could benefit from some firefighter training. And this is especially true since we live in an increasingly post-Christian society that’s operating on the basis of a worldview that differs from ours in the most fundamental ways. So how can we engage our post-Christian society with the gospel effectively? Where do we even start? 

Well, I’d like to suggest that Acts 17 is a great place for us to start—because I believe Paul’s approach to the Athenians here is exemplary. This passage shows us how Paul engaged the Athenians in a thoughtful and relevant way with the gospel. That’s the main idea we see here. Paul engaged the Athenians in a thoughtful and relevant way with the gospel. And there are four features of Paul’s approach to the Athenians that I believe are especially notable and that I’d like to focus on as we walk through this passage. 

Went to Where They Were

First, as Paul sought to engage the people of Athens, he went to where they were. Look at verses 17-21: 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. 

So notice in verse 17 how Paul didn’t just go to the synagogue in order reason with the Jews. He also made daily trips to the marketplace in order to engage the pagan philosophers who were there. Having been “provoked” by the overwhelming number of idols in the city, Paul went to the place where the idolators were. He didn’t just stay in the synagogue with his fellow Jews where he would have undoubtedly been much more comfortable but instead went to the secular marketplace and made that his base of operations. 

So, let me ask you—those of you who are Christians—what kinds of spaces do you regularly occupy? How often are you around non-Christians in a context where you have opportunities to converse with them in a meaningful way? Here in these verses, we see Paul not only desiring to see people embrace the gospel but also going to where they were in order in order to take the gospel to them. Are you doing the same? And, assuming you’re venturing into those spaces, are you actually building friendships with the people you encounter? 

I’ve come to believe that the single greatest hindrance to Christians sharing their faith is that they simply don’t have non-Christian friends. You know, it amazes me how many Christians talk about their lack of opportunities to share the gospel but haven’t even cultivated any friendships with non-Christians. The only people they ever hang out with are fellow believers! If we want to be faithful to our missionary calling, we have to first go to where non-Christians are—just as we see Paul doing here in these verses—and start getting to know them and building relationships with them. It might be as simple as introducing yourself to your neighbors, inviting them over for a meal, and then letting the friendship develop from there. For example, Becky and I have already invited some of our neighbors who have young kids over to our house for an Easter egg hunt this Saturday, and they’ve said they’ll be there. These are all people, by the way, who have come over to our house before for dinner as well. Or maybe you see some opportunities to start spending time with your coworkers in contexts that facilitate casual conversation—like lunch or something like that. Pray that God would help you see those opportunities. There are probably more of them than you might think. 

Established a Point of Connection

Then, secondly, not only did Paul go to where the Athenian philosophers were, he also established a point of connection with them. Look at verses 22-23: 22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. So, Paul remembers an altar he saw that was dedicated to “the unknown god.” Apparently, the Athenians were aware that even though they had 30,000 statues dedicated to various deities, they still might have missed one. So, not wanting to offend this unknown deity, they made sure they had an altar designated for the deity. And that’s what Paul uses as a way of connecting with them. He basically tells them, “Look, guys, I saw your altar to ‘the unknown god.’ So, since you don’t know him yet, let me tell you about him.” Paul establishes common ground with those he’s seeking to reach. 

Now, if you were here last week and remember Paul’s ministry efforts in Thessalonica and Berea earlier in the chapter, you’ll recall that he engaged the Jews of those cities much differently than he does these pagan philosophers in Athens. Paul already had plenty of common ground with the Jews—most notably, the Old Testament scriptures. So, from the very beginning of his dialogues with those Jewish audiences, Paul went straight to the scriptures and demonstrated how Jesus is the one who fulfilled all of the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. And that seems to have been Paul’s approach not just in the synagogues of those two cities but in all of the synagogues he visited. But now that he’s in Athens and engaging with pagan philosophers, he changes things up a bit and uses a different page from his missionary playbook. And yet, it’s still the same basic approach of establishing common ground and a point of connection with his audience.  

And I’ll just say that for us today, our society is becoming much more like the Athenian marketplace than the Jewish synagogue. Until recently, it might have resembled the Jewish synagogue more. Even though most people may not have been genuine Christians, they still held many elements of the basic Christian worldview—kind of like the Jews Paul encountered in synagogues. There was already a lot of common ground there. But that’s not really the context in which we find ourselves now. Of course, there are still many people around us who hold to a lot of the basics of a Christian worldview, but things are changing very rapidly. Our society is quickly becoming more and more like Athens—which means that we might need to rethink some aspects of the way we approach people. 

That begins with us identifying some of the prevailing beliefs and assumptions and values and desires of our culture. Is there anything that we can use as a point of connection with people—just as Paul did with the Athenians? 

For example, one desire that’s behind a lot of what we see in our society is the desire for freedom. People desire to choose for themselves how they live. They don’t want to have to conform to the expectations of other people or to traditional moral values. They want to be free to be themselves and express themselves in virtually every area—even in areas such as gender and sexuality. “You do you” is increasingly the sentiment of our day. People want to be free. And that’s a point of connection that Christians have an opportunity to use. Our task is to affirm that basic desire for freedom and yet help people see how they’re going about it all wrong—because, as we read the Bible, we come to understand that so much of what people today view as “freedom” is actually slavery—slavery to our own sinful desires. The things we think will make us happy so often end up making us miserable. And ultimately, they lead us down a path that will one day end in our destruction. That’s not freedom—it’s bondage. 

Yet true freedom can be found in Jesus. The Bible says that, through his death on the cross, Jesus paid the price to redeem us from our sins. That word “redeem” or “redemption” is a biblical word that actually comes from the ancient slave market. Back in ancient times, if one of your relatives, let’s say, was captured in war and being sold at the slave market, you could redeem that person by paying the required sum of money. Essentially, you were buying them out of slavery. And that’s what Jesus has done for us. Through his death on the cross, Jesus paid to set us free—so that we’d no longer be slaves to sin but would now be free to live as we were always meant to live. That means letting the Bible guide our lives—which, far from being burdensome, is a path of absolute delight to those whose hearts have been changed by God, and which leads to untold blessing both in this life and in eternity. That’s what true freedom looks like. 

As Tim Keller helpfully points out, freedom isn’t, as is so often assumed, the absence of constraints but is instead the acceptance of the right constraints. For example, if a fish desired “freedom” so badly that it jumped out of the water and landed on grass, what would happen? It would die, right? That’s not freedom. Freedom isn’t achieved by throwing off all constraints but instead by accepting the right ones. For the fish, that means staying in the water. And for us, that means letting the Bible guide our lives. It’s when we confine ourselves to God’s ways that we experience true freedom. And Jesus is the one who makes all of that possible by virtue of who he is and what he’s done to redeem us. So that’s one example of how we can establish a point of connection with many of the people around us, who desire freedom, just as Paul did in Athens. 

Another example, very briefly, involves the feeling that many people have—especially these past couple of years—that this world is spinning out of control in many ways. I mean, just think about all of the crazy things that have happened just in these past two years—everything from COVID-related shutdowns and vaccine debates and mask debates to George Floyd and the nation-wide riots that followed his death to accusations of a stolen presidential election and the breach of the Capitol building. And now, here we are potentially on the brink of World War III, though thankfully that seems to be settling down a little bit. Any way you look at it, though, we’re in the midst of cultural and societal upheaval unlike anything that’s been seen since the 1960’s. So it’s quite understandable that many people feel like the world, as we know it, is spinning out of control. Yet what a comfort it is that Jesus is the Rock upon which we can build our lives. In the midst of a world that’s constantly changing, Hebrews 13:8 tells us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” In a world where so many institutions of various kinds seem to be falling apart, we’re told of Jesus in Colossians 1:17 that “in him all things hold together.” In a world where so much of what we hear and read in the media can’t be trusted, Jesus says of himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Again, he is the Rock upon which we can build our lives. What a comfort, what a blessing, and what an opportunity to establish a point of connection with the people we’re seeking to reach. 

Started at the Beginning

Then, moving forward in our main passage of Acts 17, we see not only how Paul went to where people were whom he was seeking to reach and how he established a point of connection with them, but also a third notable feature of his approach—how he started at the beginning. Look at verses 24-28: 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”

Now, there’s a lot in these verses—enough for a whole sermon probably—but the main thing I’d like us to see is that Paul understands that he has to start at the very beginning with his audience. He starts with God and the fact that God “made the world and everything in it” and the fact that he’s therefore the “Lord of heaven and earth.” Paul then elaborates on God’s nature as the only self-sufficient Being who doesn’t live in temples made by man and isn’t served by human hands. Paul then explains how God created humans and has sovereignly guided the human race since its inception. 

And for us today, I believe we’re at the point in our society where those are the kinds of things that we also have to start with, in many cases. If we’re having a conversation with someone that begins to go in a spiritual direction and we immediately start talking about how they need to be “saved,” that might be okay if they have a strong church background. But if they don’t, they’re probably not going to have a clue what we’re talking about. “Saved from what?” will probably be the question in their mind. And even if we start talking about sin, they might not even be as familiar with that as we might think they’d be. “What is sin? Why is it so bad? Are you saying it’s not okay for us to just decide for ourselves what moral standards we ought to follow?” These are all questions that many people would probably be wondering about. 

So, really, in many, if not most, cases, it’s best for us to start at the very beginning—with the fact that a personal and all-powerful God created the world, including humans, and therefore deserves our allegiance. That’s the starting point. We really can’t assume that people know even the most fundamental aspects of biblical teaching. Kind of like, when you’re building a house, you have to start with the foundation. That’s what we have to do as we seek to engage people in a thoughtful and relevant way. Otherwise, the house we build might look a lot like the leaning tower of Pisa. 

And, by the way, that’s why I love these Story booklets so much. I carry three of these with me wherever I go. They’re booklets about the gospel that start with Creation and then talk about the Fall and then God’s Rescue and then the wonderful Restoration we’re looking forward to in the future. And if you’d like some of these for yourself and will commit to put them to good use, you’re more than welcome to take a few from the stack of them that’s located on the Resource Table in the back. 

Issued a Clear Call for Repentance

Then a final notable aspect of Paul’s approach is that he issued a clear call for repentance. Look at verses 29-31: 29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” 

So, as you can see here, it would be a mistake to think that connecting with people and being relevant to our culture means that we never say anything controversial or potentially offensive. We can see here that that’s simply not the case. Paul tells these philosophers straight up that some of their most fundamental beliefs are totally wrong. He refers to the idolatrous statues that fill the city as products of human “imagination” and describes the worship of such statues as “ignorance.” Then, Paul makes his call to repentance explicit. He says that God “commands all people everywhere to repent.” That would include repenting from both sinful behaviors and wrong beliefs. Paul then shares with these philosophers what turns out to be the most offensive teaching of all—that Jesus rose from the dead. The reason they found that so offensive is because these philosophers believed that all physical matter is bad and therefore couldn’t fathom a bodily resurrection. Nevertheless, Paul proclaims it to them. 

And likewise today, there comes a point in every gospel conversation that one author named Rico Tice calls a “pain line”—a point in the conversation, or perhaps several points, when things become uncomfortable and when we really have to take a risk and step out in faith and share with people things that are potentially offensive to them. There’s just no way around it. Sharing the gospel involves the uncomfortable task of calling people to repentance from both sinful behaviors and wrong beliefs. So, yes, as we seek to reach out to people, we’re meeting them where they are, but we’re also calling them to something better. 

Conclusion

And, in some cases, that might result in people immediately embracing what we say. But, more often, evangelism is a process. We can see this in verses 32-34: 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. 

So, yes, there were some who immediately embraced the gospel like Dionysius and Damaris. But there were also others—I’d imagine a greater number of people—who needed more time and told Paul, “We will hear you again about this.” And, of course, there were also some who mocked Paul, as will sometimes be the case. But I’d like to focus on the ones who needed more time. The further away from a biblical worldview someone is, the more time it often takes them to embrace the gospel. Seeing someone come to faith who’s steeped in our secular, postmodern culture will usually require a lot more time and effort and patience than someone who grew up in church and already has a lot of the basic building blocks of a biblical worldview. And that’s okay. Remember what 1 Corinthians 13:7 says about love—how love “always perseveres.”  Don’t give up on people. In some situations, it may be months or even years before those you’re seeking to reach will finally embrace the gospel, but those months or years are nothing compared to eternity. And when you play a part in leading someone to faith in Jesus, you’re making a difference for eternity.