Hello, my “Walking with Jesus” friends, welcome to the weekend!
What would you do and say if you were invited to come to a gathering of some of the most intelligent people in your country, and they asked you to explain what you know about God and how God relates to our world? That could be fearful, intimidating, couldn’t it?
That is exactly what happened to the apostle Paul only a few days after he had first arrived in Athens! Come with me, let’s join him in that situation and see what Paul did and what God did. You’ll find the story in Acts 17.
Dr. Luke records the event like this: “Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: ‘People 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’. So, you are ignorant of the very thing you worship – and this is what I am going to proclaim to you...” (Acts 17:22,23)
Yesterday I drew several lessons from the way Paul respectfully spoke with these scholars in the Areopagus. Today, let’s look more closely at exactly what Paul said as he took advantage of this rare opportunity to speak the Gospel of Jesus to some of the most intelligent, inquisitive people in the world!
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and He does not live in temples built by human hands. And God is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything. Rather God Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:24,25)
Do we recognize that Paul is declaring that the God he worships is the Creator of the universe and everything in it? What a profound statement! Paul started with that declaration for one important reason: The Creator is superior to all things He has created! So while some people in Athens worshiped the sun or moon or imaginary dietes who supposedly had various powers, Paul was declaring that only one being can be supreme over all and that being is the Creator, the God Paul knew and worshipped!
Can you imagine how startling a statement that was!? So I ask you my friends: is the God you worship the Creator or something the Creator created?
Do you also see Paul made it clear that the Almighty God is the author of all life including human life and God has no need of anything human beings might be able to do for Him. God both designed and made our human species unique person by unique person. God both gives and sustains life.
God does not need us humans to build houses for Him or prepare food for Him, He is entirely self-sufficient. God designed and created our planet earth to be exactly what He knew the human race needed for sustaining our lives!
All things which occur here on our planet or anywhere in all of God’s creation occur under His overall sovereignty. All is known by God even before it happens!
Next, Paul continued: “From one man God made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.” (Acts 17:26)
Do you see Paul claiming that all humanity is descended from Adam, the first man God created, and that while we might think it is the work of great national leaders or military accomplishments which have defined the boundary lines of nations, God is sovereign over all that!
For the Greeks who viewed themselves as intellectually superior to all other people in the world, and who boasted of the great conqueror Alexander the Great, this concept that God reigns supreme over all human endeavor would have been very challenging for them to consider!
Paul had paused, giving these scholars time to process the unlimited majesty of the God Paul was proclaiming. No other person had ever made such unlimited claims about the gods they worshipped. Paul then spoke again anticipating their question ‘WHY would an all powerful God do all this?’ Paul said: “God did all this so that the human race would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though God is not far from any one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:27) Have you given much thought to WHY God created our universe? Psalm 19:1 says: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.”
My friends have you considered every spectacular sunrise and sunset, every night sky when the stars are so brilliant, they seem to be jumping out of the sky, every full moon and crescent moon, all are created by God first and foremost to awaken in us, you and me and all humanity, a sense of AWE as we see and contemplate the incredible creation work of God!?
And further, God has designed our minds that the more we contemplate the creative genius of God we find our inquisitive inner self wants to seek after this God and find Him and build a relationship with God! That too is a remarkable work of God for HE has placed within every person this spiritual hunger to find and know God. So, what about you my friends, how strong is your yearning to know God and what are you doing to follow that God given spiritual hunger?
Finally my friends, did you notice that powerful, climactic statement from Paul that “…in Him we live and move and have our being!”? (Acts 17:28) What does that mean to you? Do you agree that none of us created ourselves, nor can any of us create another human life? Also, while we eat and drink and are active, none of us can keep ourselves alive! We don’t keep our heart beating or our lungs breathing or our minds thinking. We don’t keep the blood pulsing through our veins or our internal vital organs working.
All of that, Paul declares, is the life sustaining work of God… in all 8 billion of us! We cannot exist apart from the continual, hour by hour, moment by moment work of God in keeping us alive!
And yet I want us to pause right here to consider how many people totally disregard God’s efforts to sustain their lives and even how many people reject any notion that an Almighty, Holy God created them?
Here’s what God says to our world: “I am the LORD and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you though you have not acknowledged Me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is no God besides Me. I am the LORD and there is no other…” (Is. 45:5,6)
I love those powerful words from God that call us to pause, reflect and speak to God about what He claims about Himself. And here’s a song to help us do that my friends, and I’ll meet you back here tomorrow and we’ll hear the rest of Paul’s great claims about the God he worshipped.
Today’s Scripture is Acts 17:22-28.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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