Acts 17:22 -25 - To the unknown god

17:22,23

So Paul gave his defence or explanation of the gospel. In classical education rhetoric was considered one the key elements that was taught, and Paul’s speech here uses high quality Greek rhetorical devices. There are times for a straightforward gospel presentation, there are times to connect with the culture in order to lead people to the gospel. Paul starts be recognising that the Greeks were “very religious”. Saying something positive about the audience is often a good way to start, it establishes contact and makes it more likely that they will listen to you. However, this is not an absolute rule, remember that John the Baptist once started by calling his audience a brood of vipers (Matt 3:7)! And he too was quite successful. Paul then pointed to the altar to the “unknown God”. Wrong philosophies and religions will have within them self-contradictions and these can be starting points for opening their minds.

17:24

Paul then goes to true religious thought. God does not dwell in temples. Some Greek philosophies accepted this. Indeed, one of the problems of Jewish religion was an over veneration of the temple, despite Solomon recognising at the outset that the temple he had built was in reality insufficient to the task. The key point is that God is infinitely greater than us, yet we so often look at things and try and explain, or even limit, God as if He was just human. We still do this today, even in churches.

17:25

The basic human way of looking at the concept of  God is from a human perspective. We look at Him as if He is served by human hands, ie as if He is dependent upon us and works like we do. This is totally the wrong way to look at things. God is not dependent upon us any way whatsoever. Rather, He provides us with life, and every other thing that we need.

Haggai 2:17-19 - From now on I will bless you!

2:17-19

Verse 17 reminds us that God actively frustrated their efforts. Yet despite this, they did not return to the Lord. Now they have started work in the temple, they have turned to God. The time that this word was given meant the harvest had passed, new seed had been planted, but as yet there was no harvest, for it was not harvest time. But now that they had turned to God, had started work on His temple, then the harvest would come. “From this day on, I will bless you”.

Remember that earlier, in v10-14, God has spoken to them about the defilement of the people. They could not make themselves clean.When we do God’s work, when we do things God’s way, we do not earn salvation, we do not earn blessing, but we are living as part of God’s kingdom, as part of His economy, and we then enjoy the fruit of His kingdom.

Acts 17:17-21 - You bring some strange things

17:17,18

Paul’s response was to reason with them. First with the Jews and the Gentile worshippers (God-fearers) and in the marketplace with anyone who would listen. Athens was known for its philosophers, and had been so for many, many years. Stoics and Epicureans were two schools of thought. They accused Paul of being a babbler. This term was applied to those who recycled others ideas, ie they weren’t independent thinkers. They also misunderstood the gospel, for they refer to him speaking about “Jesus and the resurrection” and thought he was proclaiming “foreign gods”, ie gods plural. In some ways nothing much has changed. There were a variety of misunderstandings of the gospel, just as there are today. Likewise, Judaism and Islam both think that Christianity has multiple gods, not understanding the trinity.

17:19

The Areopagus was Athen’s city council. The members were familiar with philosophy and sometimes investigated foreign cults. If their reaction was favourable the proponent of the ideas may be allowed to give a public lecture. Things could go the other way! Socrates was found guilty of “advocating foreign gods” (hence the statement in v18) and they had him executed! This practice was not alive at this time, so Paul was not likely to be executed. However, he, or his ideas, were “on trial”. So Paul was invited to explain his “new doctrine”.

17:20,21

“Bringing strange ideas to our ears”. Paul’s teaching was new to them. Indeed, the gospel teaching is new to the whole world, even in the West. Despite our long Christian heritage, most of the West has no idea what the gospel is really about. They wanted to know what the ideas meant. Luke seems to have a somewhat jaundiced impression of the Athenians and Athens as a place, seeing it as somewhere where people spent all their time debating this that or the other.

Haggai 2:13-16 - You are unclean!

2:13,14

One could not become holy by default, but one could become defiled by default. Haggai asks the opposite question, what happens if someone who is unclean touches something does it become unclean, and the answer is yes (Lev 11:28, 22:4-7). We then get to the point of all this, “So is this people, and so is this nation before Me, and so is every work of their hands and all that they offer”. Were the people doing all this, making offerings, building the temple, in an attempt to make themselves clean, acceptable to God? If so they were completely wasting their time. For they were a defiled people, and all that they did was defiled. What?! Should they not then build the temple? Absolutely not the case. We can be the same. We can think that our giving, praying, studying, worshipping, witnessing, helping, serving makes us acceptable to God. We could not be more wrong. It makes not one jot of difference in the acceptability stakes, but we should still do all of these things.

2:15,16

Now God calls on them to consider the facts. The gospel, the Christian “religion”, is a revealed religion, it comes from God. It is based on revelation from God, not the thoughts of man. However, that does not mean it is not logical, if we look at the facts of life they are consistent with the word of God. Man’s wisdom, man’s ways, simply do not work. For instance, man has said there is no advantage in being married, living together is fine. Well the simple facts are that the breakdown and diminution of marriage has had a disastrous effect, socially and economically. Likewise, man’s current wisdom on LGBT stuff will prove to be equally disastrous. So here God reminds them that in the days before they worked on the temple nothing worked, everything produced far less than could be reasonably expected.

Acts 17:12-16 - Many of them believed

17:12

Many of them did believe, and again we get Greeks and prominent men and women believing. Luke places a great emphasis on women who became followers of Jesus. Today there is a dual tendency in the church. There are some who take special delight in prominent people coming to faith, or at least claiming to follow Jesus. On the other hand there are those who emphasise reaching the poor and dispossessed. Here, and earlier, we have Luke pointing out that the gospel reached a number of prominent people. In 1 Corinthians Paul will say that not many of you were of noble birth or otherwise held in esteem by the world (1 Cor 1:26). The gospel is for all people, rich or poor, high or low.

17:13-15

In contrast to the conversions we see the actions of the Jews from Thessalonica who opposed Paul. They followed Paul in order to cause trouble. So we see their determination and commitment to doing evil. We should not be surprised when similar things happen today. The believers in Berea quickly dispatched Paul and his co-workers, and Paul went to Athens. It seems that the effect that Paul was having had got around, so they wanted to spare him further beatings.

17:16

Even before reaching Athens itself Paul would see the temple of Athena on the Acropolis. Indeed, if we visit Athens today we can still see many of the statues and temples. Today we marvel at them because they have stood so long, but Paul was deeply troubled for they signified the depth of idol worship in the city. “The city was given over to idols”. Today there are many signs in our societies that they are given over to idols of various sorts, and we too should be troubled. Not in a condemnatory way, but more in sorrow and a passion to see things change.

Haggai 2:9-12 - The latter glory

2:9

“The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former”. In Mark 13:1 we read of the disciples marvelling at the splendour of the temple. We see here, and in Zechariah, Ezra and Nehemiah, the importance of the temple. In Ezekiel 47 the water of blessings flows out from the temple. Yet this temple was destroyed in AD 70, and in Mark 13 Jesus goes on to warn the disciples that the temple would be destroyed. So this temple was a precursor to the real temple, which is you and me, God dwelling in His people. As it says in Rev 21:3 the dwelling of God is with men. And Jesus said that “from within you shall flow streams of living water” (John 7:38). And it is this dwelling of God with His people that will bring true peace. We need to remember that the word for peace, shalom, means so much more than an absence of trouble, it means the totality of Godly blessing. The reality if the events surrounding the building of the physical temple demonstrate the reality of the work that God will do in and through His people.

2:10-12

This is about two months after the last word from Haggai. This time there is no indication of who it is directed to. In fact it seems that the word was God speaking to Haggai telling him to ask the priests the given question. So it is possible he was in the temple when he received the word, or he would have gone to the temple after receiving it. Holy meat is meat that has been offered to the Lord. Haggai had to ask the priest if someone carrying such meat touches other things, do they become holy. The priests, of course, answer no. You cannot become holy be default.

Acts 17:10,11 - Bereans

17:10

Night was the best time to escape a place. Berea was a major city in Macedonia, but not the most obvious place to flee to. When they got there they went to the synagogue, so Paul is continuing to follow his adopted strategy.

17:11

There he received a much more mature reception. The folk listened to him and then searched the Scriptures for themselves to see if what he was saying was true. Indeed, this is an excellent model for all of us to follow. We should not just take a preacher’s word for it. Now this is not having a critical spirit, ie trying to find a flaw in a sermon (there will almost always be some), or going with a starting point that what the preacher says is wrong! There are two good reasons for doing this. One, when what is preached or taught is good (which should be most of the time) the message will take deeper root in us if we seek to understand the teaching for ourselves. I is the Holy Spirit through the word of God that changes our hearts and minds. Secondly, we all get somethings wrong, or have a slightly wrong emphasis, so it is good to check.