An Unknown God

    There have been some extremely intelligent people who have concluded that there is a God and that God is the Great I Am of the Bible.  Luke records the story of Paul coming to Athens following incidents in Thessalonica and Berea.  Coming upon a city full of idols, Paul is drawn to an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown God.”  The Athenians would spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.

    Paul, seizing on the inscription, “To an unknown God” began to proclaim Jesus as the God that was unknown to the philosophers of Athens.  His message was as follows:

      For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.  The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;  nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,  that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;  for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’  Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.  Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

   Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.”  So Paul went out of their midst.  But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

    Paul’s encounter with the Athenians can be seen as a presentation of the gospel of the Lord.  The text takes us from a simple stating of facts that resonated to some who came to seek more from the apostle to some becoming believers and followers of the Lord. 

Pastor Dwight <><