ACTS 17:22\u201334<\/b><\/p>\n
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent<\/i><\/p>\n
(Acts 17:30)<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Paul\u2019s message to the philosophers in Athens is a good example of highly confrontational preaching. Paul begins by pointing at an idol made \u201cto an unknown god.\u201d For Greek philosophy, \u201cBeing\u201d consisted of the known and the mysterious. As a result, the Athenians had erected idols to all kinds of known things, and another idol to all the mysterious, unknown aspects of \u201cBeing.\u201d Paul says that he is going to declare the \u201cunknown God\u201d to them (Acts 17:22\u201323). This is a bit of a problem, but evidently what Paul meant was that even Greek philosophy and superstition retained some slight glimmer of knowledge about the true God, and this memory is partly bound up in their \u201cunknown god.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul confronted the notion of eternally existent \u201cBeing.\u201d He referred to \u201cthe God who made the world and everything in it.\u201d He began with the doctrine of Creation, which meant that God is a person who acts, not an \u201cit.\u201d It meant that He is personally interested in His works, and that He will call all His creation to account. Creation implies judgment, which is the last thing any sinner, including Greeks, wants to hear.<\/p>\n
The Creator has provided them opportunities to seek and find Him (Acts 17:26\u201327). But we have not done so. Philosophers have used phrases like \u201cIn Him we live and move and have our being,\u201d and \u201cWe are His offspring,\u201d but they have meant the wrong things by these phrases. Such language should have pointed the Greeks to the fact of God\u2019s creatorhood and His omnipresence. They should have realized that such a God cannot be worshiped in wood and stone.<\/p>\n
Paul said that God had tolerated their ignorance and stupidity in the past, but now they had to repent. (This is not the way to win friends and influence people when it comes to philosophy.) God, he said, was going to judge the world, and the proof that He means business is that He has raised Jesus from the dead. The Resurrection is not some freak of nature, which is how the Greeks would have explained it, but is a sign from God that the new age has come, an age of judgment. They wanted to hear something new (Acts 17:19\u201321); well, says Paul, here it is: The age of judgment has arrived!<\/p>\n
CORAM DEO<\/b><\/p>\n
1 Kings 8\u20139<\/p>\n
Luke 23:39\u201356<\/p>\n
Paul asserts all kinds of common ground with the Greeks. Paul does not confuse common<\/i> ground with neutral<\/i> ground. At every point, the Greeks have misinterpreted this common ground because they suppress the truth. They must repent and change. Don\u2019t compromise the truth, stand firm until the Judgment.<\/p>\n
For further study: Prov. 1:23\u201333 \u2022 Hosea 14:1\u20133 \u2022 Amos 5:4\u20136 \u2022 Jn. 8:24\u201347<\/i><\/p>\n
tuesday<\/p>\n
may<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ACTS 17:22\u201334 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). Paul\u2019s message to the philosophers in Athens is a good example of highly confrontational preaching. Paul begins by pointing at an idol made \u201cto an unknown god.\u201d For Greek philosophy, \u201cBeing\u201d consisted of the known … Continue reading “JUDGMENT DAY IN ATHENS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}