August 30, 2026

"The Unknown God and the Appointed Man" (Acts 17:22-34)

Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church Scripture: Acts 17:22–34

So here now the word of the Lord from Acts chapter 17 and verses 22 through 34. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you were very religious. 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.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life, breath and everything. 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, 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. 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.

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. The times of ignorance God overlooked. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 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.

Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, we will hear you again about this. So Paul went out from 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. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated.

And as you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together this morning in prayer.

Gracious Father, we thank you that you are indeed the God who created all things, the God who has providentially upheld all things, and that you have appointed a man coming in righteousness to judge the world. And his judgment shall be right.

And so, as we hear this great sermon preached by your servant, the Apostle Paul, we pray that this morning you would give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the Gospel of your son, Jesus Christ our Savior. Fill us with your spirit to accomplish this very thing. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Well, two weeks ago we introduced this sermon by looking at Paul in Athens, wandering around and seeing how his spirit was provoked in him. Because of all the idolatry that he witnessed there. And as I've been meditating upon this passage here, One of the questions has been in my mind is if you had this opportunity, if you were able to come to present the Gospel to a group of people who were as far off from you as possible. Because what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? As one of the church fathers named Tertullian says, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?

What does this culture have to do with Jerusalem and all the events that had transpired there just a few years earlier. When Jesus Christ gave up his life and died just outside the city of Jerusalem for the sins of people? What would you say? And as I was thinking about this, a time in my life came when I was. Earlier on in my life, when I was doing sales for a company.

And I was thinking about some of the things I learned. I have the utmost respect for those of you who do sales. Because I know that it is one of the hardest jobs to do in the world. My father was in sales all of his life. And he told me some of the stories as I was going through this.

And I had a new appreciation for some of the things that my father did. Because in sales, it's not just. I don't see this as a crass thing. We're just trying to push things on people. What I learned in that time is that especially by getting a lot of no's and a lot of rejections.

Was that I couldn't just talk about the good things that my company was selling, the good things that we had to offer. I had to actually go through a very deliberate process where I worked with people to understand what exactly their needs were, where their problems were, to then figure out with them what the solutions would be that would actually benefit for what their problems were. And a lot of times, people did not know their problems.

Now, I don't say that evangelism is like sales. Some similarities, but very different. The point of comparison I want to make is that I don't think people understand the great problems that they are facing. And as I was praying this morning about this. How do I preach about a problem that we so often don't have on our radar whatsoever?

A problem that people go through their entire lives without ever registering. A problem that the Athenians were utterly unaware that they had? How do I communicate to you this morning the problem that is facing every one of us if we are left in our sin. Because Paul, with all of the things that he might have said in this sermon, focuses the entire sermon toward a particular problem. That there is a man appointed by God who is coming at the end of the age to judge the world in righteousness.

And when Paul says the proof, the proof that what he is saying is true, he points to the resurrection of that man from the dead. Of all the things that the resurrection of Jesus accomplished, part of what it did was demonstrate and to vindicate that this man truly is a righteous man who can bring all of God's counsels and decrees for all of time to completion. This man is worthy to be the man to judge the world in righteousness. And his judgment will be right. And so our theme this morning as we think about this great sermon is that God will judge the world by an appointed man.

God will judge the world by an appointed man. And there are three parts to Paul's sermon. First, the unknown God, the unknown God in verses 22 through 29. Second, the appointed man in verses 30 through 31. And then third, mockers and believers, the two reaction, mockers and believers in verses 32 through 34.

1. The Unknown God (Acts 17:22-29)

So let's start with the unknown God in verses 22 through 29. Again, Paul has been in Athens. He has been working in the synagogues, preaching to them, reasoning with them from the scriptures. He has also been in the marketplace of Athens, reasoning with people from the Scriptures. And the longer he has talked to people, with whoever are there.

We read about the Epicureans, we read about the Stoics that he encountered. We'll talk about them as our study goes on in this passage. But over time, they wanted to know more. If you look back at verse 20, you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean.

And so now Paul has his opportunity. Now, this the place where he is significant. Because if you go to Athens, I've never been there. I have some relatives who have been there recently, or a relative who's been there recently. But if you go to Athens, there is a hill.

Areopagus is the hill of Ares, Mars Hill. Ares is the Greek name. Mars is the Roman name. So Mars Hill. There is a hill you can go to.

And this is the place where some people think that Paul was preaching this. But there was also a council. There was a tribunal of 12 judges who were called the Areopagites. And they took their name from this hill. And they were sort of the governing body over Athens.

And if you look at the end of this Passage you look at verse 34, that one of the people who believed was Dionysius the Areopagite. So one of the judges from that council of the Areopagus, that's what they were called, actually came to faith. It's very likely that Paul was not standing on that hill, a place you can visit today, but actually giving this testimony before the council that officially oversaw Athens. Now, throughout Acts, we have seen Christians preaching privately and publicly, but also at several, several instances, we have seen them summoned before magistrates to give an account of the Jesus whom they are preaching. Sometimes they are on trial, sometimes not.

Here we have Paul not on trial, but called to bear witness to the hope that is in him. And so as he addresses these men, again, I think these are probably the Areopagites. He's in the midst of the Areopagus, the midst of this court. He said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. Now, this word religious in Greek is interesting, especially because it's very similar to our word in English for religious.

You might mean this as someone who really takes their religion, their faith seriously. You're a very religious person. Or maybe more scornfully, you might say that a little bit superstitiously. You're very religious about that, aren't you? And this word can also mean superstitious.

It can mean religious or it can mean superstitious. In fact, if you are reading from the King James Bible this morning, you will read that you are too. Superstitious is how the King James Version has it. It's probably a word that Paul is sort of putting out there that could mean either thing. And he's sort of piquing their interest to wait for him to say what he has to say before they understand what he had meant in this opening shot across the bow.

So he goes on, in verse 23, he says, for as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. Now, I think the English Standard Version is correct in lowercasing this. Their worship was not to a. The God who is really there, whom they simply didn't know. Paul wasn't saying, this whole time you've actually anonymously been worshiping the living God.

Wonderful. Congratulations. Let me tell you who you've been worshiping about. He's not saying that. He's saying, you recognize that you do not know the gods who are there.

You have a whole altar dedicated to an unknown God. So let me tell you about a God that you don't know the living God who is truly there. And so in verse 24 he says the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man. Now in this we're going to look at different things that he's critiquing. Part of this is he's critiquing general paganism again.

He's walking through the city, he sees all these shrines, all of these temples made by man and worshiping all of these gods. And what he is saying is the God who is there, the God who exists, he does not dwell in these little dwelling places, these huts that you have made for your so called God. He doesn't live there or your so called gods, I should say. Nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. Now we need to stop there because Paul is talking about a lot of things here.

Some of this is paganism, just sort of the God who exists does not live in these temples. But he also talks about the creation. In verse 24 he made the world and everything in it. In verse 26 he made from one man every nation of mankind. Part of what Paul is doing is not only to talk about paganism in general, but he's interacting with some of the beliefs of the philosophers, the schools of philosophy that he interacted with.

Now remember, there were Epicureans and there were Stoics. Many of you I'm sure have the Routledge Encyclopedia Philosophy. I'm just kidding. I don't either. But it's available online and if you look up today, I.

Maybe not today. It's. It's the Lord's day and Epic. Epicurus is not necessarily the most interesting God honoring person to read about, but he was a philosopher who lived in the 4th and 3rd, 3rd and 2nd centuries BC 341 and 271. And he argues that there can't.

David Sedley says in this article that there. Epicurus argues that there can be no creating or controlling divinity and that our world, one of infinitely many, is an accidental and temporary product of large scale atomic collisions. Now he's describing what philosophers and so called scientists today would call the Big Bang Theory. Again, this is not a new idea. This is a recycling of ancient Greek paganism.

To say that is a myth that the world was created out of an accidental and temporary large scale atomic collisions. The Epicureans were people who believed only in material things, only in matter that can be reduced to the Smallest elements, these atoms. And because the only thing existed was the material world, these were those who gave themselves over to hedonism. They just lived for today, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. They were hedonistic, much like the philosophical naturalists and materialists today.

If this world is only composed of what science can explain, then why not just live any way you want? Well, David Sedley also has an article about Stoicism, and he says Stoicism, on the other hand, was pantheistic. They did believe in lots of gods, but particularly that we were a part of the divine. That not that there's a God who is a creator and human beings who is creation, but that we're sort of all together, we're all in God. God is us.

I am God, you are God. We're all God, we're all part of God. I feel God everywhere. He's flowing through me right now. That's the kind of view, a belief that the world is God, the world is divine.

There's no difference, no distinction between humanity and the gods. And what this did is it gave the Stoics a very high confidence in this world. It was wisdom not to look at some of the disasters that happened as bad, but it was wisdom to say this is a part of the best that there can be and to sort of adapt to it. Now, again, there's been a revival of Stoicism in this world. There's been a revival.

If you go to the Daily stoic.com Again, I wouldn't recommend it. There's daily Stoic articles about how to get in tune with his ancient Greek pagan philosophy, to sort of get in tune with the fact that this world is all there is. And so we need to enjoy it and embrace it for what it is. And cutting right through this, Paul says, no, we aren't the accidental byproduct of a collision of atoms. We are not God in and of ourselves.

There is one God, and He is the Creator and He has created us. We are his creatures. There's a distinction between the Creator and the creatures. But then what Paul says is he starts with creation, but he moves on to God's providential ordering of history. Verse 24.

The God who made the world and everything in it. It talks about that. But then in 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, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him the same Creator. Is the same one who is providentially ordering all of history, giving rise to every people group, every era, every epoch, every civilization, every race. And he desired in all of these that all these people should seek Him.

But he says he's not far from us. And what Paul is trying to say is that they had a sense of this, especially the Stoics. They had a sense that in him we live and move and have our being. Although Paul is quoting this to differentiate Stoicism from biblical Christianity, and as even some of your poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. And he points to those poets of their own pagan poetry to make a particular point.

Being then, verse 29, 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. He's saying, look, these images, gold and silver and stone, just like we read about and sang about today. Well, let's think about tonight, actually, what we read about today in our call to worship in Psalm 115. These gods don't have ears. They don't.

They have ears, but they can't hear. They have eyes but can't see. They have noses but can't smell. They cannot really compare to the dynamism and the vivid life of a human being. So if those can't represent us, how could they possibly represent the Creator?

He's moving in and out of critiquing what they believed and then drawing off what they believed to show that other parts of what they believed were not logically coherent.

Well, before we move on to the rest of what Paul says, we've sort of seen creation and we've seen the providential ordering of history, and particularly that God wants us to worship Him. Him. I want to start by simply saying the doctrine of creation is so foundational to understand everything necessary about God and our salvation. If we get creation wrong, we get everything wrong. Which means we must believe what the Scriptures teach.

There is indeed only one God who created heaven and earth and everything in it. We are not the products of an accidental atomic collision sometime millions of years ago. And we are also not sort of floating in and out of God. God is a part of us and a part of me and a part of you. There's a Creator and there is his creation, and they are distinct.

And yet this same Creator is not someone who created us and wound us up and then sort of set us off in time. The same Creator is close. He is near. The God who created all things is imminent. He is close to us.

We don't serve him in the sense of providing him for his needs. That word there is the word that we get our word therapeutic from. We don't do therapeutic things to help God like the pagans believed. He is the One who blesses us with life and breath and movement and being. He is so alive, he is so vivid, he could not be imaged because no image could capture him.

And by the way, come tonight as we talk about the first and the second commandments on that point, but the Creator wants us to seek after him and to know Him. Now, all of this again is Paul's skillful way of sort of moving in and out of Epicurean and Stoic philosophy. Some of it, maybe, if we're not in the weeds of these debates, goes a little bit over our heads. And so we say, okay, I don't really care about ancient Greek poetry. Don't really care about philosophical ramblings.

I really have no intention of reading anything from the Routledge Encyclopedia Philosophy. That's fine. Where then are we going? What does Paul say? This is his chance to preach the Gospel.

2. The Appointed Man (Acts 17:30-31)

What does he say on the second section? He preaches the appointed man. The appointed man in verses 30 and 30. One key to understanding this particular sermon is time or the passage of time or chronology. Now, pagans really important mythology.

Mythology does not have a linear sense of time. One thing happened at the beginning, and then things happened after that, and then other things and other things. And then there's sort of a end goal somewhere. We have that sort of a sense of time intuitively because our, certainly our faith is shaped off the Bible. But even our worldview of the Western worldview was shaped off a biblical understanding of time.

Mythology, paganism has a circular sense of time where time began. And it's just repeating forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. You don't get past anything. You simply are in some phase of repeating time. But Paul is laying out against that a biblical view of time that moves from the beginning through a period of time to another period of time, all the way to the future at the end.

He began with creation. He talked about providence over human history. And now in verse 30, look what he says. He says the times of ignorance God overlooked. Now what's he talking about?

He's talking about the times of the Old Testament when all the Gentile nations lived in ignorance. Now, if you want to use fighting words here, these are fighting words to Greeks, they prided themselves in their knowledge to say that they were ignorant of the true and living God. This was a very provocative thing. This is to take the glove off, you know, to put the glove down. And what Paul is saying is that in the past, they, and even the most eminent of their philosophers, Socrates and Plato, all of these philosophers, were ignorant of the living God.

God. But the times of ignorance God overlooked. It doesn't mean that God pardoned all of this. It means that God sort of let them to themselves to live their lives in this world, sort of moving along with blissful ignorance, unaware of the judgment that was coming. They had no judgment in this world yet, but they would experience judgment in the life to come.

And Paul is saying those times where God overlooked that ignorance is over. But now something has changed. He doesn't say what yet, and that's really important. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Now, why, here's where you expect him to say, Jesus, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come into this world.

That the one who is God of God and light of light from all eternity past took upon himself a human nature and lived and suffered and died for you in your place. Think about the salvation that he offers by his resurrection from the dead.

That would be true.

But that's not what he says here.

Instead, he skips over this. He says, the time has come to repent, but he withholds that fact. The time has come to repent. But he doesn't say what has changed the times of ignorance to now when repentance is demanded. And instead he jumps all the way to the end of time.

He says, because verse 31, he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. Who's this man? What's he done? Why is he so special? And of all this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Now again, when we think about the resurrection. When we confessed earlier our belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and our hope in the resurrection of the dead at the end of time, we see this as a part of the salvation that Jesus Christ purchased. And that is true. But what Paul is saying is the resurrection of Jesus did something different. It confirmed his righteousness.

Not a righteousness that he received from outside himself, as we do when we trust in Christ for salvation, but a righteousness that he personally earned, that he personally accomplished, that he personally assembled in moment after moment, reaction after reaction, decision after decision, action after action. In everything he did, he was perfectly and completely righteous. And if you want to know, how do you evaluate that about someone's life? Even a very good person's life seems to have skeletons in the closet somewhere, right? Well, this man, unlike any other man, was raised from the dead.

Now, here's where he stops, or at least here's where things are cut off. What he is wanting them is to cry out, sirs, what must we do to be saved? Sir, what shall we do then?

3. Mockers and Believers (Acts 17:32-34)

But that's not what they say at this point. The sermon ends because we go to our third section, Mockers and Believers. And in verse 32 we read. Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, understand that to Platonic ideals, philosophy from Plato in ancient Greece and most Greeks followed this to some idea the body was evil, matter was evil. The whole goal was to die so you could get rid of this dying, decaying carcass of flesh and then be alive in a realer sense where you had left all the problems of your bodies behind.

When they thought of resurrection of the dead, they thought about something like zombies, something like the dead, decaying, rotting corpses coming out of the dead and walking around in this world, or like mummies or something like that, the stuff of horrors. And they thought about that and they that's your message, that's your hope that someone was raised from the dead in that sort of a sense.

Some mocked, but others said, we will hear you again about this. So Paul went out from 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, you see here, sort of lived out very clearly in this one snapshot. Jesus, Parable of the Sower. Here Paul had been the sower scattering seeds, the seeds of the Gospel about the man appointed at the end of time for judgment. And you see that some of these seeds, the word of God, had those seeds immediately snatched up.

They mocked him. They wouldn't listen any further to him, what a fool this man is. Others seem to have some kind of response, some degree of what appeared to be fruitful growth. They say, we want to hear more of you from this. But in verse three, we read that Paul went out from their midst and we don't hear anything else about these people circling back.

And in fact, we have a contrast between the last group of people in verse 34. But some, in other words, others joined him and believed the first three groups did not have lasting faith. Some the seeds were snatched up. Some of them had rocky or thorny soil in their hearts. But others had soil of hearts that was good soil.

And the seed that fell on them ultimately led to faith, including one of the areopagites, Dionysius, and also a woman. Paul is always showing this as men and women who are coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

Well, here we look at this and we say, boy, what might have been? Could Paul have taken a different approach? Could he have maybe led with the benefits instead of just talking about the problem they faced in the judgment?

But I think what we are seeing here is Paul again, that's that lesson I had to learn. Don't just start with the benefits. People have to understand their problems. And so as I think about pushing to you the message of this passage from a sermon preached 2,000 years ago halfway around the world in Athens, Greece. The application to take from this is that Christ is coming in judgment despite the ignorance of our culture, and you need to respond accordingly.

Christ is coming in judgment in spite of the ignorance of our culture, and you need to respond accordingly. Again, in verse 30, Paul talks about the times of ignorance that God overlooked. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Again. The world is constantly talking about where we have come from in order to make sense of where we are and where we are going.

For many in this world, this world is all that there is. The matter and the material world, the things that we can touch and taste and measure and see. These are the things that exist. And nothing else that does not is not able to be seen, exists. But the world didn't come into existence by a large scale atomic collision.

The world is not a manifestation of the divine. God alone created the world and everything in it. And that same God providentially gives life to all people and all creatures. He has given rise to kingdoms and empires, raising one up and putting down another, determining the periods of time and the boundaries over which these empires will endure in their dwelling places. And for thousands of years, the world drifted along in ignorance, cut off from the knowledge of God, dwelling in the darkness of ignorance.

And during this time they lived lives. They married, they had children, they died and were buried. They built cities, cultures, technologies, civilizations. But all of this, they lived and died in ignorance. God let them be in their lifetimes, even though he still held them accountable after their death.

And during that time, God alone disclosed himself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in order to reach the nations with the offspring of Jacob, the offspring of Israel, and ultimately, one from the ranks of Israel, a man. Jesus of Nazareth, 1 from the ranks of Israel, is coming again. He is the man who has been appointed to bring judgment over the whole world. And what makes him qualified? It's because.

Because he lived the perfect human life. Maybe some of you have been in a testing situation. Maybe in classes where you're thinking, boy, I did badly. But if I did badly on this test, maybe I'll get a break. Because I imagine that everyone else did badly as well.

And surely the teacher or professor can't flunk all of us. And then you see that one kid beaming at the front of the class, holding up his 99% that he got on the test. And you say, oh, no. Because if one person wrecks the curve, it's wrecked for everybody. Jesus Christ is the man of righteousness beyond a 99%, 100% of everything he did in life.

Wrecked the curve. Perfect, absolute, infinitely high as heaven. Righteousness is demanded and expected. And that man represents a nightmare to anyone who believes that. That you are good enough to come before God.

What Ken preached last week. Who shall ascend to the mountain of the Lord? Only the one with clean hands and a pure heart. That is Jesus. It is not you.

But that same man has not only ascended into the heavenly places, that same man is coming again in judgment.

But by the same token. And here's the rest of the story. Here's what Dionysius the Areopagite and Damaris and the others came to hear as they did ask. The question, what shall we do? Is that this same man did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world.

This same man came into this world not because God hates the world, but because God so loved the world that he gave his only son. God of God, light of light, very God of very God Begotten, not made. This one came into this world. This man of righteousness came to rescue the lost, to save sinners, to lay down his life as a ransom for many. He died as the victim of the blinded, sinful hatred of the wicked.

And he died in your place as your substitute as the Lamb of God for sinners slain, whose blood atoned the wrath of God against you. This man indeed will be the judge on the last day. But he is also the redeemer of God's elect. He is the Lamb who is slain. He is worthy to break the seal.

He is worthy to open the scrolls of God's eternal decrees. He is worthy to bring all of human history, which is not cyclical, it's linear. It's going to a completed day, a day that has been appointed for judgment. And he is the one who will bring all of this to completion, when on the last day he himself will will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. This is the man who could command the opening of the books.

And if your name is not found written in the book of life, you will be thrown into the lake of fire forever. This is the man on whom all history hinges and turns. And therefore this man declares to you. He commands, repent the times of ignorance God overlooked. But now he commands everyone, everywhere to repent.

Repent from your sins. Turn in your mind from your former ignorance. And let that turning of your mind, that change of mind, effect a transformation, a change of your heart. And let that change of heart change your life as you look to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God slain for sinners and to trust that what he did through his life, death, crucifixion and resurrection was for your salvation. Flee the wrath to come.

Don't wait. The day of judgment is fixed and there will be no extent.

By God's grace, turn to this man, Jesus Christ, in faith for your salvation. He is your only hope in life and in death. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do pray that you would bless your people. That you would bless the coming of Christ by drawing us to faith in Jesus.

We pray that you would do this to glorify your Son and to save sinners. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

other sermons in this series

Sep 13

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"My Grace Is Sufficient for You" (2 Corinthians 12: 1-10)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:1–10 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Sep 6

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"Power Made Perfect in Weakness" (Acts 18:1-17)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 18:1–17 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Aug 16

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"Drawing Near to the Far Off" (Acts 17:16-21)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 17:16–21 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church