Acts 17

     17:1-9.  Thessalonica was the capital of Macedonia.  Once again, the same cry was heard that was heard against Jesus at his crucifixion.  The Jews, who had no love for Caesar, chose Caesar over Christ, and charged Jesus with usurping Caesar’s power (7).  Satan, the usurper, was charging the Lord of the universe with his own crime.  But the Lord reigns (3).  Satan may bring persecution, but Christ is on the throne of heaven, and his righteous judgment will be revealed and his people vindicated at the last great day.

     17:10-15.  The noble minded Bereans tested the truth of the gospel by examining the Scriptures, and therefore many believed.

     Apparently it was the usual practice for some of the company to quietly stay behind to teach the new converts, and help establish the church, whenever Paul would be forced to go ahead to another place (14-15).

     17:16-34.  At Athens, Paul preached to both Jews and Gentiles, in synagogue and market place alike (17).  He attracted the attention of the bored philosophers of the great city.  The two most influential schools of philosophy were the Epicureans and the Stoics.  A mixture of these two counterbalancing ideas of what brings the greatest good still controls most people’s minds today.  Simply put, Epicureans said the greatest good was whatever brought the most pleasure.  The Stoics believed in self-control, that the disciplined mind and life brought the greatest good.  In one succinct sentence, v.21, Luke captures the atmosphere of Athens.  They had heard it all before, were open to anything, and ready to close with nothing.  They were surrounded by artistically beautiful idols that they didn’t believe in.  Paul never said anything they found really new, or offensive to their ears, until his conclusion.  In fact, he quoted Greek poets (28).  According to F. F. Bruce, it was Epimenides of Crete who supposedly had advised them to erect alters to unknown gods.

     This is part of Epimenides’ “address to the Supreme God” (also quoted in Titus 1:12):

They fashioned a tomb for Thee, O holy and high One,
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But Thou art not dead; for ever Thou art risen and alive,
For in Thee we live and move and have our being.

     And from the poem Phenomena, by Aratus of Cilicia:  “For we are indeed his offspring.”

       But when Paul got to the need for repentance, and the coming judgment by the Son of Man whom God had raised from the dead for this purpose, there was trouble.

     “The tragedian Aeschylus had described the god Apollo as saying, on the occasion when the Court of the Areopagus was founded by the city patron goddess Athene, ‘But when the earth has drunk up a man’s blood, once he is dead there is no resurrection.’ ”  F. F. Bruce, The New Bible Commentary: Revised, Eerdmans, 1970, pp. 996 f.

     Most Greeks had no problem with the idea of the immortality of the soul.  But the resurrection of the body was a ridiculous and repulsive idea.   Truth be told, most modern people have a much more Greek notion of life after death than they do a Biblical one.   But Jesus, unlike Apollo, is a savior of the whole man, albeit with a glorified spiritual body, not a corruptible natural one (1 Cor.15:42-44).

     God calls on all men to repent and acknowledge him as Creator, Sustainer, and sovereign Lord over all things.   Judgment is coming, and it will be a righteous and just judgment, because God has appointed a man to do the judging.   We can’t plead that God doesn’t understand us, because God the judge is one of us.  This Son of Man has been shown worthy to judge by dying and being raised from the dead, and all must rise and appear before him.