SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/13/2018 9:30 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 Intro to Acts 17:16-34
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts
17:16-34
Message of the verses: “16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. 17 So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. 18 And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, "What would this idle babbler wish to say?" Others, "He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,"-because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? 20 “For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean." 21 (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.)
22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “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. 24 "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; 25 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; 26 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, 27 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; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ’For we also are His children.’ 29 “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. 30 "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 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."
“32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, "We shall hear you again concerning this." 33 So Paul went out of their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.”
We learned from our last section in Acts that Paul had
been kicked out of both Thessalonica and Berea, and he had fled to Athens,
waiting on the arrival of Silas and also Timothy. While Paul was waiting he walked around the
city and was very upset with what he saw, for Athens was a very pagan city, and
so it was Paul’s desire to tell some of the people of Athens the good news of
the gospel. It was during Paul’s day
that Corinth had actually replaced Athens as the most important political and
commercial center in Greece. However
Athens had not lost it cultural significance and was still the philosophical
center of the ancient world. Is it no
wonder that Paul was disturbed at what he saw in Athens as every public
building was dedicated to a god, and statues of gods filled the city as seen in
Acts 17:16, and 23.
Paul was not one to set around as Luke notes “while Paul
was waiting for Silas and Timothy at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was
beholding the city full of idols.” Paul
was not viewing the city like a tourist would for he saw Athens as a city full
of lost men and women, doomed to a Christless eternity.
John MacArthur writes “Provoked does not bring out the
full force of paroxuno, which means
‘to become angry, or infuriated.’ Luke
used the corresponding noun to describe the ‘sharp disagreement’ between Paul
and Barnabas (Acts 15:39). Paul hated
idolatry because it robbed God of His glory (cf. Rom. 1:23). Nineteenth-century missionary Henry Martyn
expressed what Paul must have felt. He
wrote concerning a discussion he had with a Muslim:
‘Mirza Seid Ali told me of a
distich (couplet) made by his friend in honour of a victory over the
Russians. The sentiment was that Prince
Abbas Mirza had killed so many Christians that Christ from the fourth heaven
took hold of Mahomet’s [Muhammad’s] skirt to entreat him to desist. I was cut to the soul at this blasphemy. Mirza Seid Ali perceived that I was
considerably disordered and asked what it was that was so offensive? I told him that ‘I could not endure existence if Jesus was not glorified;
it would be hell to me, if He were to be always thus dishonored.’ He was astonished and again asked ‘Why?’ ‘If any one pluck out your eyes,’ I replied,
‘there is no saying why you feel
pain;--it is feeling. It is because I am
one with Christ that I am thus dreadfully wounded.’”
We will try and finish this introduction in our next SD.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Canaan” (Genesis 12:6-7).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who had gone out of Sodom the
day it rained fire and brimstone?”
Answer in our next SD.
5/13/2018 9:54 PM
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