by Pastor Bob Burridge ©2014,2025 – Acts 17:24-29
As Paul waited for Silas and Timothy to join him in Athens, he took the opportunity to explain the gospel. He taught both the Jews in the Synagogues, and the Gentiles in the market place. He was invited to address the philosophers at the Areopagus so they could hear his teachings. Though he was aware of their their mere curiosity, he didn’t hesitate to accept the opportunity. He commented on their awareness that there was more to life than just the physical. They had an altar to an unknowable God. But God is knowable, and Paul proclaimed that truth to these skeptics.
being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,”
The true God is the Creator of everything. He made the world and all things in it. The word translated as “world” here is “cosmos” (κόσμος) which is the whole order of things, the universe. This is the foundation of all truth. It’s the reality that makes truth possible. If there is no God behind all that exists, then truth becomes relative. It becomes what we personally choose to believe, or what seems to produce the results we want to see.
If the universe came about by its own power, not by a Creator, then truth evolves like everything else in the cosmos. So contrary to what the philosophers believed, Paul laid the foundation for real truth. These philosophers continually ridiculed the pagan gods of the popular myths, but they had no alternative, just the doubts of pantheism or atheism.
However, if God made all things, then he has the right to make demands of what he made. When you pour a slab of cement for a driveway, you have the right to drive your car on it. That’s why it was made. If you build a shelf in the garage to hold cans of paint, then that’s what it’s for.
God made the universe for a specific reason. He therefore has the right to demand that his creation should serve that purpose.
When we present the gospel to the unbeliever, we must do as Paul did. We must establish that there is a Creator to whom we are responsible. Otherwise, talk of salvation is meaningless. Without a Creator, there can be no real solution to our real needs.
The Creator does not live in man made Temples. God made all things, and lives eternally before anything physical was made, therefore he doesn’t need a physical place to live.
Notice how Solomon expressed this idea after he made the Temple as God instructed him. In 1 Kings 8:27 Solomon said, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!”
Stephen, the first Christian martyr, made this point before the Jews executed him for his faith. In Acts 7:47-49 Stephen said, “But it was Solomon who built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest?’ ”
Even the Greek philosophers couldn’t deny this evident problem with their mythological gods. Euripides wrote, “What house built by craftsmen could enclose the form divine within enfolding walls?”
But Paul wasn’t citing Euripides to prove his point. The Apostle was presenting biblically revealed facts from God himself. We often find inescapable insights like this in the writings of unbelievers. Though distorted and mangled in their attempt, the creature cannot consistently deny what he is, and can’t escape the realities he works hard to deny.
since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”
Since God is the same before and after creation, his nature can’t depend on things made. He existed eternally before there was anything outside of himself. God is truly independent. He is complete in himself and needs nothing for him to be all that he is.
The word translated “served” is therapeuo (θεραπεύω). We get our words “therapy” and “therapeutic” from it. It means the kind of service we give to someone in need. It’s like when a sick person needs the service of a physician. God needs nothing more than what he already is. He doesn’t need therapy from his creatures.
God is above all, and everything depends upon Him. He’s the source of all things, of life itself. He is the source of life, of every breath, and of all things. In contrast, we as his creatures are totally dependent beings.
All the Athenian philosophers came up with were questions. They had become pantheists, skeptics, or agnostics. Paul’s answer was direct and simple. There is only one true God, the independent Creator of all things.
having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,”
The God who created all things is also ruler of the universe he made. He oversees and sustains all he made by his governing providence.
He made all the nations as we descended from Adam. National and ethnic distinctives have often become a source of pride and divisivness. The Athenians believed they were naturally superiority to the barbarians. Many Jews saw themselves as blessed by God because they were better than the Gentiles. We all ought to see ourselves as part of a lost human race. No one is better than anyone else.
The people of all nations need to see themselves as equally lost in Adam and in need redemption. They exist and have all they possess by our Creator’s enablement.
God determined their appointed times eternally, before they were even created. In Lystra Paul said that God is the one who sends the rains and fruitful seasons (Acts 14:17), even the seasons for every nation that prospers. We see the rise and fall of nations, but behind it all is God’s hand.
God determined their boundaries by his eternal decrees. He gives the movers of history their skills and opportunities.
So often we see only the outward means God uses, but fail to understand it as his decrees at work. The God Paul dared to proclaim was behind it all.
The failure of people to find the true God isn’t found in God’s failure to declare himself. He’s placed an astounding testimony all around us in the wonders of creation. He’s displayed there in all its intricacy, complexity and beauty. It’s seen in all that happens that makes even the lost look for spiritual causes behind things. Sadly the lost invent all sorts of alternative religions and philosophies.
There can be no excuse for their failure to see the truth God displays all around them. Paul later explained this in Romans 1:19-20, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
The Bible teaches that God is everywhere (Psalm 139 for example). He’s not some far off cosmic force (as the Epicurians and Stoics believed). He’s not an isolated deity found in stone temples along the streets of the Areopagus. He’s not the sum-total of all things surrounding us as the Pantheists believe. The true Sovereign Creator is everywhere present. He surrounds us all.
The image presented here is of a blind man groping but not finding what is right in front of him all the time. This blindness is because of our lost nature. Everything around us is a declaration of the true God.
It’s not that those without Christ aren’t as smart as us. It’s not that they aren’t as good. We would be as blind as the heathen who bow before gods carved from bones or stones, if it was not for the grace of God that gave sight to us who otherwise couldn’t see.
Paul was leveling the playing field. No one had any special privilege in and of themselves. Far from being arrogant, Paul humbled himself, his people, and his listeners. We must avoid an arrogant attitude when we tell others about the True God.
All is totally dependent upon God all the time. He created and upholds all things by his power. Colossians 1:16-17, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
God is not the product of the imaginations of the creatures. They are the product of his eternal decree. Paul appears to be quoting Epimenides, an ancient Cretan writer. The whole context appears to be a hymn to the Greek’s Supreme god Zeus.
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead; thou livest and abidest for ever;
For in thee we live and move and have our being.”
The second line about Cretans being liars was quoted by Paul in Titus 1:12. Aratus, a well known ancient poet-philosopher, a Stoic from Cilicia (where Paul was born), wrote, “ever and in all ways we enjoy Jupiter, for we are also his offspring.” Cleanths, who led the Stoic school in Athens for 32 years, wrote a hymn to Zeus. Speaking for the human race and all mortals he said, “for we are his offspring.” A similar quote is found in Timagenes. (Little is known of this author.)
Paul didn’t quote these writers authoritatively. His quotations were to point out an undeniable truth they could not escape. Paul also quotes Meander in 1 Corinthians 15:33, and Epimenides in Titus 1:12. He quotes verbatim showing familiarity with Greek literature. He certainly dispelled the idea that he was an ignorant seed picker. More importantly, he drove home the obvious point that creatures by their nature, owe their existence to something beyond themselves.
This true God he was proclaiming to them is our real Creator. All people are made by him and therefore are obligated to him. We are his offspring in the general sense regarding all humans as creatures, not in the redemptive sense of the new creation in Christ. Paul wrote to believers in Galatians 3:26, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”
gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.”
This conclusion follows necessarily from the points Paul just made. This all being true about God (that he is the Sovereign Creator and Sustainer, Lord over all and giver of all things, and that we owe our being and existence to him alone), then if follows that we should not imagine God’s Nature to be like things made by him, or even less, by things we ourselves have made.
We should not expect such a God to have his nature represented by material things we make. He is infinitely greater. Image worship has always been wrong.
A similar argument was made in Isaiah 44:9-11, “All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human. Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified; they shall be put to shame together. ”
Images could never to be like a Creator who made all physical things. This is why even the pagan philosophers ridiculed the images of the mythological gods. However, they had nothing to offer in their place that could explain the realities that inescapably surrounds us. The philosophers have never agreed with one another about their theories and proposals. Still today the heathen, the pantheists, the naturalists, the rationalists, the agnostics, the humanists all continue the same debates among one another which Paul observed and addressed in Athens.
We need to realize here that Paul did not use rationalistic arguments. Instead he appealed to the truth of things as they really are, as God has revealed them in creation (Romans 1:19-20) and in the human conscience (Romans 2:15).
Though he used Scriptural arguments, he didn’t assume a biblical literacy in his audience. He used terms and quotes they would understand, yet he made clear distinctions so they would not think that he was agreeing with the philosophers he quoted.
There are but a few words here — but they were powerful words!
This was but ground work. Clarifying the basics is vital and ought not to be ignored as a first step in communicating the gospel effectively. More than ever it’s important to clarify these fundamental issues in our age of relativism and post-modernism where there is neither absolute truth nor a standard of morality by which all things are judged.
We must never neglect to clarify that the God of which we speak is not the god commonly imagined by creatures living in alienation from him.
Note: Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.