Acts 17

And this is not just church strategy made up by 21st century Christians.

This is in Acts 17.

Acts chapter 17 says, Paul in Athens, the altar to the unknown God is a perfect breakdown on a, how the camp of the unknown God has been operating and how I have always been taught to enter a culture that you are not a part of and be a good witness for Christ.

Now, in case you hadn't heard, do you have any comments on that? I'm not going to jump into a study on 17 right now.

Okay.

But like I said in the beginning, God encountered me so powerfully that...

I literally was struck dumb in so many ways.

I can and will dive deeper and deeper and deeper into Acts 17 as we put out more interviews.

So that's, that's an area of, uh, of overlap.

Um, we see-- I mean, one of the best places to see some of these points of contact is in Acts 17, where Paul is, uh, um, speaking before the Areopagus in, uh, in Athens, and there are these Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, um, who are there.

Um, and to sort of tie into the book of Acts really quickly, um, the, a Stoic like Marcus Aurelius is very opposed to superstition, and he, he talks about this in, in the Meditations.

And then we mem- we remember in Acts the burning of the books of magic, so this, this opposition to a sort of superstitious, um, view of the world that involves, like, magic and, and witchcraft and those kinds of things.

Yeah, you mentioned the Bereans.

I was just thinking about the Bereans in that verse in Acts 17.

It's verse 11.

Now, the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians, for they searched the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

Thank you so much.

I think my response would be that I think there's huge amounts of wisdom in Act 17 where Paul has that interaction on Mars Hill, the Areopagus, and points people who are exploring generally to an unknown God, the altar to an unknown God, and says, you know that God that you are worshipping, it's actually the God of heaven and earth.

And I think we need to work out how we build gospel bridges and from people who are exploring and want a depth of spirituality somewhere to say that God-shaped hole inside of you, that dream you've had, it could be found in Jesus.

And I think we need to be just aware, it comes down to that listening piece.

Thank you, Becky.

In our study of the book of Acts, we finish up the sermon at the Areopagus in Acts 17, verses 22 to 31.

I'll start out by reading the passage.

Hear the word of the Lord.

He can raise you to life or he can destroy you because God has raised him from the dead.

You know, there are a lot of apologetic ministries out there that will name themselves after this sermon that Paul proclaims at the Areopagus.

They'll call themselves like Acts 17 ministries or something like that.

I'm not digging on anybody in particular.

And in Christ, we live and move and have our being.

That's from Acts 17:28.

So we know that we can have special revelation, this special knowledge through God's Word.

That is what speaks to us.

The Apostle Paul arrived in the city, took note of the extensive local pantheon, and ascended this exact hill to deliver a massive theological update.

In the biblical account of Acts 17, local Epicurean and Stoic philosophers escorted Paul to the Areopagus so he could fully elaborate on his novel teachings.

It was an unprecedented cultural crossover, bridging the established syllabus of Greek intellectual thought with the rapid rollout of the Christian faith.

Sitting quietly on the warm, jagged stone, I took in the historical magnitude of the space.