After having been chased
out of Thessalonica by yet another angry mob of Jewish men who rejected his
message in the synagogue, Paul moved to Berea only to have their
inquisitiveness about the message undermined by troublemakers who followed him
from Thessalonica. Paul is once more
forced to flee, and then finds himself alone in Athens waiting for the rest of
his missions team to arrive. What will
he do under these unexpected and undesired circumstances? Paul goes to the synagogue in Athens, as is
his habit, but also decides to take his message to the streets of the market
where he is noticed by Epicurean and Stoic philosophers and brought to the
Areopagus to explain his novel idea to the learned men there.
How should Paul begin to explain the Gospel’s message of
sin, judgment, and forgiveness that centers around the birth, life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ to these men who care nothing of the Hebrew
scriptures and who already consider themselves to be sufficiently
religious? Rather than denigrating the
rampant idolatry that Athens is full of, Paul studies the beliefs of his
audience in order to find common ground through which he can share the Gospel
with them. The common ground that Paul
finds is a shared desire to seek and find God as expressed by the idol he found
with the inscription, “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD”.
By meeting his audience where they currently are, Paul is
able to explain the Gospel’s message of God’s desire to be found by humanity
using language that his audience would understand, even quoting their own
philosophers to punctuate his point.
Paul thus demonstrates a willingness to present the Gospel in any way
that will reach his intended audience, an attitude that requires both humility
on the part of the speaker and compassion for the lost.
Paul was willing to begin his message in an unorthodox
manner to allow his audience to understand it, but he still knew that he had to
end it with the truth of the resurrection.
This particular point was sure to cause his audience to think less of
his message, but Paul knew that it was absolutely necessary. In our day, we also need to be willing to
adapt the presentation of the Gospel to allow those who would not understand it
otherwise to hear God’s Word to them, but we too need to cling to the core message
of the Gospel even if it is as unpopular for us as it was for Paul in
Athens. In the end, only a handful of
Athenians believed Paul’s message and he wasn’t able to establish a church
there, but he planted the seeds just the same.
God will make the seed grow, and even if only one or two plants sprout
from our efforts, we know that angels will be rejoicing when those lost sinners
come home.
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