God’s Word for You

Acts 17:24-25 The Athenian Catechism (part 2)

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, October 19, 2020

Paul is preaching a sermon I like to call “The Athenian Catechism.” He has begun with a natural first part, “Who God Is.” The third point under this part is a simple statement about God the Father:

24 The God who made the world and everything in it is Lord of heaven and earth.

When many Christians share their faith, this is the point where they stop. The trouble with stopping at creation is first of all that the idea of a creating God is common to almost all religions, and second, many people today have been taught what they think is accurate about the inadvertent, sudden creation of the universe by accident. Such ideas have a way of coexisting in the minds of some Christians and non-Christians alike, and nothing is really done to create faith.

Now, God certainly did create everything in the universe. The account written by Moses in the first two chapters of Genesis presents the history in simple, concrete terms. Some people struggle to remember the order of things, and perhaps a two-layered approach might help if you’re one who struggles or might help you to teach someone else. In the first three days, God shaped the creation but did not fill it. In the second three days, God filled what he made in each of the first three days, and in the same order. So first he made an empty, formless world and universe, and he made light. Second, he separated sea from sky. Third, he brought land up from the sea, and plants began to appear. Then we start over. Fourth (completing the first day’s work) he filled the universe with sun, moon and stars, and provided the means (in the same sun, moon and stars) to sustain the light he had made. Fifth (completing the second day’s work) he filled the sea with fish and the sky with birds and other flying things. Sixth (completing the third day’s work) he populated the land with various animals and finally with Adam and Eve. On the seventh day he rested from this work of creating. He is truly the Lord of heaven and earth.

Next, Paul turns to an important point using the kind of reasoning that would be familiar to the philosophers of the Areopagus: What God is Not.

He does not live in temples made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything else.

The first point here destroys the need for all of the hundreds or thousands of shrines in Athens: God does not live in temples made by human hands. He is not, as the Greeks imagined, a God who lives in one place but not another. God’s dwelling is in heaven, and he is at the same moment in all things and everywhere. This is the Bible’s doctrine of God’s omnipresence.

Secondly, God does not require service from human hands. Paul explains: “(not) as though he needed anything.” If we fail to give God an offering, he will not starve, or waste away, or die. In fact, when a person tries to give anything to God for any reason apart from faith and thanks, God refuses to accept it: “I know every bird in the mountains,” he says, “and the creatures of the fields are mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?” (Psalm 50:11-13). And again: “The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me? I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats” (Isaiah 1:11). But most especially he says: “Stop bringing meaningless offerings!” (Isaiah 1:13). Instead, he wants us “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Thirdly, Paul draws the conclusion that God is not the beggar or the receiver in our relationship with him. He is the Giver, the one who gave life and breath and everything else. With this turn of phrase, I think that Paul might possibly be opening or at least unlocking the door to the doctrine of the Trinity, since he uses the singular “he” (autos, αὐτὸς), but then presents three separate forms of giving that God does.

The first giving God does is “life.” This is zoe (ζωή). Surely this is the work of the Father, laid down already for us in verse 24. The second giving God does is “breath,” which is pnoe (πνοή). In Greek, “breath” and “spirit” are the same thing. The usual word for “spirit” would be pneuma, but to Greek philosophers, pnoe was a higher concept, the way that “breeze” is gentler than “wind.” In Ecclesiastes 11:5, the inner workings of a man are contrasted: “You do not know the path of the wind (spirit) or how the body is formed in the mother’s womb, and so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” Paul could actually be paraphrasing that verse here. He could also be indicating that the Holy Spirit is a special pnoe beyond the comprehension and imagination of the Greek philosophers, and closer to the identity of God the Holy Spirit than any of the Athenian shrines or philosophies.

The third giving God performs is “everything.” This is another way of seeing the benefit of Jesus Christ in our lives. Surely eternal life is the truest, deepest meaning of “everything.” Who would not give up everything he had here on earth in order to live forever with God, at God’s own table, with all of God’s blessings? This is what we have in Jesus.

Paul doesn’t have time here to go into the mystery of the holy Trinity, but with a single phrase he leaves a little trail of crumbs which the Athenians can pick up on later, which he would be happy to explain and uncover for them, miraculous truth by miraculous truth. What a teacher! What an evangelist! None of his words were wasted. In this moment Paul could pick up the words of the suffering man and claim them for himself: “Men listened to me expectantly, waiting in silence for my counsel. After I had spoken, they spoke no more; my words fell gently on their ears. They waited for me as for showers and drank in my words as the spring rain. When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it; the light of my face was precious to them” (Job 29:21-24). This is the truth and the purity of the gospel. When we pull back the curtains of ignorance and doubt to reveal Jesus, this is what happens. The heart is lightened, the burden of sin is lifted, and the doors to heaven are flung wide open. When we tell about Jesus, we get to hold open those doors and smile, and people who were lost are permitted and welcomed in. Share the love of Jesus.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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