Paul's Sermon At Athens: The Right Place At The Right Time

Paul's mission to carry the Gospel to the nations continued while he was in Athens. Even though persecution had driven him out of one area, the LORD in His Sovereignty placed Paul right where He wanted him, and that was at the intellectual capital of the Roman Empire, the city of Athens. Hundreds of years before, the Greeks ruled the known world due to the military campaigns of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), opening the path for Greek culture and language to spread, including the arts, logic, mathematics, reasoning, the foundations for modern medicine, political structure, and philosophy, or the study of wisdom. Greek was the basic language of the Roman Empire and Paul used this as well as his own knowledge of Greek literature as a way of presenting the Gospel to this culture, which was rich in intellect and art, yet poor in spirit and impoverished in idolatry, myths, with the sense that there had to be something beyond their own existence. The LORD had set the stage to open the minds and hearts of the Athenians as He does for anyone weary of the world's stale bread and tepid water disguised as sufficiency for life.

Almighty God will allow people and nations to sow their wild oats and to plant those seeds that end as produce of futility, misery, regret, and oppression, taking upon themselves the foolish and arrogant thought that they are smarter than the Creator in how to run the world along with their lives. They produce gods made in their own image of wood, stone, or the product of one's imagination, and then bow before their lifeless forms, practicing rancid acts of worship that do nothing but produce emptiness and a hollowness in their souls. Some, tragically, never open their eyes to the wide road of destruction on which they were travelling until it was too late. Pagans of all walks of life today know deep down that there is a Creator, and that this universe could not have produced itself with an orderly and precise manner, whether nor not they want to admit it. The late theologian R.C Sproul (1939-2017), said that he never argued with anyone who claimed not to believe in God, but instead turned the argument back on them, saying that they do believe in God, but they are angry with Him and do not like Him, which is a trait of our sinful and fallen nature described in the Scriptures (Psalm 14:1; Romans 1:18-32, 3:10-18).

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who was the tutor of Alexander the Great, taught that there was a specific force or power that had placed everything into existence, but afterwards not involved with it, referring to it as the "Unmoved Mover", more in line with Deism than the belief in a personal God who was active in the affairs of His creation. The student of Aristotle, Plato (428-347 B.C.), established the first institution of higher learning in the Western world, known as the Academy of Athens, and was influential in the fields of religious thought and spirituality. Socrates (470-399 B.C.), the teacher of Plato, was noted for teaching his pupils through a series of questioning that made the student think over issues and problems and develop an answer and was then asked another question by the teacher in order to keep the thinking process moving forward. It was a method of training one's mind against base reaction and emotional input.

The "Socratic Method" of teaching was a characteristic of classical education, particularly in the study of law. It was the foundation of critical thinking and logical development that is absent in education today, along with the Ten Commandments and respect for God. If you have ever seen the motion picture or TV show from the 1980's entitled "The Paper Chase" (which I highly recommend), the primary character is Dr. Charles Kingsfield, a stern and challenging law professor who uses the Socratic method to root out the slackers and discipline the serious students on how to analyze cases and draw logical conclusions. He was the model of the teacher you could not stand at first because of their rough nature, stern demeanor, and harshness, yet became your favorite because they taught you how to be a better student and person. Would that we had more teachers in that mold in our classrooms and behind the pulpits of our churches, and not the Marxist- aligned professional indoctrinators found in American education today, both public and private.

Socrates was accused of being an atheist by the Athenian court because he openly questioned polytheism and embraced what might be interpreted as theism (the belief in one deity). He was found guilty and forced to drink poison as a punishment. Other philosophers such as Zeno and Epicurus stressed everything from virtue to vice, and the teachings of these men and others soon began to be repetitious and a source of frustration with nothing new or noted originating from the minds of the contemporary thinkers that gathered at the Athenaeum. The Greeks had lost their originality and creativity. They hungered for new thinking and a new direction, as does anyone honest enough to admit that whatever they had been doing does not work nor produce the results they thought would happen. You can only recycle and rewrap the philosophical fruitcake for a short time before it gets stale and loses whatever taste and flavor it had at one time. The Bible tells us that there is nothing new under the sun and we inevitably end up chasing the wind (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The thinking and actions of people, nobles, kings, and commoners throughout history without the foundation of God's Word and guidance has been an exercise in futility. The prophet Isaiah wrote that God would reason with us if we would come to Him in faith and trust (Isaiah 1:18). The tragedy is that His chosen people, Israel, followed the ways of the world, and like their pagan neighbors, soon paid the price for walking away from Him and joined the rest of the world in its sinful and godless ways of living and thought. America, take notice.