From Greece To God

“What you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”  Acts 17:23

Where do you start when people need God but are so far from the truth that they don’t even know what to look for?  You start where they are.

Need an example?  Greece is the word—Athens, Greece, more specifically.  The Apostle Paul arrived there alone, sent by ship for safety, and while waiting to be joined by his missionary cohorts, headed out for a look around town.  “He was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols”(Acts 17:1) and began speaking the truth of Jesus in the synagogue and in the streets.  Seems that all in Athens considered themselves philosophers, and Paul’s comments about the resurrection caught their attention because “the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas”(Acts 17:21). They invited Paul to the Aeropagus (the meeting hill of Athens’ judicial council) to listen to his “new teaching” and “strange ideas.”

Standing in the midst of a place crowded with statues and temples of gods and demigods, where would Paul begin?  A lecture on Abraham, Moses, or Elijah wouldn’t go far.  A lesson in Jewish history pointing to Jesus wouldn’t work here, and even a repetition of the Sermon on the Mount would fall short, so Paul started with what the people knew—idolatry.  But instead of condoning or condemning their practice, he simply commented on their fervor and on a statue he had seen in town.  (And he said it far better than anyone else ever could.)

“Men of Athens!  I see that in every way you are very religious.  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:  TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as unknown I am going to proclaim to you”(Acts 17:22-23).

And starting there Paul spoke the truth of Jesus.  “The God who made the world and everything in it…does not live in temples built by human hands.  And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else…He determined the times set for men and the exact places where they should live.  God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.  For in him we live and move and have our being…He commands all people everywhere to repent.  For he has set a day when he will judge the world by the Man he has appointed.  He has give proof of this…by raising him from the dead”(Acts 17:24-31). This teaching of the resurrection caused some to sneer but others to say, “We want to hear you again”(Acts 17:32), and several more believed.

Twenty years ago in a mission training session, I heard this statement and it stuck.  “God meets people where they are to transform them into who He wants them to become.”

Don’t start where they aren’t.
Begin where they are, be bold with the truth, and trust God to do the rest.