Acts 17:22-31

    Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "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 something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

 

    "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by 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. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them 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.' As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring.'

 

    "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."

 

We still live in a time when men say that they are agnostic as to who might be the true God. Men still don’t worship our God for who He is. They still don’t know.

 

Just as Paul did, we can tell men that our God is the God who made the world and everything in it. He is the Lord of heaven and earth. He does not live in temples built by hands, and He does not need to be served by us. He provides everything for us! He has shaped our history, and God wants men everywhere to seek Him and find Him. He is not far away from us. We are His offspring, which makes it perfectly clear that He cannot be something we’ve made – metal, stone, wood, or plastic.

 

Just as Paul did, we should be telling people that God has patiently overlooked their ignorance of Him – their agnosticism – for a long time. But no longer! God now commands all people everywhere to repent and know Him. Those who don’t will face a day when the righteous God will judge an ignorant world justly through the man God has appointed. We can know this God and know about His coming judgment because God has both proved Himself appointed His judge by raising that judge from the dead. That is God’s proof to all men that He is God, and that His patience is running out!

 

Father, help us to proclaim You, and as we do, help us to use the resurrection of Jesus Christ as our evidence for You. So often in this world people deny Jesus’ resurrection, and we feel as if we have to provide evidence for the resurrection itself. But the resurrection is Your evidence of Yourself. Help us not to shy away from proclaiming it just because it sounds so impossible to people. Help us to hold it tightly, as a precious and comforting proof that those of us who believe in You have a God who is coming again to set this world straight!