God is Not Far From You | Acts 17:16-34 | September 20, 2026

Well, we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and if you need a paper copy to follow along, just raise your hand and someone will happily deliver it to you.

I'd like to welcome in our friends who are joining us this morning online.

We're glad you're with us wherever and whenever you are watching us.

And last week we've been joined by folks from Bengaluru, Karnataka in India, Melbourne in Australia, Sagine, Texas.

Because I'm from Texas, I know how to pronounce that because it doesn't look like it, Sagine, but Sagin, Texas, and Omaha, Nebraska.

So welcome, friends.

Pray that the Lord will richly bless you in this coming week.

Well, let's get to it.

Let me pray for our study this morning, and then uh we're just gonna dive in.

So let's pray, friends.

Father, we come to you this morning eager and anxious to hear from you.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus.

Thank you for your Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, walk among us and meet us at the tender spots, right where we most need to be met.

Surely your goodness is beyond all thinking and beyond all telling.

We depend completely upon you.

We confess that we did not make ourselves, we cannot keep ourselves, and we could never save ourselves.

So we turn to you, our maker, keeper, and savior through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

So we are going to finish up Acts chapter 17 this morning with the account of Paul's time in Athens, 17, 16 through 34.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

And our study is called God Is Not Far From You.

That comes from verse 27 of the passage where Paul says he is actually not far from each one of us.

Last week, Pastor Jim led us through the first part of Acts chapter 17.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

And here's a map that he used last week, and we'll we'll get that up so you can see the journey.

And last week we were in uh we were with Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke in Thessalonica.

And if you'll remember, um there was a bunch of Jews that were really angry and coming out against Paul, and it was so dangerous that they rushed all of them out under cover of night, and they went to Berea, and then the city of Berea, they fared much better for a time because the Jews there were very open to receiving the word and eager to study about it.

Well, then the jealous and angry Jews from Thessalonica, they were so angry they made the trip up to Berea and stirred up the whole city against Paul and his followers.

And so immediately Paul sent away down the coast.

It's a couple of hundred miles' journey or so down the coast to Athens.

And Silas and Timothy remained in Berea.

So that's where our passage is going to begin today, with Paul on his own in Athens, waiting for Timothy and Silas to join him.

And here's a couple of pictures from Athens.

The first one, I believe, yes, of the Acropolis, that big mound.

And you see in the foreground is the Parthenon, and in the background is the uh Lycabedus Hill, which is a very famous uh hill in Athens.

And then the next picture is the ruins of the Areopagus, which we're going to read about today.

And that was originally called Ares Hill for the Greek god of war Ares.

Well, now the Romans have conquered and they've taken over, so it's now referred to as Mars Hill for Mars, the Roman god of war.

Well, when Paul arrived in Athens, it was the intellectual center of the world.

Scholars from all over the inhabited earth, they made Athens their adopted home.

And even though their glory days as an empire were behind them, because the Romans had conquered Athens in 146 BC, the city retained her cultural supremacy because the Romans loved everything Greek, and they did not change her status as a free city.

And there were statues.

Oh my, there were statues.

Athens was full of them.

Some historians estimate there was about 10,000 people that lived in Athens at the time, and there were some 3,100 statues.

One poet said if you're walking down the street in Athens, you'd be more likely to run into a god or goddess than you would be an actual human being.

And this is what Albert Barnes has to say about Athens and Paul in his commentary on Acts.

He said, Athens then had more that was splendid in architecture, more that was brilliant in science, and more that was beautiful in the arts than any other city of the world, perhaps more than all the rest of the world united.

Yet there is no account that the mind of Paul was filled with admiration.

There's no record that he spent his time in examining the works of art.

There's no evidence that he forgot his high purpose in an idle and useless contemplation of temples and statuary.

His was a Christian mind, and he contemplated all this with a Christian heart.

So let's dive into our text and just see what happens to Paul in this amazing cultural center of the world filled with all sorts of art and science and knowledge and architecture, filled with philosophers.

And here comes Paul.

Verse 16.

Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

We just talked about the number of idols.

So Paul doesn't waste his waiting, does he?

He's not just acting like a tourist and going around to see all the sites, get some good Greek food.

No, he's immediately observing the culture around him.

And he is grieved, deeply grieved, almost angry by the number of idols that he sees, speaking loudly, frankly, about the spiritual emptiness of Athens.

Verse 17, so he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there.

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him, and some said, What does this babbler wish to say?

Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

I love the progression.

He started in the synagogue as was his custom, preaching and teaching to the Jews and the devout persons, the God fearers that were there, Gentiles who were God fearers.

Then he moves on out to the agora, to the marketplace, and he's preaching to just anybody that will listen.

And he ends up talking with some of these philosophers, Epicureans and Stoics who were on far ends of the spectrum, Epicureans, they followed Epicurus.

They basically believed that if there was a God, he was really distant.

And so, therefore, the highest end of man would be to enjoy pleasure, to avoid pain, displeasure as much as possible, but to enjoy pleasure, all the good things in life.

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.

Then on the other side were Stoics, they were pantheists, they actually believed that fate ruled all of life, even God.

And so therefore they patiently endured whatever life brought them.

And their response was like this: whether it was pleasurable, painful.

So the Epicureans basically said, enjoy life.

Woo! And the Stoics said, endure life.

So that's who Paul was talking to.

And when they said he was a babbler, they thought he was just picking at little things, and that word babbler means seed picker, like our chickens are seed pickers, like a bird.

That's what that word means.

And then when they said that he seemed to be preaching about foreign gods or foreign divinities, he was teaching Jesus in the resurrection.

The Greek word for resurrection is Anastasis, which is very close to a female name, Anastasia.

So these philosophers thought that Jesus or that Paul was talking about these God and goddess, Jesus and Anastasis.

Let's keep going, verse verse 19.

So they took him, they brought him to the Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting?

For you bring some strange things to our ears.

We wish to know, therefore, what these mean, these things mean.

Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

So the Areopagus, it was not only a place, it was a group of people.

During the Greek Empire, it was a court where judgments would be held.

But after the Romans conquered Greece, it became a center of intellectualism and philosophy.

All of the greatest intellectual minds would meet there.

And so they want Paul to come talk to them.

And Paul is getting ready to give one of his most brilliant sermons.

It is a master class in apologetics.

He reads the room, he's standing in the middle of all of these philosophers, and he's extremely aware of the cultural context in where he's standing.

And then at the same time, he's also aware of how empty they are.

So let's read verse 22.

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to an unknown God.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

And he is getting ready to preach.

And he has five things that he's going to talk about.

God is the creator, God is the sustainer of life, God is the ruler of all the nations, God is the father of human beings, and God is the judge of the world.

He's going to funnel this down from the general down to this very specific thing about repentance, judgment, and resurrection.

So verse 24, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, cannot be contained.

Nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, yet he's actually not far from each one of us.

So right there, Paul is bringing home this old cliche of we all have a God-shaped hole in our hearts, which we do.

We are created with this innate desire to seek and to know God.

Verse 28.

So he's actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.

Again, this is brilliant cultural awareness.

Paul is quoting some of their own poets to help tell them about the gospel.

The first quote, in him we live and move and have our being, that's Epimenides.

And then the second one, we are indeed his offspring, that's Eratus, a couple of Greek poets that Paul knows about.

Well, here we go, verse 29.

Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

Paul is here subtly telling them about the vacuity of their idol worship, of their attempts to make God in their own image.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

It is just brilliant.

Verse 32, this next couple of verses should give all of us great confidence to be faithful and listen to the Holy Spirit and share Jesus with our friends and neighbors and co-workers.

Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, We will hear you again about this.

So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite, one of the philosophers, and a woman named Dameris and others with them.

So I love this because here Paul is one of the most brilliant theologians of all time, preaching one of his most brilliant sermons ever.

And do we read that Paul preached the gospel and hundreds of Athenians gave their lives to Christ?

Nope.

We don't see this chapter tied up in a neat and tidy little bow.

And yet, God is faithful and his word is preached, and the Holy Spirit does his work.

We know that Paul still spent some time in Athens while he's waiting for Timothy and Silas.

We can imagine that he continued to reason with the Athenians.

We don't read of any church being started in Athens, but we trust that the Holy Spirit was doing the work that he wanted to do.

And it gives us a great example of how to witness for Christ in a community that may not be receptive to the gospel.

Ian Dugood, this is not a slide, but Ian Duguid summarizes the passage this way in his commentary.

He says, this is the message that God has trusted to us to take, to the cultured despisers of Christianity in our own day and generation.

Some will scoff at our foolishness, some will put off making a decision about these things for another day.

But those whose hearts have been opened by the Lord will hear the truth and respond in faith to the glory of God as a result that their lives will forever be changed by the outpouring of God's grace and mercy in the gospel.

The results are not up to us.

We depend on the Holy Spirit to draw people to Christ.

Well, so this passage reminds us of a few things.

We all know these things, but we tend to forget.

And that's part of the reason why we gather together every Sunday to worship.

We gather to praise God together, we gather to pray to God together, and we gather to hear the word from God together because we tend to forget.

So the first of these things that Acts 17 reminds us of is that we all worship something.

I know you know this.

The thousands upon thousands of idols in Athens prove that point, don't they?

We all worship something.

We all have this innate hunger for God.

Kent Hughes points this out in his commentary on Acts.

He says, every idol demonstrated the Athenians' hunger for God, but it also testified to their spiritual emptiness.

We are created by God to worship.

It's the way we're made.

We can't get away from it.

Just like we can't get away from our heart beating 24 hours, seven days a week.

We can't get away from breathing.

We cannot stop worshiping.

It's how we're made.

Just like we hunger for food, we hunger for God.

And here's how important this issue is to God, because it was the very first of the Ten Commandments.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me.

Before God talked to the Israelites about any of the other ways in which he wanted them to live, this was the first item on his list to remind them to worship him and him alone.

We use the word love to paint with a very broad paintbrush, right?

I mean, I love God, I love my wife, I love our kids, I love this church, I love you all.

I love music, and I love a good stake and a great hike.

I love a good book, I love a good football team.

Yeah, well said.

Touche, yeah.

Well, I love all these things, and I imagine all of us paint with this same broad brush, don't we?

But the inner part of our heart and soul, the very part of us that is our core, it has a room reserved in it for that from which we obtain our ultimate value and identity.

And God has designed us with that room in our core, which should be ultimately filled by worship of and relationship with Him.

And the challenge is we were originally designed by our good God for a Genesis chapter one world, and yet we find ourselves, because of the fall, living in a Genesis chapter three world.

And so we tend towards allowing other things in our life into that room, don't we?

For God, but all of these other things that we love in our life, we might not even feel like we're edging God out, but we're letting those things in.

Murray Capel talks about this in his excellent book on preaching.

This is a little long, but bear with me.

His book is called The Heart of Is the Target.

It is so good.

And he says, we're not so blatant as to carve idols out of wooden stone.

Rather, we carve them out of our passions and desires, subtly moving away from finding our hope, security, and purpose in God alone.

These subtle idols of the heart can live alongside a seemingly decent Christian life.

Idols mostly don't look like idols.

They look more like legitimate passions and pursuits, not wrong in themselves.

The problem is they have assumed a wrongful place in our lives.

And here's where I say, in humbleness for all of us, it's good to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal what might be becoming idols in our lives, to catch them early on instead of later when they're entrenched.

And in that humility, we repent because the Christian life is a life of daily repentance.

It's not just a one-time thing when we walk down the aisle and accept Jesus.

Part of the Christian walk is a daily, a daily rhythm of repentance, turning away from our sin and turning towards Jesus over and over and over again.

And the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to do that.

Well, Acts 17, it reminds us that we all worship something.

And then it reminds us that history is going somewhere.

If you're an optimist, you might see all of the advances that we've made in technology, in medicine, in providing food, water, and housing for people the world over.

You might think that we're getting better and better and better.

We're progressing towards some glorious future.

If you're a pessimist, you might think that we are headed straight for the abyss.

You know, with frightening advances in artificial intelligence, with wars and rumors of wars, with increasing racist and national tensions, racial and national tensions.

I mean, you might feel like we are a runaway train careening off the track, like in that last Mission Impossible movie.

Surely there's a meteor, you know, headed for us that scientists are unaware of, and it's going to end life on earth as we know it.

But here's what the Bible tells us whether you're an optimist or a pessimist, what Paul reminded of the Athenians of in our passage about where we're headed.

All human history is under the providence of God.

He is ultimately in control of where history actually goes, and it is headed somewhere.

That somewhere is the day when God will finally and fully make all things right.

And this is how Paul described it to the Athenians in verse 30.

He said, He commands all people everywhere to repent with a reason, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

We know that's Jesus.

And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

And I know the phrase, the idea, the day of judgment.

It can make some of us feel pretty anxious, pretty squeamish.

It sounds so ominous.

But we can look forward to that day too, because it's not a day where God has just been waiting with his hammer.

He's just waiting to where he can bring the hammer down on us.

No, it's exactly the opposite.

Psalm 96 tells us this.

Psalm 96 says, He will judge the world in righteousness and all the peoples in faithfulness.

God is going to judge the world, but in righteousness.

He is faithful and true, and he is eager to set right all the wrongs that began in Genesis chapter 3, because his character cannot do otherwise.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And he is going to do that, as Paul said, by this man that he has appointed, Jesus Christ.

And the beauty is that man who is going to judge the world is the same one who was sent into the world to save the world.

John Stott describes this beautifully.

Man, I hope that brings you to your knees.

There's an old analogy which explains this so well.

So say you're in court, you guys are probably familiar with this.

Say you're in court to pay a speeding ticket.

You're standing up before the judge, he hears your story, and then he hears the story of the police officer, then he bangs his gavel and he says, guilty.

Fine is$350.

Well, then the judge does the strangest things.

He stands up behind his bench, takes off his robe, walks around from behind the bench.

He goes over to the bailiff, pulls out his wallet, and pays that$350 fine.

Puts his wallet back, goes back around the bench, puts on his robe, sits back down, looks at you, and says, you're free to go.

That, my friends, is exactly what Christ has done for us.

He's paid the penalty for what we legitimately owe, so that we find freedom and salvation and right relationship with God through him.

For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

What an outrageous gift.

So for those of us who know Christ, we can eagerly look forward to this day when God will make all things right.

So we see the broken world around us and we long and yearn for justice.

We have confidence in God's character and his provision to bring actual true justice based on righteousness.

God is also calling us to participate in this building of his kingdom come, where we're headed.

We're called to share the good news of Christ, the forgiveness of sins of life everlasting, and we do that by building bridges with our neighbors, our friends, our coworkers, whoever God is putting in our path.

And we build those bridges by actually knowing our neighbor, by being curious.

So valuable, a holy curiosity to know our neighbors, to know the context of their lives, whatever they believe, to know them, to know what is important about them, to know what they believe about God and truth and purpose.

And we can seek out the good and the true and the beautiful in their lives, anything that reflects the image of the Creator, because we are all made in his image, and build bridges with those things.

God calls us to do this.

The question is not if we should build bridges with our neighbors.

The question is, okay, when do we get started?

And the beautiful part of this whole equation, this calling that God has given to all of us is that the results are not up to us.

We're just called to be faithful.

The Holy Spirit is the one who draws people to Christ.

All we're asked is to be faithful and leave the results up to God.

Finally, from this passage, Acts 17 reminds us that God is not distant.

And friends, boy, I pray that if anything stays with you from this sermon today, just remember that because of Jesus, God is not far from you.

He's not distant, unknowable, indifferent.

Through Jesus, the transcendent God, the God who was out there, has become imminent.

Emmanuel, the God with us.

Creator, the creator has stepped into creation.

God has a name, and his name is Jesus.

Would you read these verses with me from Colossians chapter one?

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Oh man, so good.

And I love how eloquently poet Malcolm Geite writes about this in his book, Parable and Paradox.

He says, everything holds together, everything, from stars that pierce the dark like living sparks, to secret seeds that open every spring, from spanning galaxies to spinning quarks, everything holds together and coheres, unfolding from the center whence it came, and now that hidden heart of things appears, the firstborn of creation takes a name.

His name is Jesus.

So J.I.

Packer says this.

He says, all my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me.

Again, it is all up to God.

Everything is a gift.

All of our hunger and our thirst for knowledge, for wisdom, for love, everything that we're yearning for and reaching for that sometimes just lies just outside our grasp, it's to be found in Him.

And yet we don't have to find Him because He finds us.

He is always running after us with a relentless pursuit of grace, this sustained initiative of knowing us, as Packer puts it, loving us and pursuing us.

The Grand Canyon that opened up between all of us and God because of the sin of our first parents, that distance has been eliminated by the death and resurrection of Jesus, hasn't it?

Emmanuel, God with us.

There's no more gap.

No matter what is going on in your life, this past week, this morning, next week, everything that you're anxious about or that you're ambitious about, God is never far from you in all of those things.

Because of Jesus Christ.

If you feel like you're a thousand steps from God, He's already taken 999 of those steps towards you.

And he is just waiting for you to turn and take that one step towards Him.

So, friends, the one who created the universe, who determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name, is not far from any of us.

He is literally closer than our next breath.

Breathe in, he's there.

Breathe out, he is there.

He knew you, what your life would be like every day of your life before you were even born.

He loves us from eternity to eternity.

You are his workmanship, his art to reflect his glory, these incredible atomic orchestrations that cause the cells of your body to hold together, to work in harmony, the gravity that keeps all things grounded on the earth as it's spinning 17,000 miles an hour, the reality that each one of us has this unique code of DNA that tells our body how to function.

It points to this creator who is also our redeemer and friend.

Literally, Colossians 1:17, he's before all things, and in him all things hold together, or as Paul quoted, Epimenides, in him we live, we move, we have our being.

Colossians 1:17

So, friends, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, God is not far from you.

Amen.

Let's pray.

And as we pray, I I would uh remind us that if there's anything that um is going on in your life that you would love some prayer for, we have a prayer team that meets in the back.

They would love to pray with and for you.

Um Heavenly Father, um thank you for making us uh with a hunger for you that some of us may not even be able to define.

But it's only to be found and filled by relationship with you.

Jesus, thank you for spanning the gap to bring us near to you, to bring us near to God.

Pray this morning that you would draw us near, help us turn to you.

It is your grace and your gift that even gives us the ability to do that.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.