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Acts 17 "To The Unknown God"
Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you. God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.
The most basic teaching of the Bible about God is that there is one God, the Creator. Everything that exists came from Him. He depends on nothing. If everyone in the whole world forgot about God, He would be none the lesser. Just as if the whole world forgot about chemistry or biology, the processes would still continue on in the world unchanged. He does not need a beautiful church or temple. I visited one of the most beautiful churches in Japan this week. It is a wedding chapel in Karuizawa built out of rock, with carved wooden pews and lush green plants and waterfalls inside. Then I visited a much more beautiful church. There was no cross, no pews, no altar, no walls. But as my son and I hiked up a mountain and enjoyed the towering pines and flowering bushes, I knew that this church put the other one built by man to shame. Because this church was not built by man for God, but by God for man. So that everyone who came there could see the glory and the power of God, the creator.
Let me ask you, Is your God too small? Each of us have an image of God in our minds. My image of God is probably quite a bit different from yours. Of course Christians have a different image of God than others, but I am 100% convinced that our image of God, our idea of God, is much smaller than He really is. I am sure that you know the famous story about the blind men who found something in the jungle. How each blind man exclaimed. "Oh this is a tree", Or, "No, it is a long and thin like a snake", Or, "No, it is tall and wide like a wall", Or "No it is long, and sharp like a spear." You see they each grabbed onto the part close by and assumed that what they understood was the whole. One grabbing the legs, the next the trunk, the next the side and the last the tusks, of the elephant.
What is your image of God? In your mind is He a wise, loving, old grandfather? Or perhaps you have another idea of God, maybe He is the great judge, punishing those who sin and rewarding those who are righteous. Maybe your idea of God is that He was involved a very long time ago in the beginning but is now far far away. Or God is somehow love personified. Each of these ideas is true, but is too small. There is more to God. God said, (Isa 55:9) "For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
We were riding home in the car listening to some music
and my son who is 5 asked from the back seat. "What is 'desparation'?"
He heard the word over and over in the song and wanted to know what
it meant. But you know, I couldn't give him an answer that would satisfy
him because he had no experience of this. Finally the closest I could
come was to say, "Well, it is how you feel when you have to go
pee-pee really bad, but you can't find a potty." But even then,
the next time he heard the song he asked me the same question again,
because he could not really understand. This is like we are with God.
God is so much higher than we are that we cannot really understand Him,
unless He comes down to our level and explains Himself.
Paul explained it like this to the Athenians,
"Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything,
since He gives to all life breath and all things. And He has made from
one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,
and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their
habitation, so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they
might grope 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 also some
of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.' Therefore
since we are the offspring of the God, we ought not to think that the
Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art
and man's devising." (Acts 17: )
We are all like the blind men, feeling around in the dark for the elephant.
Paul says that all are groping for God. The word, "groping"
means to feel with your hands without being able to see with your eyes.
I remember going to a dance in college. The dance floor was very crowded
and dark, with lots of flashing lights and suddenly one girl cried out
from the middle of the floor, "I lost my contact." Everyone
stopped, and starting feeling around on the floor for the missing lens,
but it was hopeless. It could be anywhere. Then suddenly I saw something
sparkle on the floor, bent over and picked it up and found her contact.
Groping is incredibly frustrating and unproductive, when if we can see
it with our eyes, we can find it straight off. But we also cannot help
but search for God, because everywhere we go, anything we do, we continually
feel that He is near. Because He is very near. Nearer than anyone or
anything else. In Him we live and move and have our being. It is like
being in a room where there is someone watching you. You cannot see
Him, but you know He is there, and you cannot rest until you find Him.
This is why we grope, searching in the dark, for God. But God has not
left us in the dark
"Truly , these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead."
God has shown us clearly, in a way that we can readily understand, who He is, by sending us His Son, Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God, became a human being so that we could know God, not just as gropers, but face to face. Jesus Christ both taught and lived a godly life, so that we can imitate Him and really know God. And the proof that He truly is God, is the resurrection. That death could not hold Him, because He is the source of life.
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