Alan Lewis
Elon, North Carolina
June 2026
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?”
Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?
20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 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. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “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 human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
29 “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 human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 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 everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. (Acts 17:16-34 NIV)
How do you share your faith in a secular world? How do you share your faith with people who have never read the Bible?
How can Christians engage their culture? How do you share your faith with intellectuals and academics? Many Christians would be intimidated by them. Paul was not.
How do you do apologetics? How do you defend your faith against skeptics and unbelievers? Paul talks about Christian proofs in this sermon (Acts 17:31). He does some apologetics.
The Apostle Paul does all of these things in Acts 17. He gives us a masterclass on evangelism and apologetics on Mars Hill.
Today, we are going to look at the Mars Hill Method of Evangelism. It is very different from traditional evangelism. This is not the Billy Graham model of evangelism.
We are going to look at the most famous sermon that Paul ever preached. It was not preached in a building. It was preached outside on a rocky hill.
The Greeks called it the Areopagus. The Romans called it Mars Hill. Mars is the Roman equivalent of the Greek Ares.
You can go visit the place where Paul preached this sermon if you go to Athens, Greece. At the bottom of the hill is a plague that has the words of the sermon in Greek.
Mars Hill Evangelism
How do you do the Mars Hill Method of Evangelism? What do you have to do?
1) Be Sensitive
Paul was sensitive to the people around him. He was burdened. Paul’s ministry in Athens began with one thing, a burden for the lost. Notice how it all started.
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. (Acts 17:16 NIV)
The city of Athens Greece in Paul’s day was not only a center of learning; it was a center of idolatry. There were three thousand idols in the city.
There were more idols in the city than people. Petronius, a Roman author who lived in the first century, said, “In Athens, it is easier to find a god than a man.”
Paul’s spirit was provoked by the sin all around him. It was provoked by all the lost people around him and by all of the idols to false gods. Has that ever happened to you? Most of us see so much sin all the time that we are completely immune to it. It does not even shock us anymore. It does not affect us. It does not bother us.
We become indifferent to it. It should grieve and provoke us. Paul was not just grieved; it led him to talk to people about Jesus. He was not just provoked. He was provoked to action. Do you have a burden like Paul had? Sin and idolatry should provoke us.
2) Be Adaptable
Paul was flexible. He was flexible where he ministered. What was he doing in Athens? He was not planning on going to Athens, Greece. This was not a planned mission trip. It was unplanned.
Why was he there? He was there because of persecution. He had to leave Berea, because the Jews from Thessalonica came to Berea and caused problems, so he went to Athens, which is over three hundred miles away.
Paul is in Athens alone. Titus and Silas are not with him. He is in a new city by himself but that did not stop him from doing evangelism. He was not there as a tourist. He did not check out all of the famous places in the city, like the Parthenon.
He did not take a vacation. As Warren Wiersbe said, Paul came to the city, “not as a sight-seer, but as a soul-winner.”[1]
Paul was flexible where he ministered. In Athens, he ministered in three different locations. What were those three locations?
He preached in the local SYNAGOGUE (Acts 17:17). So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks (NIV).
Paul did not only minister on the Sabbath. That was one day a week. He also preached in the MARKETPLACE. (Acts 17:17). He did that every day. He went from the synagogue to the sidewalk. He went from evangelizing Jews to evangelizing Gentiles.
So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. (Acts 17:17-18 NIV).
That is evangelism in the mall or grocery store. It is street evangelism. Today, if you want to learn philosophy, you read a book or take a course in college. Back then, they talked about it on the street. It was a topic of everyday conversation. Western philosophy came from Greece.
The final place Paul goes to preach is a place called by the Romans MARS HILL (Acts 17:19).
19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” (Acts 17:19-20).
Paul & SocratesPaul was taken to the Areopagus, which used to be the Supreme Court of Athens. Paul is taken to the Areopagus, which used to be the Supreme Court of Athens. It was where Socrates was taken and made to drink hemlock four hundred years earlier. Paul and Socrates had a few things in common. One was a pagan philosopher, and one was a Christian apostle, but they had some similarities. Both were brought before the same place. Both were brought before the Areopagus. Both were charged with the same crime. Both were accused of preaching foreign gods (Acts 17:18). Both received the same punishment. Both were given a death sentence by the state. Both were completely innocent of the charges. Both cases were a miscarriage of justice. |
There was flexibility WHERE Paul preached and HOW he preached. Paul preached in different locations to different people (Jews and Gentiles) and he did it in different ways. He did not always preach the saw way. He preached to Jews one way. He preached to Gentiles another way.
How did he preach to Jews? He went into the synagogue. He met them at their place of worship and used their Hebrew Bible to preach Jesus from the OT.
How did he preach to Gentiles? They had never read the Bible. They had never heard of it. They never heard of the Ten Commandments. They were complete pagans.
Paul did not come with a big leather Bible with gold edges and start preaching “the Bible says this.” In fact, Paul didn’t quote one verse in his sermon on Mars Hill. Paul did not quote Isaiah, or Ezekiel.
He talked about creation, but he does not quote the Book of Genesis because they have never read it. They had never heard of it. They did not know who Moses was.
3) Be Positive
Paul did not yell at them for worshipping idols. He did not say, “Turn or Burn.” He did not say they were all a bunch of dirty sinners on their way to Hell. His message did include something about final judgment, but he did not start preaching by insulting them. There are two different translations of Acts 17:22.
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. (NIV)
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. (KJV)
What is the difference? One is an insult. One is a compliment. The first one is correct. Paul does not call the Athenians a bunch of superstitious fools, even though they were.
He does not condemn them. commends them. He said something positive about them. He said that they were very religious and they were. That was a true statement.
The whole town was filled with temples. There were all these statues to different gods. There was temple after temple in the city and idol after idol.
The Athenians were seeking after God. They were doing it in the wrong way, but they were still seeking after God. We are all created to worship. In every country, people are worshipping something. If they do not worship the truth God, they are worshipping something else.[2]
We all exist to glorify and honor God. There is inside every human heart a God-shaped vacuum. Solomon said that God put eternity inside the human heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
Now Paul did not avoid everything offensive. He preached Jesus. He preached the resurrection. Greeks didn’t believe in the resurrection, but he preached it any way. He pointed out their sin.
He said that they needed to repent. He called their idolatry ignorant, but he used TACT in how he spoke to these Athenians. You don’t have to be rude and obnoxious when you witness.
4) Be Aware
Know your audience. Know who you are speaking to. The more you know about people, the better you can witness.
If you are witnessing to Muslims, it would help to know something about Islam. If you are witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses, it would help to know some of the beliefs of the Watchtower. It helps to know what they believe.
Paul did that. He was an out-of-town visitor to Athens, but he knew some things about the Athenians. He studied their culture. He paid attention to it.
He not only studied Scripture; he studied culture. He studied their religion. He was familiar with their temples and their gods.
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. (Acts 17:23 NIV)
There is an interesting story in Greek tradition about how that altar started. Hundreds of years earlier, there was a plague in the city of Athens. People were dying. They made sacrifices to their gods, but it did not work. They asked a priest what the problem was.
The oracle said, they were sacrificing to the wrong god, so they made an altar to the Unknown God and the plague stopped. One of those altars was still around when Paul showed up.
He said, “You believe in an unknown God.” I am going to show you who He is.” That was a great way to get their attention. He began his sermon by saying that he was going to unravel an ancient mystery.
Paul knew their gods. He knew their poets. He knew their literature. Paul was not Greek. He was a Hebrew and yet he was familiar with secular poets. He read them. He even quotes them in the NT.
Did you know that Paul quotes, not one, not two but three different secular Greek poets in the NT. He quoted two Greek poets in his Mars Hill sermon. He quoted one from the third century BC and one from the 6th century BC
Aratus was the one who said, “We are his offspring” (Acts 17:28 NIV). He lived in the 3rd century BC.
Epimenides is the one who said, ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28 NIV). He lived in the 6th century BC. Both men were talking about Zeus, but Paul still quoted them.
Paul must have liked Epimenides, because he quoted him twice in the NT. He quoted him once in Acts 17 (“in him we live and move and have our being”) and one in Titus 1:12 (“Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons”).
He also quoted the Greek poet Menander in I Corinthians. He lived three hundred years earlier. He was the one who said, “Bad company corrupts good morals” (I Corinthians 15:33). You may have thought that Paul said that, but he was actually quoting Menander.
He not only knew something about Greek poets; he knew something about Greek philosophers. There were two main philosophic schools of thought in Paul’s day and he knew them.
There are two political parties today. Democrats and Republicans. Most are one or the other. They are very different.
There were two religious groups in the first century Pharisees and Sadducees. There were more but those were the main ones.
There were also two main philosophical schools in Greece in the first century – Epicureans and Stoics. Today they are not as popular. One group emphasized pleasure and one group emphasized self-control.
You could see how opposite they were. One group said to enjoy life and one group said to endure life. Paul told them how to obtain life, eternal life
What is the lesson for today? We should pay attention to our culture as well. We should study it. We should have some understanding of pop culture (literature, entertainment, movies, music, sports).
5) Be Simple
Paul was a deep theologian. He wrote most of the books of the NT. Peter said some of the things that he wrote were hard to understand but he was very simple on Mars Hill. He begins his sermon talking about God.
They didn’t know anything about Jesus. They lived in another country. They did not know that he performed miracles. They did not know that he healed the sick.
They did not know that he died and rose from the dead. They also did not know wo God is. Before he could talk to them about Jesus, he had to talk to them about God.
They believed God was real. They were not atheists or skeptics like many people today. They all believed in a supernatural divine being or beings, but they did not know the truth about God. That is what Paul began with.
So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. (Acts 17:23 NIV)
Paul gives us some basic teaching here on God to people who know nothing about Him. We might call this the attributes of God for spiritually dummies. Here are five core truths about God.
Basic Truths About God
1) There is one God
The Athenians were polytheists. They worshipped many gods. Paul is talking to them about the one true God. He speaks of God in the singular, not the plural.
He speaks of an unknown God, not the unknown gods. He speaks of God who made the heavens and the earth. There is only one God. He is the Lord of Heaven and earth (Acts 17:24 NIV)
The Greeks had gods of the sea, gods of the sky, gods of the day, gods of the night, gods of the underworld. The one Paul preached was the God of everything.
2) God is all-powerful
God is Creator. He is all-powerful. He made the world and EVERYTHING in it (Acts 17:24). The world did not evolve into existence. It was created by an all-powerful God.
It is created by a God who does not live in temples made by human hands (Acts 17:24). He needs nothing (Acts 17:25). Imagine that. We need all kinds of things (food, water, a car, a house, a job, a spouse). He needs nothing, absolutely nothing. He is all-powerful.
He not only created the world; He created us. We are his creatures. Even their own pagan Greek poets say that we are God’s creatures. We are his offspring. He gave us all life. He himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:25 NIV).
One Man or One BloodThere is a textual variant in Acts 17:26. There are two different readings of the Greek text. Textual critics try to determine which reading is correct. Notice the two readings: From ONE MAN he made all the nations (Acts 17:26 NIV) And hath made of ONE BLOOD all nations of men (Acts 17:26 KJV) Which reading is correct (ἐξ ἑνός or ἐξ ἑνὸς αἵματος)? The oldest Greek manuscripts read “one man” going back to the third or fourth century, but 453 Greek manuscripts read “one blood.” Irenaeus in the second century has this reading.[3] The majority reading is probably correct, but both readings say the same thing. We all have common origin. We share a common ancestry. We all look different, speak different languages and live in different countries but we all go back biologically to Adam and Eve. We are all genetically related, so there is no basis for any racial superiority. Paul was talking to Greeks who believed they were racially superior. They were more educated and cultures than non-Greeks. They called them barbarians. |
3) God is sovereign
What does it mean that God is sovereign? He did not just create the world. He is in complete control of it. He is in control of everything that happens in the world. He did not just make the world and people; He made nations. He is sovereign over their political and military affairs.
He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. (Acts 17:26 NIV)
4) God is personal
He is not a distant God that does not want any relationship with people. He wants people to seek Him, reach out and find him. He is not far from us.
He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. (Acts 17:26-27 NIV)
5) God is holy
The last thing Paul mentions is that God is holy. He judges sin.
30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 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 everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:29-31 NIV)
God is not only Creator and Lord; He is Judge. Paul’s sermon started with creation and ended with judgment. Paul tells us a lot about this judgment. Next week, we will take a closer look at this judgment.
[1] Warren Wiersbe, Be Daring, 48.
[2] https://www.lwf.org/sermons/audio/three-challenges-to-the-cross-1278
[3] Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.12.9 (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103312.htm)
