God’s Judgement
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2023 · 30 July 2023
The meaning of a man’s existence is that he knows God. That is what existence is all about: knowing God. And that is Paul’s message to the Areopagus court in Athens. And Athens was the cultural and learning center of the ages. It was loaded with idolatry and devil worship. So it was a super religious place. But at the same time, with all that religion, they didn’t know God.
And so, Paul presents to them the true God and how they can know that God. Now, the Holy Spirit had brought Paul to Athens for just that purpose, that they might know God. Paul’s spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore he disputed in the synagogue with the Jews, and with devout persons.” And verse 18 indicates he met with certain philosophers.
Now, of the people who don’t know God, there are two kinds. There are those who know they don’t know God, and there are those who don’t know they don’t know God. Those are the religious people who think they know God, but they don’t know that they don’t know God. In John 8:54, Jesus talked with the Pharisees, and told them that they didn’t know truth, and that their father was the devil.
Paul says, “The evidence is in that you do not know God. But that’s the way it is with many people. In 2 Timothy 3:5, it says, “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it,” they have the trappings of religion, but they don’t know God. And this is the dominant pattern today in Christianity, where you have all these people who claim to know God, but they do not.
There is another reason that people think they know God, they have religious feelings. Have you ever heard anybody say, “Well, I’m very religious.” People have certain religious feelings, and they assume that’s the knowledge of God. Some people who go to church think that going to church automatically is knowing God. Some people think they know God because they do good.
They help people; they give to charity; they love their kids, etc. And they read the Bible a little bit, that’s equal to knowing God. Whenever Satan could use it for His advantage, he quoted Scripture. And you know, this is true today of Israel. It’s true of all kinds of modernistic and liberal factions within Christianity. But more than anything, I see it in Israel watching the Orthodox Jews.
They stand at the Wailing Wall, and they bob back and forth in their prayers, and they put their prayers on paper, and stick it in the cracks. And they really think they know God. That was the position of the Pharisees, who thought they knew God and didn’t. And this is the ultimate deception of Satan. And there is another group of people who know that they don’t know God at all.
The group at Athens fit into both of those. Some of them didn’t care and some of them did. Verse 23, “For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.” Here were these pagans who still had this emptiness that they didn’t know the true God.
Knowing God involves three things. One, recognizing that God exist. Two, recognizing who God is. Three, recognizing what God is saying. They recognize that there is a God. Paul convinced them that God exists. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.”
Step two was not only recognizing that God exists, but understanding who God is. Verse 24, “The God who made the world and everything in it—He is Lord of heaven and earth—does not live in shrines made by hands.” He is the God who creates. Isaiah 45:12 says, “I made the earth, and created humans on it. It was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded everything in them.”
Isaiah 45:18, “For this is what the Lord says, the Creator of the heavens, the God who formed the earth and made it, the one who established it. He says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” Now, here God makes claim to being Creator God. God is the Ruler. Verse 24, “Seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth.” God not only made the universe, He continues to uphold it and to rule it.
Thirdly, Paul says about this God, not only Creator and Ruler, but He is the Giver, Verse 25 says, “As though He needed anything, since He himself gives everyone life and breath and all things.” Job 12:10 says, “In whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all mankind. Job 33:4 says, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”
God doesn’t live in a building. God isn’t even here except in the fullness of His presence in the universe. He dwells in us. Nor is God served by us in the sense that He’s enhanced in any way by what we do. We saw how every good and perfect thing comes down from God. That God makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. That God dominates and controls the world.
Fourthly, He is the Controller. Verse 26, “From one man He has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.” In other words, in seasonal times as well as in historical times. “And the boundaries of where they live.” Even geographical locations are determined by God as to what area nations will occupy.
Here it tells us that God controls destiny and history. He keeps is all working together; He gives everything that is a part of His creation its life, its breath, and everything it has, all of its properties, and as well He controls it. The psalmist said in Psalm 31:15, “The course of my life is in your power.” Psalm 139:16 says, “All my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.”
Fifthly, He is the Revealer. Verse 27, “He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.” Why does God create, upholds; why He gives life, breath, and everything? Why does He control history and destiny through what we call providence? In order that He might reveal Himself, “That they should seek the Lord.”
God’s objective in creation, God’s objective in providence, God’s objective in history is to reveal Himself, that men might see that revelation and follow after to know Him fully. And God has disclosed Himself in all these ways and in the Bible in order that men might see that He exists, and that they might see who He is, that they might follow on to find out what He is saying.
And there’s no excuse for those who don’t. Because revelation is so absolutely dominant. It’s beyond my imagination how an individual can see a world like our world, and not conclude there is a God. And if men will only see who He is in terms of His creative power, sustaining power, in terms of His providence, in terms of His control of history, they can then follow on.
What about the people in the darkest part of Africa? What about the people over here that never have a Bible? They have the same revelation you and I have. Every person has enough of the revelation of God to be responsible. If you were to go to an art exhibit, and all of this guy’s works are all in this fantastic art museum everywhere. And you say, “Oh, I wonder if there was ever an artist who did these.”
You see, the earth is God’s exhibit. And it is just as idiotic to wander through the world and say, “I wonder if anybody did this.” But instead, man sees the light, and he takes a look at his own sin. And he loves his sin more than he loves righteous; he loves darkness more than he loves light. The Bible says men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. He doesn’t want his sin exposed.
In Jeremiah 29:13, He says, “You shall seek Me and find when you shall search for Me with all your heart.” Psalm 145:18-19 says, “The Lord is near to all those who call upon Him. 19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry for help and saves them.” And Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Now to illustrate this, Paul says in verse 28, “For in Him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’” He is quoting two Greek poets. Epimenides, who said, “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being;” he was thinking about Zeus. And Aratus, who said, “For we are his offspring.”
Paul says, “Your own poets, have afforded us living proof that God is knowable as the Creator, the Sustainer, and the God of providence. Your own poets illustrate that God has revealed Himself so much so that even though they attach it to the wrong God, it is obvious to them that there is a God who made us, who holds us together, and who takes care of us here.
“God is revealed in nature.” God’s universal revelation that He is Creator, Sustainer, and the God of providence, and even their poets can see it. Paul says, “You’ve got to go further than that. You’ve got to come up with what God is saying.” Verse 29, “Since, then, we are God’s offspring, we shouldn’t think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.”
If we are God’s created beings, then God must be more than something we made. He can’t be stone, or silver, or gold, or some kind of artistic representation. If God made us, then we can’t make God. So, Paul just demolishes their whole idolatrous system. If you really want to know God, don’t go to some temple. If you want to know God, look in your heart, look out, and feel after God.
Verse 30, “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent.” The word “overlook” is interesting. It means that God does not actively interfere. The times of this not knowing God, the past history of the pagans, God did not actively interfere with special punishments. Does that mean there were never any consequences? No.
Ezekiel 18:20 says, “The person who sins is the one who will die.” The principle is here: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows that shall he also reap.” In Romans 1, the unrighteousness of man has been the key to the unveiling of the wrath of God. Of course wrath operates. Of course sin has consequences. It always has. And they’re without excuse.
Verse 31, “Because He has set a day when He is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man He has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead.” Who is that man? Jesus Christ. We know it because it says, God raised Him from the dead. Nobody can ever be saved except by believing in Jesus Christ. There is no other way to know God.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-8 says, “This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with His powerful angels, 8 when He takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” There is only one way to be saved. We need to be busy telling the world about Christ. God will judge the world by Jesus Christ.
John 5:22-27 says, “The Father, in fact, judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all people may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 “Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life.”
25 “Truly I tell you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he has granted to the Son to have life in himself. 27 And He has granted Him the right to pass judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 29 those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done bad, to the resurrection of hell.”
Verse 32-34, “When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him, but others said, “We’d like to hear from you again about this.” 33 So Paul left their presence. 34 However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.” Paul just said, “If you believe who God is, God will reveal Himself.”
In verse 34, “Some people joined him.” They were going to find out more. 1 John 5:20 says, “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one. We are in the true one—that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” John 17:3 says, “This is life eternal, that they might know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ.” Let’s pray.