Acts 17: 22-31

13th February 2011 Off By Derek Buckthorpe

 

22: Paul stood up before the Council of the Areopagus and began: “Men of Athens, I see that in everything that concerns religion you are uncommonly scrupulous.

23: As I was going round looking at the objects of your worship, I noticed among other things an altar bearing the inscription, “To an unknown God.” What you worship but do not know – this is what I now proclaim.

24: ‘The God who created the world and everything in it, and who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands.

25: It is not because He lacks anything that He accepts service at our hands, for He is Himself the giver of universal life and breath – indeed of everything.

26: He created from one stock every nation of men to inhabit the whole earth’s surface. He determined their eras in history and the limits of their territory.

27: They were to seek God in the hope that, groping after Him, they might find Him; though indeed He is not far from each one of us,

28: for in Him we live and move, in Him we exist; as some of your own poets have said, “We are also His offspring.”

29: Being God’s offspring, then, we ought not to suppose that the deity is like an image in gold or silver or stone, shaped by human craftsmanship and design.

30: God has overlooked the age of ignorance; but now He commands men and women everywhere to repent,

31: because He has fixed the day on which He will have the world judged, and justly judged, by a man whom He has designated; of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead.’