Knowing Your Audience

Acts 17:22-31

This passage from the Book of Acts for this Sunday’s lectionary reading basically picks up where last week’s passage in Acts left off.  Paul had been run out of town for preaching the Gospel, and had now arrived in Athens, where he was waiting for his friends, Timothy and Silas to arrive.  Paul didn’t waste his time while waiting, reading the paper and drinking coffee in the local coffeeshop.  His life’s mission was to win souls for Jesus, and he set out to do that here.

Just prior to our Scripture passage Paul had been witnessing with some local philosophers, Epicureans and Stoics, in the marketplace, telling them about Jesus and drawing their interest.  They wanted to hear more, so they took Paul to the Areopagus for him to speak further.  Paul’s usual method when preaching about Jesus was to use Old Testament Scriptures and show how Jesus was the promised Messiah.  That was his preferred tactic because he would be speaking in the synagogues to a primarily Jewish audience, though there often were some Gentiles in the group.  This group was not Jewish, and would quite possibly not even be familiar with the Old Testament.  That would have been meaningless to them.  So Paul used examples that they would understand.  He found common ground with them, something they each could agree on, and then he moved on to build a case for Jesus, and hopefully lead them to make a decision.

When we witness to others we can’t always use the same cookie-cutter method for every person.  What type of witnessing or presentation of the Gospel that might work when talking to a highly educated intellectual group would probably not work if talking to some inner city youths who hang out on the street.  Paul knew he needed to tailor his message to the crowd he was with.

In verse 23 when Paul spoke of the altar to the “unknown god”, he was not endorsing this deity, rather he used this as an introduction, to start the conversation going.  To many today, Jesus is still an “unknown God”.  Many today are “religious”, or as they often call themselves, “spiritual”, but they have not accepted true faith and salvation in Jesus.  We need to bring them to Him, as Paul attempted to in Athens.

The sermon that Paul proceeded to preach to his audience in this whole passage of ours, would have been contrary to what they would have believed in.  The Epicureans believed that matter was eternal and had no creator.  The Stoics were pantheists, believing that God was in and a part of everything, and he couldn’t have created himself.  As a way to better reach this audience with the truth of Jesus Christ, Paul used a couple of quotes from their secular Greek poetry to try to drive home his point (vs. 28 - 29).  He took a quote from Epimenides, a poet from Crete, and also a quote from Aratus, who was from Cilicia.  His point here was that if God created man, as these Greek poets attest, then how could He be a man-made idol?

God is known in and through His creation, but He is not that creation.  He is the Creator, not a part of that creation, nor was He created (vs. 27 - 28).  Paul confronted the audience with Jesus and His resurrection, no matter what they might think of that (vs. 30-31).  He may have changed his usual approach, but Paul did not at all change his message.  We, too, need to be careful that when we seek to reach a specific type of audience, we don’t whittle away the message of the Gospel, and salvation through Jesus, just to please that audience.

Many of these Athenians who listened to Paul that day were genuinely seeking to know to know the truth.  God honored that, and brought His messenger, Paul, to their midst.  Today no one has an excuse not to believe.  We have the Scriptures, and there is also all of His creation which proclaims His glory, as Paul’s sermon in this passage attests, and also we read in Romans 1:20.   Are we, like Paul was, always ready to give a Gospel witness to those who are ready to hear?