Acts 17 | Day 8

Acts 17 (NIV 1984)

¹When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.
²As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,
explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,” he said.
³Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God‑fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.
⁴But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city.
⁵They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas to bring them out to the crowd. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting, “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here,
⁶and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.”
⁷When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil.
⁸Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.

⁹As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue.
¹⁰Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
¹¹Many of them believed, in fact not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.
¹²But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.
¹³The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea.
¹⁴Those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
¹⁵Now while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.

¹⁶So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God‑fearing Greeks, and in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.
¹⁷A 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.)
¹⁸Then 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?
¹⁹You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.”
²⁰(Everything they said was spoken against him, yet some people joined him and believed.)
²¹So Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious.
²²For 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.
²³“‘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.
²⁴And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.
²⁵From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
²⁶God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
²⁷‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
²⁸“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 man’s design and skill.
²⁹“Although God has overlooked the times of ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
³⁰For 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 all men by raising him from the dead.”
³¹When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”
³²At that, Paul left the Council.
³³But some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.