Is there really such a thing as an atheist? In Acts 17:19-28, the Apostle Paul stands before the thinkers of Athens and points them to the God they do not know. Dr. Toby Holt shows from Scripture that deep down, everyone knows God is real.

Athens was full of idols, even an altar "To the Unknown God." Paul used it as his starting point, preaching one true God who made everything, needs nothing from us, made every nation "from one blood," and in whom "we live and move and have our being." Drawing on Romans 1, Holt explains people do not lack the knowledge of God; they suppress it.

Questions this study answers:

1. How are agnostics different from atheists? An atheist claims there is no God; an agnostic says a God may exist but cannot be known. Paul answers both by proclaiming the God who has made Himself known.

2. What was Paul doing in Athens? Surrounded by idols, he reasoned with the city's thinkers and preached the one Creator, turning their altar "to the unknown God" into a starting point for the gospel.

3. Does anyone truly not know God exists? According to Romans 1, no. People know God through what He has made but suppress that truth. Paul's job was to make the God they secretly know clear in Christ.

"The One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you." — Acts 17:23 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

I have concluded that there is no such thing as an atheist.

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There's no such thing as an atheist.

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Now, how can that be?

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Because certainly there is an atheist who would argue with me.

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But I don't believe there's any such thing,

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any such thing as one who does not fundamentally, intrinsically, by nature,

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ontologically understand and believe that God is there.

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Such a cat doesn't exist.

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Years ago, I served in a hospital chapel.

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You want to see people's beliefs stress-tested?

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Put them in that environment.

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I served in a hospital chapel.

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I was called in when various loved ones had been admitted for various traumas, emergencies, up to and including death.

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Now, something I noticed in those trying times is that when your loved one is on the ER table,

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when your loved one is in desperate shape,

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when your life has been turned upside down by something that you can't control, you tend to look up.

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Even if when you're in Starbucks, you might object to such a thought, such an impulse to turn to God, guess what?

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If your situation becomes dark enough, it's in those moments that I found even the ardent atheist to turn to God.

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It's amazing how our belief, how our belief in a divine transcendent source of help develops when we have a problem that only he can fix.

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Now, I've met plenty of atheists at Starbucks and college and academic settings where it's both kind of cool and easy to deny God.

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But in the chapel, not so much.

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In the hospital chapel, people need answers.

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And the facade of atheism is cold comfort when your circumstances require something more.

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In any case, my observation, such as it is, is that atheists can be very selective and

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at times they try very, very hard to suppress something, to suppress what I think they intrinsically

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know, that God is there.

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With that said, this idea of suppressing what one knows, I'd like to claim ownership of

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that, but I can't because it comes right out of scripture.

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It comes right from the words of Paul.

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In Romans chapter 1, Paul uses the very same word, the very same concept of suppression

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to talk about what the professing atheist does.

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Listen to this in Romans 1.

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The wrath of God is revealed from heaven.

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Meaning there is a revelation, be it general or special or both.

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There's a revelation of God.

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The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men

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who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

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Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

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For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen

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and they are understood by the things that are made.

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even his internal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

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So that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God.

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Although they knew that as created beings, that there is a creator.

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Although they knew this to be true in their heart of hearts, they suppressed what they knew to be true,

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and they did not glorify him as God.

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In Paul's eyes, there's no such thing as an atheist.

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No such thing.

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There are people who call themselves that, but in their heart of hearts they don't exist

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because what can be known of God has been revealed to them.

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They just don't like what has been revealed.

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And it's funny, when you don't like what God has told you,

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you'll do just about anything to avoid it, including plugging up your ears

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and pretending it was never said to begin with.

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And that's what people historically have done, our age, any age.

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In Paul's eyes, in Romans 1, there's no one who's truly ignorant of God's existence.

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However, there are lots of people who would prefer to suppress or to lie to themselves

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rather than deal with the implications of a God whose will and desires may run counter to theirs.

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Now, some suppress their natural instinct towards spiritual matters.

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Others are willing to yield to the instinct that we have,

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but insist on defining the God that they know is there, insist on defining him on their own terms.

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In the days of antiquity, this is what the Greeks were doing.

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They had a basic sense. They looked at creation.

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Again, they weren't stupid. They were intellectuals. They were philosophers.

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They looked at the world around them and they rightly concluded, they rightly concluded

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when you see wonderful created things, when you see all this order out there, there must

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be a God of order.

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When you see something that is clearly created, there must be a creator.

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Even the Greeks got that.

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Even the Athenians figured that out.

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They understood this.

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And yet they determined to define that God, whatever he might be, on their own terms.

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And because they couldn't agree and because they had this bifurcated view of what God

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must do, they had all sorts of gods.

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Those gods are the winds and the trees and the flowers and the squirrels and the like.

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They did all these things, and Paul takes one look at what they've done,

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and he just shakes his head.

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He says, you've got spiritual impulses, and that's good.

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At least you're not like the people who deny that there's a God at all.

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You aren't suppressing what you know to be true,

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but you're defining it on the basis of your wants and will.

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He says, that ain't right either.

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You can't make a God out of whole cloth and then bend down to the God you've made.

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Idolatry of any age is stupid, but idolatry by which you walk up to a tree,

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You cut it down, you carve it, shape it, you set it on a post,

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and then you start to bow down to what you've made with your own hands.

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That takes a special kind of stupid.

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Paul, he comes into Greece and he's just looking at all this just about everywhere,

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and he's saying, ah, for all of your instinct that God is there, wow.

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You have defined him in a lot of crazy ways, Athenians.

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And then he says, he has a stop the presses sort of moment,

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and then he says, in the midst of how you define God,

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I was walking along, and you have one.

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You just have an altar, and you've inscribed on it, to the unknown God.

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You're really into hedging your bets, so people of Athens, you want to make sure you didn't miss one.

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To the unknown God.

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Let's talk about this unknown God.

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And he uses their worship as something they don't even know, which is what an agnostic would do.

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Remember, an agnostic understands that God's there somewhere.

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An agnostic believes that God exists based on the evidence we can see,

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but that we can't know who he is, that there's not enough data.

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You just have to shrug your shoulders and say, well, I don't know.

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To the unknown God, that's the God of the agnostics.

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So Paul stops him and says, I've got something to say about that.

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Let's look at verses 19 through 21 to see exactly what it is that he says.

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Verse 19, so they took him and brought him to the area of Pagus.

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And they said, may we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak?

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They were genuinely curious because that was their nature.

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For you are bringing some strange things to our ears.

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Therefore, we want to know what these things mean.

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Verse 21 says that all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else

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but either to tell or to hear of some new thing.

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All right, at this point of Acts 17, Paul has just arrived in Athens.

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He's made stops in Thessalonica, he's made stops in Berea,

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and he's come into Athens, a city that's having a philosophy and even religion,

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but he's found that it's very light on a real knowledge of the real God.

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Athens was a nesting place for every foul bird of doctrine and idolatry there was.

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With that said, Paul was encouraged to know this,

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that the Athenians had this great hobby, and that is that they liked to talk.

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Some places Paul walked in, he set one foot in, he opened his mouth,

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and they did the equivalent of chasing him out right there.

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But Athens at least had this going for it, that people liked to talk.

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They liked to talk about all manner of things.

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They weren't especially discriminating about what it was they talked about and what it was they believed.

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But it was a fairly easy place for Paul to go and present the gospel.

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In fact, the people had already heard someone had been saying,

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and they realized it didn't mesh with what popular beliefs were.

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So they invited him.

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They said, tell us more.

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And as long as the people were willing to talk,

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Paul knew that the message that he brought could mop the floor

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with all the doctrines of their age and all the idols of wood and stone.

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He knew that what he was bringing was truth, and he knew that they had never experienced truth.

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But when they did, it would have an impact.

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You know, as a side note, the Christian is not scared of other religious beliefs.

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The Christian does not need to persecute other religious beliefs in order to get our views across.

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As Christians, we know that the Word is capable of doing its own good thing.

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You know, Spurgeon was once asked, he was asked this gospel,

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how do you defend it against all those who critique it?

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How do you defend it? And he says, you've got this all wrong.

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He says, the gospel, it's like a lie.

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It's like a lion, and it can defend itself.

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The gospel, properly taught, properly exposited, can accomplish its own good thing.

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Paul knew that.

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He didn't have to sit there and rail against all the counterfeit stuff.

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He knew if he provided truth, if he preached the word, it would have its own effect.

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The scripture is a two-edged sword.

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It cuts through the division of soul and spirit.

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He knew if you preach the word, it'll do its own good work,

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irrespective of how many false doctrines are out there.

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Sometimes we lose sight of that in our attempts to water down the gospel,

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but the powers in the gospel, the power of God unto salvation is through the word faithfully

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preached. And so that's what he did. Let's look at verse 22. Then Paul stood in the midst of the

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Arpagus and said this, men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious. All

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right. As Paul begins to speak, he acknowledges the obvious that Athens is a religious community.

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If Paul had arrived in Athens by boat, which is most likely, he probably would have entered

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through the west, through what is called the double gate into the city. And after passing

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through this gate, he would have come across the temple of Demeter, held statues of just an

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exceptionally pagan goddess were held there. Now, beyond that, as he proceeded forward, he would

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have come across Poseidon and the Tridents and all these things. Even further on, he would have come

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across the statues to Zeus and Athena and Apollo and Hermes and all these different things because

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they were all there. And it's with that fresh in mind, after having walked this corridor of

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idolatry to get to where he's at, all these hulking temples and altars and stone and all

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this stuff, after he's coming through all this, he tells the men something that I think

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that they would have enjoyed hearing.

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He says, guys, I perceive on the basis of what I've just seen as I've been brought here,

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I perceive that you're very religious.

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And you can see the men of Athens going, hmm, hmm, hmm, feeling awful good about themselves.

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But it wasn't meant really as a compliment.

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It wasn't really meant as a compliment.

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See, they took pride in the breadth and scope of their religious practice.

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But that's a problem.

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Pluralism, it bad.

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Paul knew this.

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Paul knew that defining truth in a haystack of lies is not a good plan.

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So they took pride in all the religious practices and the breadth and scope and all this different stuff.

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And again, Paul says, I see that you're religious.

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The problem is that all these different approaches don't mesh.

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They can't all be right.

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And furthermore, just so we know, being religious doesn't save anybody.

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The Pharisees were religious.

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Where'd that get them?

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It's not just about your practice and wearing the right clothes and having a lot of head knowledge.

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There's much more to it than that.

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Whatever the case is, the people of Athens were very religious.

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They weren't saved.

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That was the difference, and Paul knew it.

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But Paul had love and compassion when he did it.

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Even as he looked at them, even as he looked at those who were bending the knee to all sorts of hideous idols,

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You can imagine the heart of Paul having compassion for them

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because he knew they were in chains, they were in bondage to sin and death.

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They bought into a lie and he desired to release them from it by bringing the truth.

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The evangelist is fundamentally empathetic and fundamentally compassionate.

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We have to be empathetic.

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Just because someone has bought into something false,

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just remember, there before the grace of God go I.

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Apart from God entering in, we would all buy some sort of lie.

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Verse 23, let's look at it now.

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Let's see how he continues to make a tender approach.

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Verse 23, for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship,

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I even found an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God.

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As we said earlier, the people in Athens were so eager to worship every possible God,

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to hedge their spiritual bets, to have insurance with every possible deity,

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that they covered their bases by creating an altar to an unknown God,

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just in case there was one that they hadn't encountered, hadn't found yet, hadn't made himself known.

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with that said of all of the things that paul noticed and there was probably things far greater

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than this one altar there was statues and temples of stone and marble that would have been more

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significant but of all the things he encountered that's the one that stopped him that's what

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stopped him in his tracks and so this is the one he brings up here in verse 23 now what about this

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altar let's look at verse 24 to find out therefore the one whom you worship without knowing him i

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proclaim to you. God, who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven

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and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. In verses 23 and 24, Paul begins to make

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this unknown God known by saying something about his attributes, something about his characteristics.

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Amidst all the darkness that pervaded Athens at this moment, spiritual light began to shed through.

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They had had all the general revelation in the world.

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But that general revelation, what they saw in the world around them,

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was just enough to condemn them.

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It wasn't enough to save them.

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But now, again, Paul brings them light.

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He begins to connect dots that they knew by nature if they weren't suppressing it.

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He begins through special revelation to fill in the blanks.

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The one you worship without knowing him, I proclaim to you,

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God who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth,

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does not dwell in temples made with hands.

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Right off the bat, Paul's saying something revolutionary.

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See, the Greeks had a hierarchy of gods.

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The Greeks had a hierarchy of gods.

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Their gods had a pecking order.

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Remember, you ever think about Mount Olympus?

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There's a lot of gods up there.

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They all aren't number one, right?

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They had a pecking order.

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There's a hierarchy.

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And each god, furthermore, had command of different things.

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You had Apollo, the god of the sun and the like.

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A Neptune, god of the sea.

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With that said, what Paul is saying here is that his god, the god,

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The one only God that has made the world and everything in it is head honcho.

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He's the chief.

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He's the only one.

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The God who's made the world and everything in it is different than all the gods that

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they had, the stone and marble around them.

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A claim like this would have gotten the Athenians' attention.

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Because what Paul was doing was stepping outside.

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What they expected to hear was about some other God they could add to their existing

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ones, right?

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Just another of the bunch.

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And Paul's saying, throw the bunch away.

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He's saying, the one I'm introducing to, he made heaven and earth and everything that's in it.

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His jurisdiction isn't limited to the ocean, like Neptune.

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His jurisdiction isn't limited to the sun, like Apollo.

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This God I'm telling you about, he made it all.

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And it all bows to him.

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So you see how this would have been a much stronger claim than they would have expected?

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This was a revolutionary claim.

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This would have got their attention.

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God was introducing some new God to them.

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The God of the wind, the God of the frogs, the God of celery,

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God, if any odd thing under creation, he says, I am giving you the creator itself.

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Paul's not giving them a God who has a partial set of powers and responsibilities.

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He's giving them the real deal.

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The one who you worship without knowing him, I proclaim to you.

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God who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth,

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does not dwell in temples made with hands.

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His God transcended all the noise and nonsense of Athens.

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All their stone and all their different things they'd done to try to worship all these different gods

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with a lowercase g all they try to do he says nah so that's not the way it works my god doesn't live

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in such a temple my god transcends the temples my god transcends all that he has made now he's

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not done that was a big statement of itself but look at verse 25 verse 25 nor is he worshipped

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with men's hands as though he needed anything since he gives life and breath and all things to

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all. You know, in the process of idolizing stone and the process of idolizing marble and the things

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that they had made, the Greeks had developed this symbiotic relationship with what they had made.

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You see, if you take a log and you turn it into a god, if you take a log and turn it into a god,

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then you're probably going to think of yourself as somewhat critical or important or necessary to

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that god's existence. If you take a log and turn it into a god, you think you've done something,

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something critical for God. But in verse 25, Paul says that the true God has no need whatsoever

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to be whittled out of stone or marble or wood or what have you. And he has no need for the

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temples that filled the skyline of Athens. He says, God is not fashioned by our hands. We are

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fashioned by his. The God who formed heavens and earth is not waiting for some guy to come along

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and whittle him out of a tree stump. But he has made all things. Let's see verse 26. And he has

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made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth and he has determined

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their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling this statement is a direct attack

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on the bigotry of the people of athens see the greek philosophers had all sorts of ideas about

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man's origins and they felt for certain that some nations some peoples were intrinsically inferior

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to others with that said when paul a hebrew of the hebrews when paul a jew announces that every

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nation comes from one blood greek jew and gentile and the like he's making a theological statement

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that goes back to adam he's leveling the playing field for all people for all nations the people

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of athens that was a revolutionary thought people are centuries still oftentimes it's been a

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revolutionary thought but that said paul then moves on and talks about how the same god determined

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free appointed times and boundaries for the people now you and i am in a reformed presbyterian church

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we might not even blink at those words when we talk about god is appointed times and seasons

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and places and he's sovereign he's in control and he decrees the end from the beginning i can preach

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that and we'll all probably nod and say amen but here here in this in this text what he was saying

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what he was saying to the people of athens they had huge implications because they didn't have

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an understanding of sovereignty to say that god this one guy's over all things and he's not only

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overall things but he pre-appoints pre-ordains predestines times seasons boundaries for the

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nations and the people that dwell within them again to philosophers who had thought something

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about free will and the like who thought something about the way god works it doesn't work he was

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challenging not only the religiosity of the age but the philosophy really everything that came

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from the heart and will and thoughts of men falls under paul's topping block here for paul to say

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that God had pre-appointed the nations and the people within it

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and flew in the face of the established views.

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If Paul was right, if a single God really did create all of humanity from a single man,

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if Paul was right and if God really did direct the lives of Adam's descendants,

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then again the entire philosophical and religious facade of Athens would come down.

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The underpinnings of every belief system that filled that city

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were like dross compared to the gold that Paul brought.

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Okay, so verse 27 and 28.

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So they should seek the Lord and hope that they might grope for him and find him,

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although he is not far from each one of us.

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For in him we live and move and have our being.

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As also some of your own poets have said, we also are of his offspring.

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I love that Paul was willing to contextualize.

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He didn't water down, and there is a difference.

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He was willing to contextualize, though.

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He looked at the culture around him.

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He understood the way people thought.

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He understood the way people operated.

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and so he brought them truth in a way that they would readily understand and he even quotes some

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of their poets as he does so now the greek culture that paul was addressing put a lot of emphasis on

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tributes and sacrifices and temples and the like however what we can extract from paul's words is

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he talks about a god who's in us and in him we have our being this god that's this close in

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proximity to who we are and to what we're going through today again that was different that was

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different than what they'd experienced. Poseidon, Zeus, Hera, Apollo. One of the problems of

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worshiping these deities is that there were so many to choose from. You had to figure out, well,

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what's my circumstance? Which god is the god of this circumstance or what have you? Each god had

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different power, different jurisdiction and so forth. But the other problem that the people had

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was none of these gods were especially concerned with demonstrating empathy to the people. We've

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said it before, but the gods of antiquity, who would want to serve such as these? The Greek gods,

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these were not empathetic deities. In fact, they had whims. Wow, there's one day to another those

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gods could change their mind. They could smite some people just for fun, and the next day provide

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assistance, and there was really no rhyme or reason to most of it. People had to guess what their gods

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might be like on any given day or week or what have you, depending on how many bolts of thunder

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were going on in Mount Olympus and so forth. Paul is saying something different. He's saying this

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God. In him we live and move and have our being. This God has an intimate relationship with those

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he has made. He dwells within. We don't need temples of stone. Why? Because the believer is

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now the temple of God to the Holy Spirit. What he was saying was radically different, but it was so

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much better. I am thrilled to death not to worship a God that changes every week. Tonight when you

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pray and go to bed, isn't it nice that when you wake up it's the same God who loves you in the

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morning. They don't wake up and he's different. A different God. Isn't it good that when you pray

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and you've got some desperate concern, you've got some heartache, you've got some pain, you have

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some health issue, vocational issue, financial issue, relational issue. Isn't it good to know

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that the God who made you actually cares about these things? He's not given to whims and he's

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not a billion miles away. In him we live and breathe and have our meaning. Whatever you're

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going through, the one who's made you cares about what you're going through and is with you to help

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you walk through it again it's radically different it's probably different not only from the gods of

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greece it's probably different from any of the gods of the pagans molek bale these abominations

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christ jesus holds together different year after year these people in greece paid tribute to angry

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goat gods and the like and this had only imprisoned them all the more they were only more in prison

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because of what they were doing not freer and not happier but the more paul spoke the more the people

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heard a message of grace, the more Paul told them about Jesus, the more you can sense in the hearts

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that they would have longed for a God like this. A God who cares. A God who's empathetic. A God who

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doesn't reign far and away and never deals with the issues of his people, but a God who came down

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in our hour of need, was born in a manger, died upon a cross. And our God makes it easy to love

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him based on the love and the sacrifice and the grace and the empathy that he has shown for us.

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And it stands out over every other belief system since the dawn of man.

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What we believe here in our church and through scripture,

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I believe it's not only the theological truth.

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I believe it's not only the historically verifiable truth.

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I believe it's the most desirable of any potential option.

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There's no religion that I believe has more merit than that which we profess.

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But I also believe there's no religion more desirable

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than to turn to a God

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who wants to cradle me in his arms.

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To run to a God who rushes across the field

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even faster to hold me tight.

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The Greeks had nothing like this.

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This was refreshing.

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This was refreshing.

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You want to know how the world was converted

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by men like Paul?

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Part of it was because of the truth of what Paul said.

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And part of it was that this message

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was unheard of among all the nations.

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It's infinitely more desirable.

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In him we live and move and have our being.

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And then he goes on to tell them of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary,

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of his work to reconcile the people with their God.

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Sacrifice and reconciliation were not parts of Zeus' ministry.

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In fact, again, those gods didn't have a ministry at all.

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But Paul gave the people an understanding of grace.

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The doctrines of grace were introduced really for the first time to the ears of the Athenians.

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And that message of grace had an impact.

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And it still has an impact because it hasn't changed.

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If the people in our lives are to be saved, if the hard-hearted folks,

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that the folks we think are so far gone, so far lost,

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if they're going to be changed, it's going to be through the Word.

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It's going to be because someone, whether it's Paul or whether it's you,

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brings to them the doctrines of grace,

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disabuses them of the idea you can work your way into heaven,

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disabuses them of the idolatry that's claimed their heart,

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points them to the Word,

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and the God, the maker of man, woman, and child,

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opens their hearts to be able to hear that Word and to respond.

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This is the approach, and again, it's to be done winsomely,

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but it's also to be done intentionally.

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Who needs to hear this in your life?

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Paul went to Athens.

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Who will you and I go to?

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Paul went to the people he knew were inclined to reject him.

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Sometimes we hesitate to bring the gospel to family members and co-workers

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because we'll sense it will be rejected, and we may well be.

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Goodness knows, Paul was shipwrecked and beaten,

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and a lot of times people didn't like what he had to hear.

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And yet, because he loved man and he loved God, he went there.

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He went to these folks.

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In any case, as we wrap up this morning,

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let me offer this final thought.

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At one point or another, someone came to us.

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At one point or another, someone came to us.

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At one point or another, our beliefs about God,

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whether we were five years old or 50 years old,

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at one point or another, our beliefs about God

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and the world around us were wrong.

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At one point or another, we were not unlike the Greeks.

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We substituted something else

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into the throne that only Christ sits.

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For some of us, we might still be doing that.

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In a room of this size, it's most likely.

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Whether it's substitution of the idols of our age,

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whether it's idols formed in the shallow pool

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of our own intellect,

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whether it's idols we find in the mirror,

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we're still given to worshiping something else.

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Whether you're in Athens or Gulfport,

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the temptation is still the same,

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to displace God,

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to buy into something else.

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In any case, the Greeks were doing this.

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They were without God and without hope in this world,

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but then God sent Paul.

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And Paul preached a simple message.

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It wasn't filled with gimmicks and programs and the like.

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He didn't tell ten jokes before he got into it.

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it's a simple, effective message.

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A message that's shown

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a spotlight on people's sins

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and on the personal work of Christ.

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He made the unknown God known.

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Whereas they'd only had

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general revelation,

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they now had special revelation.

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The God who made all things

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and whom we live and breathe

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and find our being,

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Paul labeled him.

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He identified him.

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He called him Jesus Christ.

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Modern day atheists and agnostics

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can suppress it, ignore it,

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redefine it.

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The question is,

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what do you do with it?

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Everyone has a reckoning coming.

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I always like that term because it pictures coming face to face with our maker.

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Every man, woman, child in this room and outside this room has a reckoning coming.

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And these issues will be front and center on that day.

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Where do we stand with the one who has made us?

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Have we suppressed our knowledge of him?

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Have we kept him at arm's length?

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Have we redefined him into something that he is not?

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This morning, as we come to the table in a few moments,

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Coming to our one true Lord who has given us one true revelation through his infallible inspired word.

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Would it do well to come to terms with it because we'll be held accountable for it on that day.

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Let me pray.