Description:
This study guide examines Paul’s claim that we are all accountable for what we know, and also for the choices we make. We’ll consider how our choices impact our lives, reflect on God’s promise to forgive our sins based on true repentance, and see how Jesus responds to the questions of Nicodemus. Key Bible verses are: Acts 17: 16-34, John 3: 1-21, and John 3: 16-18.
Message from Marsh: “May your personal walk with the Lord lead you to be transformed, renewed and blessed.”
Marsh
Founder/President
Thank you for coming to: mensgroup.org
An All-important Choice We Will All Make
Scripture based Bible Study
(www.mensgroup.org – “Original Study”)
PRAY: Open with a brief prayer inviting God to prepare hearts to receive what He has to say through His Word and this Bible study.
Lord, please help us to set aside the many distractions of life just now and listen carefully to what You are saying though this Bible study. Give us spiritual eyes to see how the choices we make impact the direction and trajectory of our lives.
READ: Acts 17: 16-23
¹⁶ While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. ¹⁷ So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. ¹⁸ A 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. ¹⁹ Then 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? ²⁰ You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” ²¹ (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
²² Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. ²³ For 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. Holy Bible - New International Version
With a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address those philosophers of ancient Greece who had gathered on famous Mars Hill to hear him, the Apostle Paul chose to engage with them about the weightiest of matters: the claims of God upon their individual lives. He appealed to their penchant for reason and logic, even quoting their own writers. But he was equally clear that we are all accountable for what we know, and also for the choices we make.
1. What was it that distressed Paul so greatly as he walked about the city of Athens?
2. Would Paul find anything in our present-day culture that might cause him similar concern?
3. How did he excuse their earlier worship of the “UNKNOWN GOD”?
Read Acts 17: 24-29. Paul points to all of creation as God’s handiwork, and then tells his audience that God is not to be found in the work of man’s hands.
²⁴ “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. ²⁵ And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. ²⁶ From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. ²⁷ God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”
²⁹ “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 human design and skill.” Holy Bible - New International Version
While perhaps none of us would say that we look for God in things “built by human hands” (vs 14), what are some of the modern-day places, or things from which we seek to derive meaning and purpose in our lives?
In his address, Paul framed the resurrection of Jesus Christ as being at the center of God’s plan for human history, and he implored his listeners to embrace God’s promise of sins forgiven based on true repentance, likely reasoning with them from the Scriptures, just as he did on an earlier occasion in verse 2 of Chapter 17, “explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead.”
The entire Gospel message is encapsulated in John 3:16-18:
¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. Holy Bible - New International Version
Read Acts 17: 32-34 below.
³² When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” ³³ At that, Paul left the Council. ³⁴ Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. Holy Bible - New International Version
What are the three distinct responses made by those who heard Paul speak on Mars Hill that day?
A number of those in the crowd on Mars Hill that day were neither believers nor unbelievers. They delayed making a decision by stating, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” They heard Paul’s argument, but they delayed any decision about the claims of Christ.
The renowned Cambridge philosopher C. S. Lewis was also skeptical about the claims of Christ for many years. However, once he had conducted a rigorous examination of the Scriptures, he became a Christ follower, and he went on to write the following in his book Mere Christianity:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him (Christ): ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
REFLECT & RESPOND:
How might this Scripture passage apply to our own individual lives?
1. What has been your own response to the Gospel message and the claims of Jesus Christ upon your own life?
2. How has your response impacted or changed the course of your life?
If, like some who heard Paul speak, you still remain undecided, you may be of the same mind as the man Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night to inquire more fully of him. Re-read his brief story in John 3: 1-21, and how Jesus responded to his honest questions.
¹ Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. ² He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
³ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
⁴ “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. ⁷ You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
⁹ “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
¹⁰ “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? ¹¹ Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. ¹² I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. ¹⁴ Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. Holy Bible - New International Version
3. What did Jesus mean by his use of the word believes in verse 15, when he said, “everyone who believes may have eternal life in him”?
SUGGESTED CLOSING PRAYER:
Lord, please help us to believe that God sent his only son to earth so that anyone who believes in Jesus will not perish and inheret eternal life. Help us to not be like the men on Mars Hill who did not believe or delayed making any decision to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior. Amen.
All our Blessings,
Men’s Group Foundation, Inc.
mensgroup.org “Original Study”
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