Acts 17:24-31
24 "He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't live in man-made temples, 25 and human hands can't serve his needs — for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need there is. 26 From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.
27 "His purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him — though he is not far from any one of us. 28 For in him we live and move and exist. As one of your own poets says, 'We are his offspring.' 29 And since this is true, we shouldn't think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone. 30 God overlooked people's former ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone everywhere to turn away from idols and turn to him. 31 For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead."
NLT
I don't have time for an in-depth exposition of this passage but would like to do a brief walk-through of it by focusing on its highlights. And the goal of this little exposition is to learn why Paul said in v. 27 that God's "purpose in all this" (things previously stated in vv.24-26) is that the sons of men might seek him and perhaps find him. In other words, we want to try to answer the question: Why did God have this particular expectation from the nations that he created? So, let's get down to it without further adieu.
A. Paul's Audience
Greeks who were given over to all manner of pagan superstitions (vv.16, 18.)
B. Paul's Golden Opportunity to Preach the Gospel
Paul cleverly capitalized on their religious superstitions via their altar "To An Unknown God" to by revealing to them the one true God who was unknown by them (v. 23)!
C. Paul Sets The Record Straight on The God He Proclaimed to the Greeks
There is only one God and he made the world and everything in it, and He is the Lord of Heaven and Earth, and He does not live in man-made temples and is not served by human hands as though he needed anything! Paul basically told the Greeks they have everything backwards about who they believe God is! Man can do absolutely nothing for God because God is totally self-sufficient; instead this God who is unknown by them does everything for them to serve their many needs (vv. 24-25).
D. Paul's One True God is Theistic, Powerful and Sovereign
Doubtlessly, the pagans of the world concocted numerous creation traditions that ranged anywhere from the absurd to the more reasonable and even to the sublime -- likely some truth in virtually all of them. Apparently, some Greek poets seemed to think that the Greeks were offspring of one or more of their gods. And so again, Paul capitalizes on something one or more of their poets got right and runs with it. He affirms that all mankind is God's offspring because all mankind descended from one man whom God created directly, which of course is Adam. From Adam he alludes to the Tower of Babel incident, bypassing the Flood Epic, because it was at Babel that God created the nations, reminding the Greeks that it was always God intention and indeed his stated mandate that the sons of men fill the entire earth. Adam failed to do that. The antediluvians failed to do it and the Postdiluvians, as well, failed. Finally, God basically said, "enough is enough"; "I'm going to impose myself upon the sons of men!: At Babel, He literally "forced his will" upon rebellious mankind by confusing their tongues, dividing them and scattering them across the face of the earth to fulfill his creation mandate.
E. AT Babel Why Did Paul Write of God's "Expectation" of a Change of Heart From the Postdiluvians?
This question gets to the heart of God's "design" or "purpose" in v.27 behind he creation of nations. "God did this so that men would seek him and PERHAPS reach out for him and find him". Why would Paul assign this kind of expectation to God given who God was dealing with? He was dealing with idolaters, who were interested in making a name for themselves and who were in open rebellion with him over his creation mandate to disperse themselves over the earth (Gen 11:3-4).
First of all, Paul meticulously avoids God's judgment/punishment upon the Postdiluvians up to this point. (Such language would have only distracted from Paul's intention of sharing the Gospel in a straightforward manner.) But by Paul alluding to the Tower of Babel incident, it is perfectly reasonable for us to logically infer that this was one of God's greatest judgments upon all mankind being third to only to the Fall and the Noahic Flood, respectively. The Fall first because ALL men died spiritually in Adam, without exception; whereas in the Flood God spared only eight people from physical death. And it is this judgment at Babel that we find our answer.
The Tower of Babel was no small judgment upon mankind. It was a huge life-altering judgment that not only confused the languages of the people but spun their entire life into mass chaos and confusion. Life upon earth would never be the same again. This God-ordained division of men not only uprooted mankind in order to fulfill God's creation mandate but it faciltated the establishment of different religions, philosophies, politics, cultures, races and ethncities in the world. God's judgment turned these wanna-be, pagan globalists' world order upside down! Instead of making a name for themselves, as they so greatly desired, God instead flexed his muscles and made a name for himself once again.
So, since Paul was alluding to the great universal judgment upon all mankind at Babel, did he mean in v.27 that the all-knowing God literally purposed to elicit a godly response from wicked mankind, or was Paul instead employing a literay device of anthropomorphic language whereby God is likened to a man to reveal God's heart? Can an omniscient God contemplae or expect a particular respone to occur that he knows will not? Or is it more likely that anthropomorphic language was employed to reveal something of God's heart? I can only go with the latter answer to both questions for two reasons: the "perhaps" in v.27 and the irrefutable fact of redemptive history as this is revealed in Holy Writ. If v.27 read, "His purpose in all this was that the nations should perhaps seek after God...", it would not change the sense of the verse. The "perhaps" or "maybe" or "possibly" most certainly does not speak to a divine decree. Also, this is not the first time in scripture that a term of "uncertainty" is ascribed to God. I would strongly encourge all readers to contemplate Jer 26:1-15; 36:3-26.
Therefore, Mr. Shiloh is desperately trying to make this Acts passage say far more than it is. Yes, God commands all [dead] men everywhere to repent (v.30) but that does not mean they have the inherent spiritual power to do so. The default, natural reponse to the Gospel by the spiritual dead, not acted upon by the Holy Spirit, is a resounding "NO thank you, I'm GOOD!" How else can the natural mind that is inherently hostile to God respond (Rom 8:7)? And this is precisely why "No one seeks after God" (Rom 3:11).
