Are You Religious?

Acts 17:22-23 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men 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. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
 
DEAR Christian, I see in every way you are very firm in your reverence to God.
   Does this affirm, honor and encourage you?  Are you pleased someone recognizes you are faithful to God? Yes, I want you to know God is pleased with your diligence to know and use his Word as the guiding power in your life.
   Affirmation was Paul’s method to gain a listening ear among Athens’ intellectuals. When he complemented them as being very religious, they were likely pleased to know he observed them as men devoted to their objects of worship. They were so religious, they even worshiped an unknown god! But in his words of praise, Paul began to condemn their devotion to evil spirits. How is it possible to worship an unknown god? It’s not.  Why are they devoted to gods that originate in man’s mind and even some possible god that may not exist?
   Were they afraid? We can say these idolaters worship fear. The Athenians are uncertain what the evil spirits require of them. What will happen if the gods are displeased?
   Fear grips those who worship evil spirits. Missionaries and evangelists have found this fear everywhere the gospel is first preached. Demonic rule wraps people’s minds in a fear of retribution if they do not appease the gods. We see this in the worship of Baal, Ashtoreth and Molech in Israel. Fear of these demonic spirits caused priests to cut themselves and parents to sacrifice children into fire. Many cultures have sacrificed humans to please the gods they created out of their own sin nature. These gods’ deadly influence came from the devil corrupting mankind’s own ideas of guilt and judgment.
   When people do not know the true God, they always find something to worship – physical pleasure, wealth, carved images, plants, animals, planets, stars, mountains and anything else the corrupt mind conceives. (There is a group of people in the U.S. that worships a particular small mountain as their god.)
   God gave Paul a platform to teach these men about the God they did not know. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans 10:14)