Acts 17

Acts 17:11:
“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

Reaffirming messages against the Biblical text is wise.

Acts 17:22-23:
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.

In the absence of certainty as to what the Word of God is, superstition prevails, and instead of faith there is fog. Professed Christians, though earnest and sincere, then become like the Jews who had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. (Romans 10:2). Much devotion in churches today is hazy, anxious, and joyless, simply because people have not been taught, or do not dare, to slot their faith into Holy Scripture and venture their lives upon its "precious and exceeding great promises" (II Peter 10:2) as the sure words of a faithful Creator. Doubts and uncertainties about God and our standing with Him are poor companions to live and die with; but many today are never out of their company, because they know of no assurances from God on which their faith may rest. No wonder that the tide of faith ebbs, and that people as a body are in low spirits, suffering from apathy and lassitude. --JJ Packer; God Has Spoken (c)1993; Baker House Books

Adrian Warnock: God doesn’t use anybody, so don’t let the Church do so
“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, 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. ” (Acts 17:24-25, NLT) 8.14.22

Acts 17:26-27:
“From one man he made all the nations ... so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him”

Why do we yearn for God? The reason is because God put that yearning within us, and He did it because He wants us to seek Him and come to know Him. God isn’t a vague, impersonal force (like gravity or electricity). God is a person, and He loves us and wants us to seek Him and know Him personally. The Bible says, “From one man he made all the nations ... so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him” (Acts 17:26-27).
But how can we know – really know – God? The only way is if He reveals Himself to us, and this is what He has done! He did this by becoming a man: Jesus Christ. -Billy Graham

Acts 17:27:
so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;

“In pagan religions it is human beings who seek God (Acts 17:27). In every way they attempt to bring God down to themselves and into the dust (Romans 1:23), and by all kinds of methods they try to achieve power over God. But in scripture it is always God who seeks human beings. He creates them in his image and calls them after the fall. He saves Noah, chooses Abraham, gives his laws to Israel. He calls and equips the prophets. He sends his Son and sets apart the apostles. He will one day judge the living and dead. The religions of the nations, on the other hand, teach us to know human beings in their restlessness, misery, and discontent but also in their but also in their noble aspirations and their everlasting needs – human beings both in their poverty and riches, their weakness and strength. The noblest fruit of these religions produces humanism. But Holy Scripture teaches us to know God in his coming to and search for human beings, in his compassion and grace, in his justice and his love.”
--Herman Bavinck

“The greatest thing any one can do for God or for man is to pray. It is not the only thing. But it is the chief thing.”
-SD Gordon

Jesus Christ is not a tribal deity: he is Lord of the Christian in the pew, and he is the Lord of the atheist or the agnostic who could care less about religion. God commands “all men everywhere to repent: because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). He is not waiting for you to care: you are commanded to bow the knee to Jesus Christ whether you care or not, for the simple reason that Christ’s lordship is not dependent upon your feelings about him. It is the reality that you should conform your feelings to, not the other way round. Now some folks who love the doctrines of grace get nervous when you say that God commands all men everywhere to repent. They get even more nervous when you say that God commands all men to put their faith in Christ. And the primary reason they get nervous and object to this is that they misunderstand the doctrine of total depravity. They believe that because the Bible teaches that no one can come to Christ or love God or submit to God’s commands apart from grace, that to call someone who is dead in sin to faith and repentance would be to say that the spiritually dead can do spiritual things. This is a half-truth. It is true that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:14; Jn. 6:44; Rom. 8:7-8). But it is not true that the natural man is therefore off the hook for not believing and repenting, or that they should not be called to repentance and faith. -- Jeremiah Bass; Baptist Bible Hour