16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. (ESV)

Paul may have been walking around Athens, but he was no tourist. I am challenged by the words in verse 16 that ”his spirit was provoked within him”. What, in my culture, ‘provokes’ me, and motivates me to preach the risen Lord Jesus?

We again note the place of ‘reasoning’ in Paul’s ministry. It has to be said that Christianity is intellectually satisfying; it makes sense of life in our pagan ‘Athens’, and it has solid evidence to back it up. Paul himself was a living-breathing piece of evidence. He had once hated this Jesus he now proclaimed – until, that is, he met Him personally.

Paul was given a platform in Athens. There was an openness to ideas in the city, although the people were generally shallow and superficial, and loved novelty.

‘How like our world today! The quest for novelty overshadows the search for reality.’ Warren Wiersbe

‘One purpose consumed the Apostle. One thing I do, was the thread on which the many beads of his experiences were strung. Persecuted and rejected today, he is at his favorite work tomorrow. How different this intense earnestness from the trifling of the so-called philosophers of Athens! The Epicurean made the pursuit of pleasure the main object of life. The Stoic, on the other hand, believed in the stern repression of nature. All Greece was absorbed in the cultivation of art, architecture, eloquence, and intellectual brilliance. But here, as everywhere, Paul had but one message-Jesus and the Resurrection. Oh, to be pressed in spirit, as he was, till our earnestness should compel our opponents to give us a serious hearing!’ F.B. Meyer