Bible Study - Acts 17

S - For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
Acts 17:23 ESV

O - Commentary:
During a plague long before Paul's time, no sacrifices had successfully propitiated the gods; Athens had finally offered sacrifices to the unidentified deities of the sites where the sacrificial sheep lay down, immediately staying the plague. These altars of nameless deities were still standing, and Paul uses them as the basis for his speech. Paul does avoid, however, the practice of some of his Jewish predecessors and some second-century Christian successors of accusing pagan philosophers of plagiarizing their good ideas from Moses.
Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, Second Edition (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2014), 377.

A - Why build an altar to a god you can't even name? Because nothing else worked. The Athenians had a god for everything, and still felt like something was missing. So do we. When God doesn't answer the way we want, on the timeline we want, we don't usually walk away from Him outright. We just start building smaller altars on the side. A career. A relationship. A ministry. Things that aren't bad — until they sit where only God should sit. That's the danger. Idols rarely look like idols. They look like blessings we forgot to keep in their place.

R - Father, You are not unknown to us. You've made Yourself known — through Your Word, through Your Son, through every good gift we're tempted to worship instead of You. Search us. Show us the altars we've quietly built to good things. Give us the courage to tear them down and put You back where You belong — first, above all else, worshiped and magnified in every corner of our lives.