Preaching Like Paul

Excerpt from Acts 17: 16-33

The Apostle Paul is, next to Jesus, clearly the most intriguing figure of the 1 st century of
Christianity. The primary impact he has left on Christianity after him is through his
letters. The more we learn of Paul, the more we have understood him in his writings.
Paul, however, did not consider himself to be a good preacher (2Cor 11:5-6); others
were not impressed by his preaching (2Cor 10:10). However, when we read the Book of
Acts of the Apostles, we see the immense
I have come up with seven points for which we can understand how Paul preached, and
how we can be his followers.

1. Paul was greatly distressed: What is the first thing you got to do when you want to
evangelise? You need a heart to evangelise. The greatest need for humanity is to know
the Lord. unless we are not distressed we can never evangelise fruitfully. David
Wilkerson in his sermon A Call to Anguish says that All true passion is born out of
anguish. Unless there is no distress in our lives, we cannot go out and reach out to
God. God calls us to first be distressed over the place that we are in. As an Indian, I can
relate to what Paul went through to see so many idols everywhere. And yet, I have often
failed to be distressed. We are not called to be concerned but distressed. Like
Nehemiah who was distressed when he heard that the wall of Jerusalem was broken.
Like Abraham when he heard that Sodom is going to be destroyed. Like Jeremiah when
he was put in the well and like Jesus when he cried and prayed for all of humanity.
2. v21. Studied the crowd: - When Luke mentions that the Athenians and the foreigners
were philosophers doing nothing but learning new ideas - they in-fact studied the crowd.
They identified as to what sort of people that Paul is going to address. As Christians, we
are to get our homework done before presentation. This is important because we would
want them to understand us and hence we got to understand them.

3. v. 24. Appreciation: How many of us can actually look at something that we are
distressed and turn into something that encourages listeners. Paul exactly did that.
Before he presented the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he appreciated what they have. We do

this in order to build a conversation and to create attention. I have noticed that many
preachers and evangelists directly condemn the religious acts and then dont get any
audience. In fact, Paul appreciated that they were very religious and then bridged that
he is going to speak to them about the very inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD to
them.
4. v. 24ff The Message: Never compromising on the message. Someone rightly said that
if your message does not have the cross then there is no message. Nowadays, there
are messages that teaches you how to live a good life on this earth. There are a lot of
feel-good messages especially those that comes from the west. When anyone is not
convicted of their sins and repent - they have not yet understood the Gospel of Jesus
Christ.

5. v. 28-29 Knowledge: Paul used his scholarly skills to introduce Jesus Christ to them.
He quoted Epimenidus who was a semi-mythical philosopher or seer from the 7th or 6th
BCE. Paul also quoted Aratus who was a Greek didactic poet. Today, many such
preachers do not even have a clue of what the other religions or philosophy are about.
As Karl Barth said somewhere, "read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the
other. If we are serious about evangelism, we got be serious about how we do it.
6. v. 30: A Call to Repentance: As earlier mentioned, there is no Gospel without the cross
and a call to repentance. The cross and resurrection is central to the Gospel and no one
will be saved outside of this.

7. v32 - Some will follow: There will always people who will sneer, mock and persecute.
But there are also people who will listen and submit themselves to God.