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OFFSPRING OF GOD

               Act 17:28  for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets
               have said, 'For we are also His offspring.'

               We “live.”  We have spiritual as well as future physical life with the Lord.  Only in Christ are we
               truly alive.  We also “move.”  All of our functions in life are now accomplished in Him who
               (currently) cares for every part of our daily lives.  We finally “have our being.”  This is our entire
               existence.  Our existence (spiritual, soulish, and natural) are wrapped up in Him.  He is our
               entire life.

               Paul quotes two Stoic writers, Aratus and Cleanthes, who admitted there was a God who
               created them, not vice versa.  We find the same thing in our atheistic society; our founding
               fathers told us that our “Creator gave us certain inalienable rights.”

               Act 17:29  Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine
               Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising.

               We do not create God with our imaginations and with tools.  Even those are created by God.

                       17:26-29  God of Creation and Unity of the Human Race, HUMAN WORTH/DIVINE
                       DESTINY.  Both the OT and NT state that the God of creation created unity of the human
                       race. Through Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:20), and then the sons of Noah (9:19), all
                       ethnicities and nationalities of men come from a similar bloodline. The prophet referring
                       to the special Fatherhood and fellowship God gives to His redeemed people, asks, “Have
                       we not all one father? Has not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10). In the NT, Paul
                       affirms the unity of the human race, by acknowledging that God “made from one blood
                       every nation of men” (Acts 17:26) and that “we are the offspring of God” (verses 28-29).
                       Therefore all men and women having been created in God’s image and having their
                       beings in Him, are equal before Him in worth and have an equal right to respect.

               Act 17:30  Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men
               everywhere to repent,

               Paul is telling them that God has overlooked their ignorance in the past, but no more.  Now that
               the gospel is presented to them, they are responsible.  God does not wink at sin but will
               overlook the ignorance of it.  “All men” is referring to those who are questioning Paul in this
               meeting in Athens on Mars Hill.  They are no longer ignorant.


               THE WORLD WILL BE JUDGED BY RIGHTEOUSNESS

               Act 17:31  because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness
               by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the
               dead."
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