So
often when we think of early churches in the Bible or some of the early
churches of that era and the cities that they resided in, we think that it was
more like a theocracy than anything else.
When we hear about the churches in Philippi or Galatia, we just imagine
that nearly everyone there was at least somewhat a part of the church. Well, the picture that Luke gives us today in
Acts 19 tells us that that was far from the truth. This text, which could be broken down into
three parts, shows us the volatility that existed specifically in Ephesus
during this time, just as it existed everywhere else as well. While our text for last Sunday spoke about
Apollos being an effective witness in Corinth, we’re told that during that same
time Paul was having great success in Ephesus.
Paul was healing people, baptizing folks, teaching, preaching, and
evangelizing. This is the type of stuff
that pastors dream of; having a ministry period like Paul was having in
Ephesus. Seemingly nothing was going
wrong for him. Even when some of the
Jews who traveled around trying to discredit him attempted to drive out demons
from a man, that turned out poorly for them and led to even more people coming
to believe Paul’s message and confirm the gospel of Jesus Christ. You know things are going well when other
people’s mistakes are driving people to you.
And so often that is the extent of the image that we have of the early
New Testament church.
However,
things weren’t always so positive for Christians during this time. I remember sitting in Church History I on my
first day of seminary and my professor talking about how the history of
Christianity, while very much there in Scripture, really finds its fuller
expression in other historical accounts.
I remember him talking to us about what were called “Roman
Streetlights”. These were Christians
who were dipped in some sort of flammable material and hung on posts while
being lit on fire. They glowed like
streetlights in the night. It was the
first time that I can remember thinking, “Man, I guess things really were rough
back then.” Now, part of that was my
naivety and part of that was that we just don’t talk much about the early
church, period. That’s a lot of the
reason why I felt it crucial to undertake this study of the book of Acts in the
first place.
When we look at
our text we see the response to all of the gospel expansion in Ephesus experienced
by Paul. Verse 23 says, “About
that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way.” I’m just going to point out that from this
verse we know that it was much more than a few disgruntled folks sitting over in
the corner. This may or may not have
been a minority, but it was much more than just an insignificant few. There was a guy named Demetrius who was a
silversmith; in particular he was a silversmith who made statues for the
shrines to Artemis, who was Greek goddess of hunting, wild animals, wilderness,
childbirth, virginity, and the protector of young girls. She was said to be the daughter of Zeus. She was one of the more venerated gods of the
time, so statues of her were always in high demand. After all, every time a child was born,
either you wanted your boy to have a successful hunt or you wanted your little
girl to stay pure and be protected. And
don’t forget that the mother was in need of Artemis’ protection too since she
was the goddess of childbirth also.
Well, Demetrius
got upset at Paul’s teachings. You see,
as Paul was going around proclaiming the gospel, what he was also doing (without
having to explicitly do so) was proclaiming the falseness of the Greek gods and
goddesses of Mount Olympus. I’m going to
make a modern-day correlation in just a moment, but I want to finish this
thought first. Demetrius gathered up all
of his silversmith contemporaries and folks in similar trades that relied upon
the belief in and worship of these gods and he turned them against Paul and the
Christian message. “These he gathered together, with
the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business
we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost
all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying
that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this
trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great
goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed
from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.” Now, I’m not going to say that the reason why
Demetrius was upset at Paul concerned income.
He really may have been deeply troubled that Artemis would no longer be
worshipped by the people. He may have
really thought that spiritually and morally for the people of Ephesus to
abandon Artemis and the worship of the Greek gods was to seek their
destruction. However, I’ll just say
this: Demetrius didn’t lead with
anything about beliefs or spirituality or worship. What he led with was talk about the
pocketbooks of the silversmiths and other merchants being hurt.
What happened
from that point is that Demetrius got all the folks riled up and a riot broke
out. Now, I’ve never been in a riot, but
I’ve been in something close. Last week
when that college football team I don’t like to talk about that shares a state
with my alma mater won and stormed the field, it was pure chaos. I loved seeing pictures and videos from my
friends who were there and I even heard some stories about husbands just
telling their wives they loved them and running onto the field. Back in 2004, I was at the Mississippi State
game when we beat Florida and stormed the field and took the goalpost. It was pure chaos and pandemonium, but that’s
the closest I’ve ever come to a riot. The funny thing about it was that our
“rioting” on the football field that day resembled (somewhat) the rioting of
the folks in Ephesus that day. We weren’t
leaving Scott Field until the administration made us. After all, that win brought our record to
10-32 since the beginning of the 2001 season.
Well, the rioting in Ephesus really doesn’t seem to have any order to it
(probably because it’s a riot) until the town clerk stepped in. He told the people of Ephesus that they
weren’t doing away with Artemis, that Paul and his men had done nothing wrong,
that if there was a disagreement then it could be handled in court, and that
they were close to being found guilty of rioting. Well, maybe that last one had already
happened, but it was that the official charge of rioting was about to be
issued. Either way, it’s really kind of
difficult to tell who came out on the “winning” end of this riot. Was it Paul and the Christians, or was it
Demetrius and those seeking to keep Artemis in her place of worship? Well, we’ll just say for now that both groups
took positive things away from this scuffle.
I mentioned a
second ago that I was going to make a modern-day comparison to this situation
that existed in Ephesus. You see, people
hate Christians. No, I don’t mean that
everyone hates us because we are Christians (although there are some folks who
fit that description), but that people hate what it is that we teach. Primarily it’s because what we teach by its
very nature and definition goes against what most of the world teaches. One of the fascinating things that I have
seen at work in this world really over the last 10 or 20 years is the hatred of
the Christian message. Notice that I
said only the Christian message. You
see, people still believe in God. They
believe that someone created the universe and all that is in it. They may not want to use the name God, but
their description sounds an awful lot like the one we have unfolded for us in
Scripture. People even like Jesus. They talk about his earthly ministry and his
teachings and parables and they say that there’s some really good stuff
there. However, many of these folks are
only speaking about Jesus from a morality point of view. And part of this has come because of our
preaching and teaching morality more than Jesus. Of this point, I think that C.S. Lewis in his
famous work Mere Christianity put it
best when he said that Jesus was one of three things: Lord, liar, or lunatic. In other words, Jesus was either exactly who
he said he was and who Christians profess him to be, he was a liar who was
completely aware of the falsities he was saying, or he was a crazy person who
thought he was the Son of God but really wasn’t. Of these three choices, none of them leave us
with the option of simply taking Jesus as only a really good moral teacher. None of these options leave us being able to
say that he was merely a prophet or a really good guy, because if he were a
prophet then he would have known for certain if he was or was not the Son of
God. We either have to have the view of
Christ that he was 100% right or that he was completely wrong.
You see, what
we fight in this world today is not really the problem of different
religions. Sure, they’re out there and
occasionally we come in contact with them, but they are not our biggest
concern. Like I said, don’t think that I
don’t view ISIS and other groups like them as not being enemies, because I
do. I just happen to think that there is
a much greater enemy even closer to home.
To me, our biggest concern (and this is just my humble opinion) is the
belief of self over all other things.
Now, let me explain this for just a moment. This is nothing new. In fact, this is really the oldest heresy or
problem for the Christian faith. This
belief was around even before Paul began his ministry. It’s the idea that the individual person
decides what is right and wrong for them.
It’s taken many names over the years. It’s been called by numerous different titles,
most recently postmodernism. It’s the
sin that Satan preyed upon with Adam in the garden. It’s the sin that Satan still preys upon with
us today. According to Scripture, there
are things that are right and wrong. It
is right to worship God, it is right to defend oneself, it is right to marry
and have children (these are just a few).
It’s wrong to murder. It’s wrong
for someone to be in a homosexual relationship of any kind. It’s wrong for two individuals to have sexual
relations outside the covenant bond of marriage. Now, I happen to affirm all the things that I
have said today as being truthful, but I haven’t done so on my own accord. I do so because they are affirmed by God in
His holy, inerrant, infallible, and inspired Word. It doesn’t matter what I think. However, to the person who places themselves
and their thinking above anything else, ask them what they think of what
Scripture does and doesn’t command. I’m
almost willing to bet that somewhere in the response, the first few words will
contain the phrase “I think.” But you
see, it’s not about what we think, it’s about what is right and what is wrong.
You know, I
wonder how many attacks upon the gospel that we see today are out of disbelief
and how many are out of fear. I get why
someone of a different faith may reject the Christian message. I don’t agree with it, but I understand
why. Maybe the time just hasn’t come for
God to reveal himself to them and I pray that that day comes soon for them. However, I think that many of the attacks
that we find upon the gospel today come about much like the one led by
Demetrius in Ephesus. He was motivated
(at least primarily) by something other than religious beliefs. I think that a lot of the attacks that we see
today aren’t because of religious matters, but other things. Whether its lifestyle choices, political
opinions, social causes, or something else entirely, much of the attacks upon
the gospel are for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. They are because the Christian message and
the things that we are called to do in light of that message are in many case
contradictory to how someone wants to live their life. Now, instead of conforming one’s life to the
gospel, many have just taken up the cause of attacking and destroying the
gospel.
Friends, this a
dangerous and slippery road. Y’all want
a bit honesty? Do I get excited when I
read the things that Scripture calls me to do?
Nope. I don’t want to pray for my
enemies or clothe and feed the wicked.
However, that’s what we’re called to do in Scripture. And that’s the difference between those who
profess faith in Christ and those who don’t.
We know that it is us who are in need of being changed and
transformed. It is us who are in need of
being conformed to a more perfect image.
It’s not the other way around.
The gospel doesn’t need to be changed or torn down so that it looks more
like we think it ought to look. You want
to know what salvation looks like? It
looks like our Savior upon the cross; it looks like the table that sits before
us. When I read all the things in
Scripture that I’m commanded to do, I come away with an even greater
thankfulness for my Savior and the sacrificed he made on my behalf. Because I know how woefully short of those
standards I fall. Know this,
persecutions aren’t going to stop.
People looking down upon Christians and calling the Bible ignorant
aren’t going to stop either. However,
what we must continue to do is exactly what Paul did in Ephesus. We must continue to focus upon the task at
hand. We must continue to defend the
faith, which requires us to grow in our understanding. We must continue to proclaim the gospel,
which requires our unbridled willingness to speak out. We must continue to call upon and rely upon
God to give us strength for the task at hand.
Glory be to God; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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