After Christianity cripples the occultic book business in Ephesus, craftsmen worry their miniature silver idols business could be next. The result is a mob stirred up into a frenzy, which teaches us about the response turning to Christ can produce in those who still love the world.
Transcription (automatically-generated):
And as we pick up our study, we are in the city of Ephesus, where Paul has been enjoying some of the most fruitful years of his ministry. The entire province of Asia, modern-day Turkey, had heard the gospel through Paul's preaching or through those who had turned to Christ through Paul's preaching. God had been working mighty miracles through Paul in the city and as a result, many people were turning to Christ and turning from their old gods and idols. Just last week, we saw many people burning their occultic books as they left their old lives to embrace new life in Christ. The impact of Paul's ministry in Asia was astonishing.
People came to Christ in every city and every class of society. So, let's jump in. In Acts chapter 19, verse 21, it says after these events, Paul resolved by the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and to go to Jerusalem. After I've been there, he said, it is necessary for me to see Rome as well. The spirit was stirring within Paul.
He had spent almost three years in Ephesus. The church was established, thriving, and had solid leaders. They were more than ready to stand on their own two feet. Paul desired to visit existing churches in Macedonia and Achaia before heading to Jerusalem. And that might seem strange as Macedonia and Achaia are in the opposite direction to Jerusalem based on Paul's location at this time.
But Paul desired to visit the churches in those provinces that he had established to collect an offering from them to take to the poor in the Jerusalem church. Remember, Christians in Jerusalem had been excommunicated from Jewish life, and I don't know if you know this, but Jerusalem was super Jewish like super Jewish, and many believers therefore could not find employment. And they faced significant financial challenges. By having Gentile churches give to support the first church, the Jewish Church in Jerusalem, Paul would provide an opportunity to the uppercase-C Church to demonstrate unity in a practical and beautiful way. Achaia was also where Corinth was located and Paul had heard that the church in Corinth needed a little bit of guidance and correction, to put it mildly.
Now, Rose, on the other hand, was something completely new. It was in keeping with Paul's strategy of targeting influential regions and cities. Rome had a thriving church that had been started by the Jews who lived there, had traveled to Jerusalem for a feast, heard the Gospel there, got saved, and then taken the gospel back to Rome with them. So, Paul longed to visit that church in Rome and strengthen it and help them start more churches out of it. And incredibly, Rome was not even Paul's final goal.
He would later write in his letter to the Romans that we have in our Bibles that while he was on his way to Jerusalem, he wrote them a letter and he said in Romans 15 that his final goal was to stop in Rome on his way to Spain, a highly influential region in the western Roman Empire. As we shall learn later in the Book of Acts, Paul will never make it to Spain. From this point to the end of the Book of Acts, Paul's focus will be on getting to Rome, which he will just not in the way he expected to. He'll be going, all expenses paid, and we'll talk about that later. Verse 22, it says, after sending to Macedonia two of those who assisted him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.
So, Paul stays in Ephesus a few months longer but sends two of his assistants ahead of him Timothy, his pastoral protege, and Erastus. And their job was to make preparations for Paul's arrival and help administrate the offering that was being collected for the Jerusalem church. Now, the rest of today's study will require us to know of a goddess named Artemis or Diana in the Greek pantheon. Ephesus was a city, you may recall, that embraced pretty much any and every god. We know of at least 50 gods who were worshiped in the city.
But the most popular, and she was wildly popular, was Artemis. Her glorious temple was considered so spectacular that it appeared in Antipater of Sidon's list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was about four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens and was richly decorated with the works of the greatest painters and sculptors of the age. Artemis was most famous, you may recall, for the specific form of worship she allegedly required. If you were an Ephesian man who desired to worship the city's protective mother, you would enter her temple and meet in private with one of the women who was employed there as a sacred employee, and you would worship with her.
You would pay the temple for her priestly services and that money would go into the temple coffers. And as I shared in an earlier message, it was a stunningly effective form of fundraising and resulted in most of the city's men becoming highly devoted worshippers of Artemis. But her popularity extended far beyond Ephesus. Archeology knows of at least 33 shrines to Artemis throughout the Roman Empire, making hers perhaps the most popular cult of all. Other than the imperial cult.
There was an annual festival held in her honor in Ephesus and it would pack the city with pilgrims and generate huge sales of Artemis paraphernalia. It was Artemis Palooza, basically, and historians tell us it was likely during one of these festivals that the events in today's study took place. So, with that context in mind, the rest of our study will be narrative. It's going to detail one event. There's not a ton of practical application in it.
And so, I'm going to walk us through the event in a way that will hopefully help us understand it. Then I'm going to wrap it up by just sharing one main observation that we can learn from this event and how it can impact our lives, and we'll trust the Lord to speak through his word as always. Verse 23. It says, about that time, there was a major disturbance about the way. You may recall that the way was an early term for Christianity.
For a person named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis provided a great deal of business for the craftsmen. So, the silversmith named Demetrius was running a wildly successful business making little silver shrines that had little silver statues of Artemis inside them. Remember, Ephesus was a major port city, and so people were always coming and going and passing through. And if you wanted to add a god to the collection of gods you worshiped, you would want a small idol of them, a small statue of them that you could take with you. And that's exactly what Demetrius provided.
It seemed he had something of a monopoly on the trade, as he provided a great deal of business for the craftsmen. But we learn here that Demetrius had an issue with the presence of Christians in Ephesus, resulting in a major disturbance we're going to read about. When he learned that people were burning their occultic books, he must have thought, oh, man, tons of people are turning to Jesus, this Jesus that Paul keeps talking about, and when they do, they're turning their backs on all other gods. Christianity just killed the magic book business in Ephesus, and my silver business could be next. Then we read in verse 25, when he, Demetrius, had assembled them, the craftsmen he employed as well as the workers engaged in this type of business.
That would be salespeople, silver traders, et cetera. So, Demetrius calls a union meeting. That's what he does. He said, men, you know that our prosperity is derived from this business. Uh oh, Paul's ministry was touching that most sensitive part of a man his wallet.
Verse 26. You see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia, this man Paul has persuaded and misled a considerable number of people by saying that gods made by hand are not gods. Now, the belief at the time was not that these little idols were gods. The belief was that an idol of a god would summon that god to partially take up residence in that idol, thereby allowing you to keep that god and their benefits close to you. Paul's preaching was, yeah, but if you can boss a god around by making a little statue of them, how great can that God be?
Paul never denied the reality of those gods. On the contrary, he called people to turn from those lesser gods to the living god who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them. Paul did what the Old Testament prophets did. He mocked the lesser gods, calling them worthless things compared to the glory, goodness, power, and greatness of Christ. He pointed out the real test of a god is whether it can do anything.
Paul's God was working undeniable miracles, and he was not like other gods. He couldn't be summoned by an incantation or a spell, and he wouldn't show up just because you made a little idol of him. Nothing could contain him. And so, to Paul's reasonable preaching and argumentation, the men who got rich by making gods with their hands said blasphemy. Verse 27 not only do we run a risk that our business may be discredited, heaven forbid, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be despised, and her magnificence come to the verge of ruin, the very one all of Asia and the world worship.
In other words, where does it end? Brothers, these Christians may damage the reputation of Artemis so much that we not only lose our business, but people stop caring about her magnificent temple. And Ephesus loses her place of prestige in the empire. Paul is going to destroy the economy. Christianity is going to be the ruin of us all.
It can happen. Because of the Welsh revival between 1904 and 19 six, there was a time when not a single bar or tavern could be found in the entire country of Wales. They had all been closed due to lack of business. And guess how many sermons they preached against drunkenness? None. None.
Just as Paul did not tell the Ephesians to burn their occultic books, it was simply the conviction of the Holy Spirit moving upon people who had genuinely turned to Christ. They intrinsically understood that turning to Christ meant turning from their sins and all other gods. But these men cared nothing that the men women and children who were being set free by Jesus were finding new life, joy and peace, and hope in his name. All they cared about is how it affected what they cared about, which was money. Remember the medium girl back in Acts 16 whom Paul cast a demon out of?
Remember why her owners got so upset? It was because they were making a living off her. They didn't care about her soul. All they cared about was money. Jesus spoke against such thinking with one of the most haunting rhetorical questions of all time comparing earthly wealth to our eternal destinations.
Jesus said, what does it benefit someone to gain the whole world and yet lose their life? Hell will be filled with people who loved money more than God. Verses 28 when they had heard this, when they heard everything Demetrius had said, they were filled with rage and began to cry out great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Great as Artemis of the Ephesians. As we will see, what Luke is describing to us is people in the psychological state of a mob frenzy.
Emotions are soaring and reason is plummeting. People do terrible things when they get into a mob frenzy. This is a scary truth about the world we live in. People do terrible things when they get into a mob frenzy because most people don't have a moral tether. Most people don't have a moral anchor.
They derive their morality from their surroundings. They look at the culture around them and how most people around them are behaving. And from that they determine right and wrong. And the consequences of this can be horrific. We saw this in German society during the Holocaust or Mao's Communist China, but it can take place in much smaller settings.
If there's a protest going on, emotions are soaring, reason is plummeting, and someone smashes a store window and begins looting a store. A few people follow and before you know it, people are thinking this must be okay because everyone else is doing it. You see, they have no moral tether, no transcendent moral law that they're submitted to. Their morality is flexible based on what everybody else is doing at any given moment in time. Added to this are things like demonic activity.
This crowd was full of people who were worshiping pagan gods and who led them into dark sins. They worshiped money. They worshiped lust and greed and didn't really believe in self-control. So, there was a lot of opportunity for demons to stir up anger and rage in a place like Ephesus. I'm sure all of us have seen people who get into a mob frenzy state.
You've seen Muslim extremists chanting Allah Akbar for hours and hours and hours. And closer to home, you can see his phenomenon at many LGBTQ-related protests. You can go and watch the videos online. Middle-aged men dressed as women who have no children, crazy eyes screaming at the top of their head, demanding that children be given puberty blockers. And they're just incapable of reason.
They're just screaming and yelling at people, completely out of control, completely given over to their emotions and their lust for sin. They're in a mob frenzy. Verse 29, it says so the city was filled with confusion, and they rushed all together into the amphitheater, dragging along Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's traveling companions. Now, the amphitheater was a logical place to head as city-wide civil matters were often handled there. It also provided a venue where everyone could see what was going on and hear from the city leaders.
I've actually got a photo to show you, if you can put that up, Randy, of this amphitheater because incredibly, it's still standing. It's still there. That's the one that these events were taking place at almost 2000 years ago and they still occasionally hold concerts there. Paul was understandably viewed as the man at the Peter of the expanding Christian church in Ephesus. It seems they couldn't find Paul, though, so they grabbed two of his assistants, Gaius and Aristarchus.
Verse 30. Although Paul wanted to go in before the people, the disciples did not let him. Even some of the provincial officials of Asia who were his friends sent word to him, ending with him not to venture into the amphitheater. Though the mob couldn't find him, Paul was in the city somewhere, and when he heard about what was happening, he was concerned for the safety of his friends and felt the need to defend the gospel. In Ephesus, Paul was ready to charge into an amphitheater filled with thousands of men who wanted to see him dead.
Classic Paul. For not the first time in his travels, the Lord had to speak through brothers and sisters who told Paul, read the room. These people want to kill you. You won't even get the chance to say anything. That some of Paul's friends were provincial officials of Asia is another reminder of just how widespread the impact was of Paul's ministry in Asia.
He reached people in every city, directly or through those who heard his message, and in every class of society, even rulers of the province. And based on the time it would have taken Paul to get word of what was happening, for people to warn him, and for people not with Paul to send words of warning to him, the mob must have been in the amphitheater for hours before the next developments unfold in the narrative. Verse 32. Some in the amphitheater were shouting one thing and comes another because the assembly was in confusion and most of them did not know why they had come together. This is how mobs work.
People just get caught up in intense emotions and just want to be part of whatever is happening. They're interested because other people seem to be interested. There was no social media, so everyone in the city is just saying, what's going on? What's all this shouting about? What's happening in the amphitheater?
And so, thousands of people come streaming into that amphitheater. Reminded me of a YouTube video I saw, which cracked me up, where a random guy just dressed up in a hoodie with sunglasses. He hired a couple of security guards and a couple of photographers and then walked through a mall having the photographers take pictures of him and the security guards pushing people out of the way. And it wasn't long before there were hundreds of people following him, trying to take pictures with him. Even though nobody knew who he was.
He wasn't anybody at all. That's how mobs work. People just want to be a part of whatever is happening. Verse 33. Some Jews in the crowd gave instructions to Alexander after they pushed him to the front.
You see, the Jews in Ephesus knew that whenever things start going wrong, when the economy is in danger, when people's livelihoods are on the line, the Jews often get blamed. Fearing a riot that might turn into violence against the Hebrew community, they pushed forward Alexander, who was a prominent and eloquent Jew, to make their defense and assure the Gentile Ephesians that they had nothing to do with Paul or the Christians or anything like that. It says motioning with his hand. He was part Italian. Alexander wanted to make his defense to the people.
But when they recognized that he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about 2 hours great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Jews were also known for being against idolatry, but they hadn't had any impact on the city of Ephesus. As soon as the crowd realized Alexander was a Jew, they had no interest in anything he had to say. And they shouted him down with chants of great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
This is the fervor. This is the frenzy that I was talking about for 2 hours. The crowd shouted in unison, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Verses 35. When the city clerk had calmed the crowd down, now a city official finally gets involved and tries to just calm the situation.
Ephesus was a free city in the Roman Empire. It was a status given to cities that allowed them to essentially govern themselves while still abiding by Roman law. It was a very special privilege. They would not have Roman officials ruling over their city. They would have some of their own citizens as leaders.
But this status was a privilege, and it only remained if the city's officials could collect the mandated taxes for Rome and keep the peace. And something like a mob that starts to riot could put Ephesus's status as a free city in jeopardy. Additionally, the Romans could come in and break up any troublemaking, trade guilds. When Rome felt like it needed to drop the hammer on a rowdy city, it did not play around. And that's what his city official is going to base his appeal to the mob on.
He said, People of Ephesus, what person is there who doesn't know that the city of the Ephesians is the temple guardian of the great Artemis and of the image that fell from heaven? You see, hidden inside the temple of Artemis out of public view was allegedly a rock that traditions said fell from the sky. And the people of Ephesus had become convinced that his rock was in the likeness of a woman whom they decided was the goddess Artemis. You see, in their thinking at that time, objects that fell from the sky were from the gods. They were from the heavens.
Interestingly, there were books that we have that were written in the second century by some Christians who went around debunking the origins of some of the pagan gods in the Roman empires. And they would do things like interview tradesmen who were multigenerational tradesmen, whose great-great grandparents were also tradesmen et Peter. And one of the places they went was Ephesus. And what their research revealed was that his rock of Artemis was in fact wood that had been made by craftsmen and that's why it wasn't put on public display. So, it was literally a scam to try and create a business and a tourist industry in the city and turn it into legend.
That's what he's referring to here, this savvy and secular public official. He placates the crowd by telling them, relax, relax. Everybody knows. Everybody knows the gods have visited Ephesus in the form of the Artemis Rock. Everybody knows how special this city is, and nothing can change that.
Although the man was sincere, he was tragically mistaken, for today, nobody worships Artemis, but hundreds of millions of people worship Jesus Christ. Verse 36 therefore, since these things are undeniable, you must keep calm and not do anything rash, for you have brought these men here who are not temple robbers or blasphemers of our goddess. So, if Demetrius and the craftsmen who are with them have a case against anyone, the courts are in session and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you seek anything further, it must be decided in a legal assembly.
In fact, we run a risk of being charged with rioting for what happened today, since there's no justification that we can give as a reason for this disturbance. After saying this, he dismissed the assembly. It's a good pitch. This official says, let's not be hasty and incur the wrath of Rome. We're not savages.
We have courts, we have laws. If there's an accusation to be made, let a charge be brought legally through the justice system and it'll be dealt with. But right now, we're on the verge of a riot that could endanger our whole city. So cut it out. And they did.
For now.
Last week, we saw Ephesians turning to Christ and burning their occultic books in a powerful and practical demonstration of repentance. And we ended in verse 20, where it told us the word of the Lord spread and prevailed. Wherever the word of the Lord spreads, wherever it takes root, wherever it leads people to Christ, who then respond by turning from their sins and turning from their idols and turning to Christ, there will be a response from the powers of darkness. Always. When their power and authority are stripped by Christ, they don't like it.
They don't like it when it happens in a city like Ephesus. They don't like it when it happens in a church. They don't like it when it happens in a family or in a marriage or in an individual. So, if you get serious about repenting and following Christ, you should expect spiritual opposition. What Ephesus shows us is while the forces of darkness may create opposition, they cannot triumph over the power of Christ.
One man filled with the power of Christ preaching the word of Christ can stand against all the powers of darkness in existence because Christ is greater. Paul stated it to the Corinthians like this. He said, I fought wild beasts in Ephesus as a mere man, but we must understand this. We must understand this. When we destroy the idols in our lives, we are destroying idols that many people worship. When we turn from lesser gods, calling them worthless, and turn to the living God, we are insulting the gods that many people worship.
Write this down and take it in. When we turn from idols, lesser gods, and sins, we turn from the things the world loves and worships, offending and angering the world.
When our actions call Christ worthy and everything else worthless, we should not be surprised when people get offended and angry. They love and worship those things. They've devoted their lives to those things. They've placed their hope in them. They've built their identity on them.
And when we turn to Christ, it disrupts the mob mentality that we've been living in and that they are living in. Here's what I mean by that. We live in families, we live in communities, we have coworkers, we have fellow students, we have a social circle. And when we turn to Christ by the simple act of turning to Him and turning from all other gods, we create problems for the social dynamic. Because we used to be part of a group that said, this is okay, it's fine to do that, it's fine to live like this.
And we suddenly do a 180 and turn to Christ and bear witness that that is sin, and we are sinners, and we need a savior. It's as though there's a riot, a store is being looted, and suddenly in the middle of that going on, someone stands up and says, this is wrong, this is theft. We should not be doing this. We need to stop. What's the reaction going to be to that?
You're probably going to get punched, you're probably going to get shouted down, people are going to get angry with you. And that's what happens. When we turn to Christ, we disrupt the mob mentality of a world in the grips of sin and death. Jesus called his church to be salt and light, and salt stings when it's rubbed in wounds. And light reveals the evil deeds done in darkness, and both can provoke a hostile reaction.
We see this as well in the trans community today. They hate Christians because we preach the truth that God created men and women, and there's nothing anyone can do to become the other. But there's one group they hate even more than Christians, and it's detransitioners those who were transitioning but have since abandoned it after seeing the light of the truth. Now, why the hate? Because the detrans community destroys the idols of the trans community.
It calls their gods worthless. It says they cannot save, they cannot heal, they cannot help. And that doesn't go over real well. This is one of the reasons Jesus said to count the cost before you commit to follow him. It's because your community, your social circle, your people group, your family, as Jesus said, may very well hate you if you disavow their gods and destroy the idols they worship.
Expect it, is what Jesus said, because we are calling the things they love and treasure worthless because it's true. But they don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear it. I'm going to ask the worship team to come up. Wherever the gospel is preached.
Christ will be glorified, idols will be torn down, and the powers of darkness will rage. Expect it. You live for Christ. Expect opposition. But don't fear opposition, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
Christian will build his church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He's with you to the end of the age. Let's pray. Would you bow your head and close your eyes?
Jesus. Thank you for your Word. And thank you for how plain and how honest you have been with us in Your Word that we should expect opposition. And Lord, we see our dear brothers who went before us like Paul, not flinching when they experienced opposition because he expected it, but not being intimidated for even a second, because he was assured of the greatness and goodness and power of the God in whom he had believed. And so, Jesus, we thank You that we can be as assured of Your greatness, goodness, and power as Paul was.
You're the same yesterday, today, and forever, and you're as much with us as you were with Him. And so, Lord, we thank you that we don't have to fear, but Lord, we pray for eyes to see and to recognize and discern where we're experiencing spiritual opposition. Lord, I pray for discernment so that we would not rage against people, that we would not mistake what is a spiritual attack for a personal attack or a relational attack, but that, Lord, we would see clearly that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but in the spiritual realm. And so, Lord, help us to come to you to seek Your power, Your wisdom, Jesus, Your help, Your power that works so powerfully in us. And so, Lord, I pray right now for any of my brothers and sisters who are experiencing spiritual opposition in any area of their life.
Lord, I pray for confident assurance that you are with them, for hope and peace from knowing you are with them. And, Lord, for eyes to see and recognize what is truly going on. And thank You, Lord, that the ending is assured. Christ is victorious. We reign with you forever.
And that no matter what our circumstances are in this life, we can experience victory in you because we can have peace and life and hope and joy regardless of our circumstances. So, Lord, let that be real. Help us to appropriate that. Help us to receive it. Help us to cast our cares upon You and to receive all those good things that You.
Always have available for us. Jesus, we love you. We bless you. In Your name we pray. Amen.