Latest / United Baptist Church / A Riot In Ephesus
Transcript
- Can you imagine a scenario? I need you to dream with me a little this morning? Maybe fire up your imaginations. Can you imagine a scenario where the collective faith and practice of the Christians and Elsworth would profoundly influence the moral and economic trajectory of the city where so many citizens would exchange wickedness for goodness that the trades supporting the wickedness would be in danger of going out of business right. That's what's playing out for us this morning. In the ninth chapter of the Book of Acts, the City of Ephesus, once part of ancient Greece, now modern day Turkey. The apostle Paul had visited Ephesus for a time. Then he left and he pledged that he would return if it was the Lord's will and it was the Lord's will. So he returned and he ministered there for two years and and three years actually in total. And what we see in Paul's spirit led approach to disabling is that involves a combination of going and staying. We are familiar with Jesus telling us to go and make disciples, and yet we understand at the same time, if we're going to have an impact, sometimes in certain places we have to stay for a while. Mark never says something along these lines. In the recent nine Mark Mark's article, he says, In order for the go to have any meaning, you need to stay for a significant amount of time, a few weeks, a few years, maybe the rest of a life. And our passage for today, Paul has stayed in Ephesus for a time, but he's readying himself again to go. He sent his ministry partners away and then he stayed there a little while longer. And based on the riot that ensued, we might conclude he wished that he hadn't. Let's pray while there always is. We open up your world, we come to it. We see it as the supreme authority in our lives, wisdom beyond anything we could ever conjure up or imagine. So we ask for your help to understand it well. Receive it as you intended. In Christ's name. Amen. Ex 19, verse 23. About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the way if you've got a King James version you're reading, it says No small stir, no small stir, which of course means it was a big stir, that it was a large tumult, a significant commotion, but not just any old commotion. This one came about because of the way the way which is a reference to the followers of Jesus, to the gospel that Paul was preaching. And to the broad impact that that gospel was having in the city. Last week, we noted that emphasis was a multicultural city, a haven of demonic activity, a home to flagrant idol worship and chief among the deities worship. There was Artemus, also known as Diana. So don't panic if you have a translation that says Diana, we're talking about the same thing. Once upon a time, the Temple of Artemus was one of the Seven Wonders of the world. John Paul Hill describes this temple. He writes, The temple of Artemus was indeed a hub of a fusion economic life. It was an impressive building, some 165 feet by 345 feet and dimension and built on a platform 240 by 420 feet. The entire edifice was elaborately adorned in brilliant colors and gold leaf. The altar area was 20 feet square and contained a massive image of the goddess with a veiled head with animals and birds decorating her head and lower body and numerous breasts from her waist to her neck. The animals and breasts were symbolic of her status as the ancient Asian mother goddess, the goddess of nature, who was believed to protect and preserve the fecundity of all living things. For centuries, emphasis was known for this temple, and it clearly had become a source of the Ephesians identity. New York has the Statue of Liberty. Seattle has its Space Needle. San Francisco has its Golden Gate Bridge. You get the picture. Places become known as the home of some architectural marvel. Emphasis is the home of the temple of Artemus. It's part of the city's identity. It's also a significant source of revenue of income for the region's craftsmen. Replicas of this great Temple Trinkets memorabilia were sold in that city by the silversmith, no doubt by bought by worshipers, but also bought by travelers and tourists to the city. So it was a big trade. And one of the silversmiths there in emphasis who made his living by selling these sorts of goods to the man known as Demetrius. Commentator Kent Hughes calls him head of the local six, six, six. She's head of the head of the local union, so to speak. Right. He is a man of influence. And whether he has been elected or appointed or is self-appointed, we don't know. But he seems to be a spokesman for the craftsmen who are supported by this idol worship that's going on in emphasis versus 25 and 26. These he gathered together with a workman 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 emphasis but in almost all of Asia. This, Paul, has persuaded and turned away a great many people saying that God's made with hands are not gods. The Apostle Paul, by sharing what the Bible says that God's made with hands are not gods, and by taking that assertion further and introducing people to the living God, to the true God in Christ has landed a direct hit on the industries whose profits come from idolatry, from the worship of these false gods. Demetrius is probably exaggerating a little bit here on the influence of Paul's ministry. For the sake of effect, maybe he's maybe he's expanding in a little bit so that he can create a crisis in his hearers. But still, at the same time, there's no doubt that Demetrius and his colleagues have actually felt the pinch of the effects of good gospel ministry. And that is the problem as the people have come to know Jesus in Ephesus, they've given up their idols, Christ has come into them and changed their hearts and he has changed their desires and he has changed their needs. And and they have found something better than Artemus. They have found Jesus. And the word tells us here that a great many have come to Him the impact of Paul's gospel ministry then in the city, in the region, according to Demetrius, testimony, had been both seen and heard. So I read of that that Paul's ministry and and its effects and all these people coming to Christ had both been seen and heard in the region. And I thought, what is it that people see coming out of the United Baptist Church of Ellsworth? And what, if anything, do they hear about us? What collective effect are the Christians in our area having on the way of life here? The growth and the influence of the church in Ephesus is observable. People are talking about it, people are witnessing it. Lives are literally being changed. Society is being transformed right under their noses. Demetrius continues to build his case. Verse 27. There's a danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemus may be counted as nothing and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence. She whom all Asia and the world worship. In case it's not clear to you, Ron, having read the whole thing and me reading snippets now, Demetrius concern is with money. Just in case you missed it. That's what he's worried about. It is it is apparent from his speech. It's what he leaves with. He says from this business, we have our wealth. That's what he starts off with. Listen, it's from this business that we have our wealth. What's priority one for Demetrius there? Well, there is danger that this trade of ours might come into disrepute if all of a sudden people don't need our goods anymore, then we're not going to be able to make money off this. God is off this temple. He is worried that if things keep going in the direction in which they've been heading, the people of Ephesus, Ephesus will just stop by buying what he's selling and then he's going to be out of business and he's going to have to find a different line of work. No one's forcing him out of business here. Mind you. Pay attention to that, please. This is not a boycott. The Christians didn't all get together and message each other on Facebook and say, Don't buy your stuff over here anymore. Okay? This is not someone's campaign to cancel. The silversmith is there. As we can tell, nobody has stood up and said, you can't do this and you can't do that, which is often the knock that we get about Christianity, right? That it's just a bunch of rules and just a bunch of regulations. That is not what's happening here. Look, look at what is happening here, because this is really where we're going to hang for the rest of the time. We're not going to get too deep into this story. What is happening is that Christ has captured the hearts of so many men and women in this area that their needs and desires have changed completely and that this genuine change in them is reflected in that they're no longer worshiping what they used to worship and they're no longer spending their money on those useless things. Brothers and sisters can you envision a Christianity, a love for God and a group of people in a collection of churches in a region of believers that is so vibrant, that is so powerful that it poses? Using Demetrius is worth a danger to the very establishments who stand against it. That's a powerful thought, isn't it? As a forsaking of sin that is so great, an embracing of God that is so wide reaching that it actually becomes a threat by its very existence to the institutions, to the enterprises, to the shops that promote and profit from the values and practices that are contradictory to it. Oh, Lord, make us a danger like that. Don't you really want us to be that dangerous? We ought to be. It's not unheard of that this should happen, beloved. It's not unthinkable. It's not undoable. It's not impossible. It is actually happened before. And not only just in emphasis. Listen to this. How many bars have you shut down is the question. As to preaches by Methodist pastor Lauren Porter in a in a blog where he cites a March 9th, 1831 article about evangelist Charles Binney, Finney had just concluded a six month series of meetings in Rochester, New York. The meetings often called the world's greatest single revival campaign, led to the closing of the town's theater and taverns, a two thirds drop in crime and a reported 100,000 conversions. Hmm. We need Jesus for what we need. Society needs Jesus. Something similar to this is happening in the Welsh revival. 1904 19 06i read this quotation rather lengthy. It was plainly evident. Now to everybody that God had answered the amazing prayers of his people, and it sent a mighty spiritual upheaval. A sense of the Lord's presence was everywhere. His presence was felt in the homes, on the streets, in the mines, factories and schools, and even in the drinking saloons. So great was his presence felt that even the places of amusement and crowds all became places of holy are many. Were the instances of men entering taverns, ordering drinks, and then turning on their heels and leaving them untouched. Wales, up to this time, was in the grip of football fever. We can appreciate that it was in a different kind of football, but anyway, it was in the grip of football fever when tens of thousands of working class men thought and talked only of one thing. They gambled also on the result of the games. Now the famous football players themselves got converted and joined the open Air Street meetings to testify what glorious things the Lord had done for them. Many of the teams were disbanded as the players got converted and the stadiums were empty. This change, this putting off of the old ways in favor of the new is what the Scottish Minister Thomas Chalmers called the explosive power of a new affection. The explosive power of a new affection, love of God and love for God displaces one's love for the world, one's love for the self, one's love for the things of this world and the result is a change in how a person lives, not out of some dreadful sense of duty and trying to be good enough for God, but in response to the amazing grace of God that rescues guilty sinners and puts our feet on the right paths and leads us to eternal life, that's what's happening in the Christians, in ethicists might there be some implications for the Christians and elsewhere? I think so. Let me share a few with you. Five, actually. First, we have seen this already. The influence of the Christians in emphasis was both seen and heard. It was seen and heard. And you know what? With the growing hostility towards Christianity these days, some will be tempted in order to avoid trouble, in order to avoid conflict, to say and do as little as possible so that we might not get noticed, so that we might not be singled out to fly under the radar, to not make any waves, to stay hunkered down in our foxholes. You can say this any number of ways. You know what I'm getting at. The reality is that society wants to intimidate the Christians into and I'm not saying there's some massive conspiracy out there, by the way. Don't get confused. All right. This is this this is how the flesh operates. It stands in contrast to the things of God. And it wants to squelch, it wants to put down it wants to stop the things of God. And that is what the culture does. It wants you to feel like you are wrong or you are odd to believe in Jesus and he doesn't want you to say anything about it and doesn't want your good works to be seen. Why is that what Jesus said that let your light shine before men in such a way that people see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven. If you are seen for your good works, you can give glory to God. But if you're worried and you lay low and you fly under the radar, you won't be seen and you won't be heard. There's a temptation to do that. It's real. I don't know if you would acknowledge it or not, but I believe it is real. Just like peer pressure is real. And if you ask ten out of ten teenagers, if they feel peer pressure, they know not at all. It's real. This pressure for us to not be seen, to not be heard. How how though, if we fall for it, how does it square with what Jesus calls us to in terms of being sold a light? If I'm not going to be seen it, I'm not going to be heard because light is meant to be shown, isn't it? Jesus said that again in the Sermon on the Mount. No. One light a candle puts it under a bushel basket. Don't do that. Let your light shine before men. Same thing, same principle. Salt is meant to preserve. Salt is meant to add flavor. How are we going to do that if we withdraw from the world, if we stay away from what we can't? In other words, we can't be obedient to Jesus if we're not willing to be seen and we're not going to be heard as Christians. So we got to first live in minister in such a way as that. We are seen and heard No shame, no fear. Second, we must be willing to risk a disturbance. I know we try to be civil. We ought to be kind, but we still need to risk be willing to risk a disturbance. I'm not saying that we should run out and cause problems, but we should be okay when the problems come. As Paul was, we read through the Book of Acts. It happens a lot when the gospel is faithfully preached is going to be some opposition. There's going to be some pushback, there's going to be some trouble. We have to be willing to risk a disturbance. I heard just recently of a grandparent who is a believer who was having a conversation with the grandchild, who's not a believer. In fact, the grandchild announced that she did not believe in God at all. And a pastor asked this Christian grandparent, what did you say in response to that? And the response was, I didn't say anything. I didn't want to create a disturbance. And that is not an uncommon conversation and it is not an uncommon response. But beloved sometimes to be faithful will need to be risking that disturbance. Have you noticed, beloved home, how many who opposed the gospel have little trouble saying so? Why are we so timid and afraid to speak what we believe? Do we value our peace at the dinner table more than we value our loved ones? Eternal state? Are we afraid of what others will think of us? It is good to be considerate of the opinions of others we ought to be, but not to care for them at the expense of speaking truth and love. Kevin Young offers a timely word on this. He says, To survive as a Christian, we must die to the approval of others. Put another way, we must live for the approval of God. Our Lord calls us to be salt in light. He sends us into the world with this mission. Occasionally, doing this is going to create a disturbance, as it did for him, as it has done for the Apostle Paul's, have been studying him, working his way through the book of Acts here. We have to be willing to risk a disturbance. Third, we must be okay, or at least become okay with being called dangerous. I've been around long enough to say I never would have believed there would come a day when the faith I hold dear would be counted as dangerous in this country. And I know it's kind of dangerous in other countries. We that's been a long time, but not here, not now. And yet that is the case. If living and advocating for what the scripture says is true and is right and is noble, makes us dangerous, then could we be dangerous unashamedly, Please. It's all right to be dangerous. I don't think we can shrink back because of accusations delivered by modern day democracies who really only want like him, their way of life preserved and their way of life promoted. As if we have done anything wrong, we should not shrink back from that. No matter what people may say. It is not harmful. It is not unloving, it is not unkind, it is not immoral, it is not hateful to stand up and declare that the commands of our Creator God, are good for us. That is what the Bible teaches. And we have to keep saying that no matter who, who thinks it's right or wrong, we should not be convinced otherwise. It might be new to American Christians to be called dangerous. But as our text attests, this is not a new phenomenon for the Christian church. The church has been slandered. The church has been opposed, the church has been persecuted, the church has been accused. And sometimes rightly, by the way, the church has not been perfect. But not by a long stretch. But we have been accused and slandered and opposed from the beginning of the church. We must become okay with being called dangerous, and we must end now. Because what is the tendency when somebody calls you dangerous, you want to prove to them that you're not? Oh, no, no, no. We're not like this and we're not like that. And after a while, you look and you're taken the edges right off of Christianity to make it acceptable, to make it fit in with some other worldly philosophy and idea. And you take in the gospel, you take in the heart rate out of it. Ours is a dangerous religion. Christianity is dangerous to someone who wants to be their own sovereign, to someone who thinks she or he can save herself himself. Christianity is dangerous in that regard, not in the way that it's being portrayed out there today. But listen, don't be afraid of someone says that Christianity is dangerous. In fact, beloved, get used to it. Get used to it. Fourth, we must be serious about being Christians. How did the how did the vision Christians impact their society? By living holy lives? By living obedient lives. There had been a strengthening of the Christian community. First of all. But that is not only how the Gospel spread. Let me read to you from James Montgomery Bush. I just jumped in the middle of that quotation. There had been a strengthening of the Christian community. First of all, that is not only had the gospel spread so that many had become Christians, but the Christians had become serious about being Christians. Maybe that is where we ought to start when we think in terms of social reform. Today, with the transformation of Christians over that, if you would think about that, open your heart and mind to the possibilities here. Are there ways in which you may be inadvertently even propping up on godliness, supporting values or practices is contrary to the faith you profess, the entertainment that you choose, your subscriptions, your online habits, how you spend your time on the Lord's Day, at least one person's recipe for revival is to draw a circle, step into it, and ask the Lord to start his work right there inside that circle. Let's not be so worried about what's going on in everybody else's life, but let's just get it squared away here. God, begin the work in me. That's a good picture, isn't it? And that's a good place for us to start if we're going to make an impact on society, we've got to be serious about living the Christian life. The Christians constituted a danger to the Idol making industry in Ephesus not by targeting it, but by ceasing to patronize it. To be blunt, brothers and sisters, we aren't going to shut down anything ungodly if we are the ones keeping it open. Fifth, we must recognize what is at stake. What if we capitulate? What if we faint in the face of persecution? Why was Paul willing to enter the the riot the theater in Ephesus and had to be held back? Do you think about that? Paul was ready. There's this is massive crowd and they're screaming for his head. And he's like, I'm going in. You go in, you're like, I can find a way around that. Why is he willing to do that? Why is he willing to go in and has to be has to be held back? No, you can't go in there because he trusted God for his life, because he believed in God's providential care. And he knows that I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to risk my life if that's what it takes. He was willing to risk his life to tell the truth about the eternal consequences of sin, of the just wrath of God and the judgment of sinners that is to come. Paul would risk his life to get that message across of the divine rescue afforded sinners in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There's a lot at stake. Eternal life is at stake, and Paul is willing to put his life in the crosshairs in order to save others. Does that remind you of anybody? This is our great savior who does the same thing, who being in the very form of God for not equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but empty himself, taking on the form of a man, a servant, humbled himself even to death. Paul's following Jesus and then following Jesus takes him into the lion's den, so to speak. That's where he's going. You know why? Because God has his life. And if God wants his life to end there, then so be it. All Glory be to God. And if God doesn't want his life to end there, then it simply isn't going to end. He's going to move on. Why be afraid when God hold you in his hands, when your life is his? There is no reason. Listen, beloved, there will always be opposition. There will always be someone or someone's trying to sway people into believing what is not true. And try trying to get people to believe law is eternal. Life is at stake. We have to preach the gospel. There will always be opposition. There will always be liars. Time in history will expose these fraudsters for what they are, will expose without a doubt the the the kernel nature, the destructiveness of the heresies that they are spreading. That stuff is going to become evident. It will be made known, but not before they mislead many into eternal condemnation for failing to hear or receive the good news of God's salvation. And in Christ. Artemus was great. Artemus was mighty to save. That's what Demetrius was saying. That's what the crowd was saying. That's what everybody in the theater is chanting. The Temple of Artemis is one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world should be preserved at all costs. That's what Demetrius thought. But what has become of it now? One call and a bunch of debris. That's the greatness of the world. It is for our own good that Jesus warns us not to lay up treasures in this world where Moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal. But to lay up treasures in heaven where these things cannot happen, too many people come to the end of their lives only to realize they've missed it. They've bought something that in the end wasn't satisfying, wasn't saving, wasn't enduring. It wasn't what they thought it was. And that's why Jesus warns us. Luke 21, verse 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. God's truth remains God's truth is eternal. It will not change. It will not pass away. So we must keep in mind what is at stake. Why we must not relent. We must not shrink back from preaching the good news of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine a scenario where the collective faith and practice of the Christians in Elsworth would profoundly influence the moral and economic trajectory of the city where so many citizens would, by God's grace, exchange wickedness for goodness that the trades supporting the wickedness would be in danger of going out of business. I can. I can. If believers are wanting to be seen and heard willing to create a disturbance, comfortable with being called dangerous, serious about their Christian walk and mindful of what is at stake in the preaching of the Gospel. Our Father. We are so grateful for this passage in Acts Lord. It is so easy for us to lose hope, to become frustrated, overwhelmed, to see the rising tide of darkness around us, to think nothing can be done, to feel isolated and alone. We are reminded today from your holy word that you are a powerful God, able to do much more than we could imagine or think. And we praise you for that, Father. We thank you for loving us the way that you do and for making us new creations. We thank you for the power that is within us. Explosive power of a new affection. And may it be great. The greatest of all, Father God, we ask that we might love you more and we might love you better. Not only us here in this little place on the corner of these couple of streets, Lord, but our brothers and sisters throughout this city, throughout our county, in our region, that we might join arms linking with them to be a true force for good that marches forward, not in hate, not in arbitrary discrimination, but in love with hearts committed to justice, full of compassion, willing to risk, eager to serve, to be glorified in this body. Here in the Christians in this town. Use us, Father, we pray and ask you to change the direction of a society. That'd be your will. It is our desire. In Christ name we pray. Amen.