Introduction
We have
seen the apostle Paul become a Christian, turn from a life of persecuting
Christians. We have seen him learn to do ministry and have early success near
his hometown. We saw him at Antioch as a leader there, we saw him out on his
first trip to go plant churches around modern day Turkey. We saw him take a
second journey where he went through Turkey to those same churches and then he
went down into Greece. Last week we finished up with Paul coming to the end of
his second journey. That is where we will pick up this week where he goes on
the road yet again (for a third time). This is Paul’s third missionary journey.
Remember
last week we left him at Antioch.
After
spending some time in Antioch,
The year
here is about 53 AD.
Paul
went back through Galatia and Phrygia, visiting and strengthening all the
believers.
He is
moving back through churches he planted on the first missionary journey. He
started his second journey by going back through these churches, encouraging
the believers there and he starts his third one going right back through those
same cities, right down that road, right through his hometown of Tarsus. It
never talks about what he did at Tarsus, kind of mysterious, Paul’s
relationship with his family and whatnot. He moves through here through the
churches he planted, encouraging the believers, he didn’t just plant churches
and leave them behind.
Meanwhile,
a Jew named Apollos, an eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well, had
arrived in Ephesus from Alexandria in Egypt.
While Paul
was on the way west from Antioch, at Ephesus some things are happening.
Remember, at the end of the second journey Paul made a brief stop here, did a
little bit of teaching and said he would come back if God wills. He left his
fellow Christian workers Priscilla and Aquila (husband and wife power couple).
He leaves them there at Ephesus to apparently try and get things going there.
Ancient
Ephesus
Let’s talk about Ephesus, that will
be our location for all the action happening tonight. Ephesus is an
unbelievable archeological site. F.F. Bruce calls it an archeologist’s dream.
They have excavated an entire main street heading through town. It heads to a
famous ancient structure called the Library of Celsus which would have been
built a little bit after Paul was here at Ephesus, very famous structure.
Ephesus is the third (or fourth) largest city in the empire depending on who
you read, about a quarter million people. It’s either that or Antioch where
Paul is coming from. Alexandria is the second most important city in the
empire. Next to Rome we have the three major cities in all of the Roman empire
mentioned in these two verses; Antioch, Ephesus, and Alexandra. Strabo said,
‘Ephesus was second in importance only to Rome.’
It was a
major venter of religion, especially of the worship of the goddess Artemis. It
was also a center of magic. I am not talking about Magic the Gathering
here…This is the real kind of magic, the kind with spells, the kind where you
communicate with demons and try to get evil spirits to do your will. In fact,
remember how at the church at Corinth that we studied last week, ‘To
Corinthianize’ became synonymous with living a raw party lifestyle. The phrase
‘Ephesian writings’ came to be known as a term for magic scrolls, magic papyri,
that sort of thing. They were so famous for their magic there. This is right
what Paul is going to walk into, that becomes important in our narrative.
It is also
an important financial center, very wealthy here, very influential. As a free
and wealthy city Rome gave a lot of autonomy to Ephesus. They were not directly
under the rule of Rome, they were kind of self-governed. That freedom was
limited and if you really messed up bad, Rome could come in and take away your
freedom, we will see that come up in this story as well.
Apollos
So, they
are at Ephesus and it says that Apollos comes from Alexandria. He came by boat;
this is a port town. Today it is about 7 miles from the Mediterranean because
the river flowing through Ephesus would drop a bunch of silt and they would
have to dredge the harbor to keep it a port town. By this time here, the city
was going on the decline, they were starting to lose their port, they were
pretty dependent on religious tourism, that also becomes important in our
story. At the time, you could sail right up to Ephesus and Apollos lands there.
It says he is from Alexandria, a major center of learning.
an
eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well
He was a
good teacher.
He had
been taught the way of the Lord, and he taught others about Jesus with an
enthusiastic spirit and with accuracy.
He was a
Christian teacher; this guy was probably a believer. He is looking pretty good.
Enthusiastic, good speaker, accurate, teaches about Jesus. There is only one
problem, he is a little confused on some things.
However,
he knew only about John’s baptism.
Luke
doesn’t tell us what exactly the nature was of his confusion but John the
Baptist was such a major influential teacher that by this time, John the
Baptist and Jesus had both been dead for 20 years and yet we still find people
here at Ephesus that had some sort of mix of stuff John the Baptist taught (who
pointed the way forward to Jesus) and stuff that Jesus taught. In fact, you
have some people who have only heard of John and who hadn’t heard of Jesus who
we will meet later. He had some deficiency in his teaching, Luke doesn’t give
us too much detail about what that is, I guess it wasn’t that important. What
is important is this,
When
Priscilla and Aquila heard him preaching boldly in the synagogue, they took
him aside and explained the way of God even more accurately.
They saw
real potential in this guy but saw that he was off base on some things. They
didn’t embarrass him or get up and try to debate him. Apparently, Apollos took
it from them. He was a good teacher, he wasn’t just a good speaker, he knew his
word, was clear, good at apologetics, enthusiastic, but he was also humble
enough to learn. You need humility if you are going to become a good teacher of
the word and he was willing to learn.
Apollos
had been thinking about going to Achaia,
That’s
Corinth, the province that Corinth is in. It’s obvious that he wants to go
there, it is also a very important city.
and the brothers and sisters in Ephesus
encouraged him to go.
Corinth
can use all the help that they can get, you should definitely go there.
They wrote
to the believers in Achaia, asking them to welcome him. (cf. 2 Cor 3:1-2)
Sometimes
if you didn’t know a group you would need a letter of recommendation. We have
this for job interviews or if you are applying for a scholarship, you might
need references or recommendations. They knew the people at Corinth knew
Priscilla and Aquila (remember they were there last week with Paul) and they
wrote letters of recommendations to get Apollos through the door. This isn’t a
crackpot teacher, this guy knows his stuff, you should listen to him.
Later on,
Paul is like, ‘look I’m not like other teachers who need letters for
recommendation. I don’t need a letter, you guys are my letter, I led you all to
Christ’ (2 Cor 3). But Apollos apparently did need a letter of recommendation
and they gave him one, and he sailed away.
When he
arrived there, he proved to be of great benefit to those who, by God’s grace,
had believed.
God used
him powerfully there. One thing he did,
He
refuted the Jews with powerful arguments in public debate.
Trained in
rhetoric, apparently.
Using
the Scriptures, he explained to them that Jesus was the Messiah.
Just like
Paul was doing last time.
Apollos
was a really sharp speaker, very charismatic, and as it turns out, the canal
Corinthian believers and they used this as one more reason to fight with each
other. People were fighting about who was better… This makes more sense now,
this debate going on right in the first pages in the letter to the Corinthians.
Some of
you are saying, “I am a follower of Paul.” Others are saying, “I follow
Apollos,” or “I follow Peter,” or “I follow only Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:12)
He’s like
look, ‘we are all servants of Christ. I planted, Apollos watered, God caused
the growth. Why are you fighting about this? This is just evidence of your
immaturity.’ But you see Apollos going there preaching about Christ.
This is
our introduction to Apollos who appears other places, but I think he is an
example of a good, humble, sharp, knowledgeable of the scriptures, bible
teacher.
While
Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions
He is
making his way through southern Turkey; through these churches he has planted.
Remember on his second journey he wanted to go to Ephesus but the Spirit
blocked him and so he had to go another way? Now he gets to do there.
Baptism
of the Holy Spirit
until
he reached Ephesus, on the coast, where he found several believers.
But as
Paul starts talking to these believers, he senses that something seems a little
funky, what exactly did they believe, it seems like something is wrong here, so
he starts to trouble shoot what is happening with these so-called believers.
“Did
you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” he asked them.
“No,”
they replied, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
These guys
seem a little more confused that Apollos, right? He was teaching the way about
Christ accurately; these guys have never even heard about the Holy Spirit. This
is like being like, ‘so you guys are married, something seems wrong here,
you’re not acting like it, did you have sex when you got married?’ And they’re
like, ‘we haven’t’ even heard there is such a thing as sex, what is this thing
you are speaking of?’ And he’s like, ‘okay, now we are talking.’
“Then
what baptism did you experience?” he asked.
And
they replied, “The baptism of John.”
Paul sees
the problem here.
Paul
said, “John’s baptism called for repentance from sin.
Remember
John the Baptist went around baptizing people, that’s how he got his name.
But
John himself told the people to believe in the one who would come later, meaning
Jesus.”
It doesn’t
sound like they knew who Jesus was or the Holy Spirit. They do not sound like
Christian believers. John did teach that the one coming after him that he would
baptize with the Holy Spirit, he just baptized with water. The guy coming after
will bring the Holy Spirit, that is the one that he pointed to. ‘He must become
greater and I must become less,’ he says. They apparently had only heard part
of John’s teachings and they hadn’t heard the full set. So, Paul explains Jesus
to them and teaches them about Jesus and apparently, he leads them to Christ.
As soon
as they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Remember
what Jesus said? ‘Go into the world and baptize in the name of the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ That’s what Paul is doing here.
Then
when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke
in other tongues and prophesied. (cf. Acts 2, 8, 10)
Just like
we saw with the Jews in Acts 2, and the Samaritans in Acts 8 and the Gentiles
in Acts 10. This looks like maybe another one of those, it is kind of a weird
story here. But they speak in tongues just like they did in all of those other
cases, probably affirming the teaching and ministry of Paul here.
There
were about twelve men in all.
One thing
we need to point out here is that this is different than Pentecostal teaching
on what is known as the second baptism. There is a swath of Christianity that
teaches that when you become a Christian that is all well and good and receive
the Holy Spirit at that point, but then you might come to a point ten or twenty
years later where you get Spirit Baptized and that is where you speak in
tongues. You are kind of like a second-class Christian unless you take this
upgrade to the next level. They use passages like this to support that
teaching.
There are
some problems here. For one, they had never heard of the Holy Spirit and they
didn’t know Jesus. This was not Christians who were laboring along and then got
spirit baptized, these were not even believers, this was a transitionary time
where it is moving from the Old Testament to the New testament. There was also
no delay between their belief and their speaking in tongues. They got baptized
and then immediately Paul lays hands on them and they speak in tongues. It is
also a narrative passage and narrative passages describe what happen, not
prescribe what is supposed to happen. We need to look at the teaching portions
of scripture to see what is supposed to happen. That is why we have the
epistles and the teachings of the apostles preserved in that way. Scripture
teaches that all Christians have the Holy Spirit.
Rom.
8:9 – Remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them
do not belong to him at all.
The moment
you believe, the moment you put your trust in Jesus, you are forgiven for all
of your sins and because you are cleansed now, God can send his Spirit to live
inside of you, a person being, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you.
That is a significant event. He is never going to leave, he is never moving out
according to scripture, that is permanent. Christians, therefore, if there is
someone living inside of you, shouldn’t you have daily personal experience of
that person being? Yes! You should. The Holy Spirit does all kind of things in
our lives. He assures of our sonship/daughtership before God. He illuminates
the scriptures. Do you ever wonder why you read the scriptures and you can’t
tell what they mean? And then you become a Christian and all of a sudden it
makes sense? It’s the Holy Spirit. He gives Christians spiritual gifts they can
use to serve God; he guides us, he gives us direction in our lives, he
transforms us more and more into the image of Christ. He empowers us to serve
God, he helps us to experience God as he pours our God’s love into our hearts.
This is why we can experience God in a personal way and not as some distant,
abstract, theological concept. He also helps us to pray, because we are weak,
and we don’t know how to pray, and we have the Spirit of prayer. These are the
sorts of things we should be experiencing as Christians. This is your right,
this is the blessing of God, the greatest thing about the New Covenant.
And so,
what if I don’t? Some Christians are like, ‘well I read about the Holy Spirit
in the book, I have heard people talk about him, but no personal experience.’
One possibility is that you don’t have the Holy Spirit. Maybe you are not even
a Christian according to Romans 8:9. Maybe you need to call out to God and say
you want to accept Christ, that you want the Holy Spirit indwelling you, and
Jesus says, ‘The Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask, generously.’
Maybe you are a Christian who has the Holy Spirit but just don’t have any
ongoing experience of the Holy Spirit, he is not a very real present thing in
your life, I guess that is possible. If that is the case, I would talk to God
about that. I would also talk to a mature Christian believer about that and
tell them that you want to have this. Paul commands the Ephesians, ‘be filled
with the Holy Spirit.’ Filling is not where you get more of the Holy Spirit,
but it is where the Holy Spirit gets more of you. The Holy Spirit is important, he is the life
blood of the Christian and at the center of everything.
Paul’s
Ephesian Ministry
Then
Paul went to the synagogue and preached boldly for the next three months,
Like his
normal practice he goes, and he talks to the Jews there. They let him go three
months. Sometimes he doesn’t even make it a couple of weeks.
arguing
persuasively about the Kingdom of God. But some became stubborn, rejecting his
message and publicly speaking against the Way.
We see a
polarization like always happens as well. Some are responding to the message,
others are getting more and more angry, it is offensive to the religious
person, to think that grace alone is the only way to salvation, to think the
way of Christ is the way to God. That is offensive to the proud religious
person and so some didn’t like what he had to say. “The Way” is what they
called it. Paul finally decides to leave the synagogue like he has done before
in other cities.
So Paul
left the synagogue and took the believers with him. Then he held daily
discussions at the lecture hall of Tyrannus.
We have
not uncovered this yet at Ephesus, there is a lot more digging to do there
though, but that is where he went. What is this place? It belonged to a guy named
Tyrannus which literally means, ‘the tyrant.’ It sounds like he was the teacher
here, I don’t know if that was a nickname his students gave him, but if you
were a teacher you needed a place. This was his place, it sounds like where he
taught, maybe he just owned it and rented it out to teachers. Normally, they
would teach lectures in the morning until it got too hot. So, what Paul would
probably do, a lot of people think, is that he would work in the mornings as a
tentmaker and then at 11am he would drop his tent stuff and would teach all
afternoon. Some say from maybe 11-4, about 5 hours of lecture when most people
were resting. One commentator says that there were more people asleep at 1pm
than at 1am in ancient Ephesus because they took their siesta in the middle of
the day. Paul, though, he would be awake with his Christian workers that he was
training there and they were hitting the books. In fact, he goes on to say he
was doing this for years, probably six days a week. That is some serious teaching
of the word.
This
went on for the next two years, so that people throughout the province
of Asia—both Jews and Greeks—heard the word of the Lord. (cf. Rev 1:4)
All these
cities in the area around Ephesus, churches started to get planted there, people
met Christ, new disciples started to be made there. If you read Revelation 1:4,
he says, ‘to the churches in Asia’ and then he lists them. He starts with
Ephesus and then the next six, you can travel right up the road from Ephesus,
go clockwise and you will find each of the next six cities that are the
recipients of the book of Revelation. There is also Colossae, we have a letter
to that church as well. Significant unleashing of the power of the Spirit going
on, there is a real spiritual movement taking place here simply with churches
meeting from house to house and also a centralized training center, equipping
and teaching the word to these believers. One thing that we see, as awesome as
the Holy Spirit is, spiritual movements can’t survive on the Holy Spirit alone,
what we also need is the Spirit of Truth, he is the Spirit of truth, he
inspired the scriptures, we need to invest deeply in the scriptures as well.
This is why so many of us here have invested our time learning the word. This
is why a lot of people in this room have spent a year and half straight, three
hours on a Wednesday night, in the lecture hall of Tyrannus, learning theology,
learning the practical application of that theology. This is why so many of us
spend hours each week meeting with another believer one on one to learn to the
scriptures, to study books together, to talk about it, and then turning around
and pouring into others. That’s what they did. Paul doesn’t look like he got
too much outside of Ephesus. When he writes the letter to the Colossians, it is
obvious that he has never been there, the dude that he trained planted that
church though and the one at Laodicea probably. These guys were being equipped,
learning the word, and going out and teaching that word to other people as well.
This movement of the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit and the power of the
living and active scriptures. This is textbook right here.
This is
about as good as it gets in Paul’s ministry, this three-year stint that he
stays at Ephesus. He also wrote the letter to the Corinthians here; the letter
of 1 Corinthians is written during his time at Ephesus. If you have read it you
know that there were a lot of problems there, so he is trying to juggle both.
On the one had he is getting reports from Corinth, he even makes a quick trip
to Corinth, he calls it a painful visit, sometime here when he is at Ephesus.
Then he writes the letter to the Corinthians, there are problems there. They
don’t trust Paul. On the one hand, he has an awesome movement at Ephesus and
trying to get things on track in Corinth. Luke really doesn’t tell us much
about these two years at Corinth, but what we do know that this was a time of
great strides for the gospel but also great opposition from God’s enemy. You
read about revivals and you think it sounds like it’s awesome all the time, and
you talk to people who are in them and they say no, you feel anxious, that
there are blows and counter blows. God’s enemy isn not going to allow anything
to go unopposed, Paul writes to the Corinthians about what is going on there.
I will
be staying here at Ephesus until the Festival of Pentecost. There is a
wide-open door for a great work here, although many oppose me. I fought wild
beasts in Ephesus… (1 Corinthians 16:8-9, 1 Corinthians 15:3)
When God
opens the door you go through it, when God makes a hole in the offensive line
you run through that hole as fast as you can. But at the same time, he talks
about the opposition, don’t forget about the linebackers waiting to level
whoever goes through that hole. This is spiritual warfare at the center of
magic in the whole part of the Roman empire, the place famous for its magic
scrolls. I don’t think he is talking about literal wild beasts; I think he is
talking about his opponents. They were ferocious, wild beast-like in their
opposition. Of course, he knew it was God’s enemy Satan that was behind all of
this. He shares more about this with the Corinthians,
We do
not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced
in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability
to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received
the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves
but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)
Deep
depression, he is so weighed down, they didn’t think that they were going to
make it. Paul says that even in this time of great spiritual advancement, God
is still at work in his life, he is still breaking Paul, he is still teaching
Paul the value of suffering and how that suffering should drive him closer to
Christ. That is the value of suffering in our lives, don’t expect Christian
work without opposition or suffering, don’t think you are doing something wrong
because you are experiencing opposition. We must fight through, sometimes for
year, and really it is a battle that we won’t lay down our armor until we lay
down our lives, at least that is my hope.
God
gave Paul the power to perform unusual miracles. When handkerchiefs or
aprons [lit. sweat rags] that had merely touched his skin were placed on sick
people, they were healed of their diseases, and evil spirits were expelled.
Not just
everyday miracles, Luke is explicit on the skin thing, using a term that is
used only once in the New Testament. What is going on here? Gross. Something
similar did happen to Jesus, this lady just kind of burst through the crowd at
one point in his ministry, she just touched him, and she was healed. But Jesus
stopped the procession and made her come forward to tell her that it was her
faith that healed her there. I don’t really see anything like this, I guess it
is why it is an unusual miracle. It makes sense in the center of magic though.
It doesn’t even really say Paul was behind it, he wasn’t pushing it. It
literally says that they carried away his sweat rags and put him on people. You
wonder if it’s 11am and time to close up shop at Tentmakers-R-Us and he goes
back to teach and he comes back and he’s like, ‘Ah who stole my sweat rag?
Those crazy kids.’ It just says it happened. It’s obviously God affirming what
he is doing here, it also goes on to explicitly denounce magic, so it isn’t
that. Very different from modern healers who will sell their prayer cloths.
‘For a donation of whatever you want, but what you give really shows how much
faith you have, and you will get even more back if you give more money. Send
away from one of your prayer cloths.’ That’s not what we are talking about
here, he didn’t charge for these. This was just something that God was doing
here, not a way to bilk old people out of their social security check or
anything like that. This is an unusual miracle here at Ephesus.
Speaking
of unusual spiritual activity…
A group
of Jews was traveling from town to town casting out evil spirits.
We have
travelling Jewish exorcists.
They
tried to use the name of the Lord Jesus in their incantation,
They are
all about the magic formulas, spells, and potions, and ‘it looks like Jesus
works on some things to let’s throw that in there and use that to cast out a
demon and see what it gets us.’
saying,
“I command you in the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, to come out!”
Seven
sons of Sceva, a leading priest, were doing this.
Apparently,
this was some kind of family business, there dad was a prominent priest.
But one
time when they tried it, the evil spirit replied, “I know Jesus, and I know
Paul, but who are you?”
It’s funny
now, I don’t think they were laughing. These spirits are already pretty angry I
imagine, that Christianity is moving through and driving out the darkness. They
had such a foothold in this area. This one was so mad that,
Then
the man with the evil spirit leaped on them, overpowered them, and attacked
them with such violence that they fled from the house, naked and battered.
Seven
dignified, Jewish travelling exorcists go into the house, seven bleeding, naked
Jewish exorcists run out of the house. Demons can possess people, they know
about Jesus, they also know about followers of Jesus and they know who is not,
like these guys. It’s not about a magic word. It’s about a relationship with
Christ. Does Jesus know you? Is his Spirit dwelling inside of you? Are you His?
“Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world,” John writes.
The
story of what happened spread quickly all through Ephesus, to Jews and Greeks
alike.
A
solemn fear descended on the city, and the name of the Lord Jesus was greatly
honored.
This
became famous.
Many
who had become believers confessed their sinful practices. A number of them who
had been practicing sorcery brought their incantation books and burned them
at a public bonfire.
What some
think here, is that these were not brand-new converts, but it almost sounds
like these guys had become Christians, but they still had their secret magic
scrolls tucked away in that chest back in the corner of their room. They were
still kind of doing both and then they saw this, and they realized that this is
true, they can’t be hiding this anymore, they can’t have this secret life with
the occult and also be a professing Christian, it is one or the other. God sees
it all as well. So finally, they took these scrolls and they brought them out
and they burned them. There were apparently some wealthy believers. You see the
size of the church and the wealth here by the next statement.
The
value of the books was several million dollars.
Whoa. One
lesson here is that the occult is real and needs to be taken seriously. It is
not surprise that in this center of occult magic stronghold we see the book of
Ephesians give the longest teaching on spiritual warfare in the New Testament. Paul
says, ‘Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it is against the unseen
forces of spiritual darkness in the heavenly places.’ They knew that all too
well and Paul had seen it with his own eyes. Some of you have experience with
this, with the occult. It needs to be renounced. There needs to be a decisive
break with it. If you have stuff, burn it, destroy it, they didn’t just put
this stuff up on Ebay or have a garage sale. They weren’t like, ‘I spent a lot
of money on these scrolls I might as well get something out of it.’ They were
like, ‘no, this has got to go.’ Must be renounced. Explicitly renounced.
Honestly, if you have people, parents or grandparents who are really into the
occult, I would talk with God about that and have a direct renunciation there.
“I want to renounce this; I give this completely over to you. I know Jesus now
and this is yours and I want to protect me from this.’ He is the only one who
can protect you. Some of us walk around terrified of the occult, you need to
get linked up with the only one who can save you.
There
might be broader application to this as well. It could be that some of us here
are Christians, but we still have our secret sin, we aren’t telling anyone,
it’s hidden away, and we think we can do both, no. It’s time to come clean with
that as well, God sees that. It’s time to make a break and live wholeheartedly
for Jesus Christ. And it says,
So the
message about the Lord spread widely and had a powerful effect.
This
revival is just exploding here.
Afterward
Paul felt compelled by the Spirit to go over to Macedonia and Achaia before
going to Jerusalem.
He is
basically going to make a tour of the churches from the second missionary
journey.
“And
after that,” he said, “I must go on to Rome!”
He has to
go to Jerusalem because he has a collection he is taking to the Jews there. He
will go to Rome, but not exactly in the way Paul thinks he is going to go to
Rome. More on that later in Acts. In the meantime, though, he stayed at
Ephesus,
He sent
his two assistants, Timothy and Erastus, ahead to Macedonia while he stayed
awhile longer in the province of Asia.
Well this
is when trouble started to break out.
About
that time, serious trouble developed in Ephesus concerning the Way. It began
with Demetrius, a silversmith who had a large business manufacturing silver
shrines of the Greek goddess Artemis. He kept many craftsmen busy.
Paul is
really starting to hit these people in the pocketbook. The idol makers are
starting to grumble that no one is buying their stuff anymore. The Temple of
Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Four times larger
than the Parthenon at Athens. It had 100 marble pillars; each was 56 feet tall.
Massive temple. These idol makers made statues of Artemis, there are two of
these statues of Artemis in the archeological museum at Ephesus. She was a
goddess of fertility.
Pausanias,
writing in the middle of the second century A.D., states: “All cities worship
Artemis of Ephesus and individuals hold her honor above all the gods.”
…Pausanias informs us that this cult was the most widely followed in the
ancient world (Descript. 4.31.8), with some thirty-three worship sites from
Spain to Syria in the Empire (Strabo, Geog. 4.1.5). The inscriptional evidence…
portrays Artemis as one who answers prayer… she is proclaimed as savior and
seen as having lordship over the supernatural powers, including demons.
Witherington,
Ben, The Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 586-7.
We see,
Christianity was getting so big at Ephesus that it was starting to make a dent
in the biggest religious cult in the world. You can see how he is presenting
Jesus as a rival to Artemis who is supposed to do all those things that Jesus
actually did. We’ve got Demetrius making his speech to his fellow craftsmen,
But as
you have seen and heard, this man Paul has persuaded many people that handmade
gods aren’t really gods at all.
Isn’t that
self-evident?
And
he’s done this not only here in Ephesus but throughout the entire province!
You can
see the spreading of the word throughout that whole area.
Of
course, I’m not just talking about the loss of public respect for our business.
I’m also concerned that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will lose its
influence and that Artemis—
this
magnificent goddess worshiped throughout the province of Asia and all around
the world—will be robbed of her great prestige!”
And we are
losing a lot of money…
At this
their anger boiled, and they began shouting, “Great is Artemis of the
Ephesians!”
“Great is
Artemis of the Ephesians
Great is
Artemis of the Ephesians, not bad, great!”
Soon
the whole city was filled with confusion. Everyone rushed to the
amphitheater, dragging along Gaius and Aristarchus, [probably the guy from
Thessalonica] who were Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia.
They have
found this amphitheater, 25,000-person capacity. This is what you would have
seen when you walked up to ancient Ephesus. They all rushed here and started
packing out the amphitheater.
Paul
wanted to go in, too, but the believers wouldn’t let him.
They are
holding him back, he’s like, ‘I’m going to go in there and die like Samson.’
Some of
the officials of the province [“Asiarchs”],
Luke again
uses the exact right term. He knew the right term at Philippi, Thessalonica,
Athens, Corinth, and here. Maybe because he was either there or had direct
eyewitness testimony. He knows this stuff, he is a good historian, excellent.
Asiarchs were very wealthy, elected city officials and it says they were,
friends
of Paul,
He was
leading some of the big fish to Christ here at Ephesus as well.
also
sent a message to him, begging him not to risk his life by entering the
amphitheater. Inside, the people were all shouting, some one thing and some another.
Everything was in confusion. In fact, most of them didn’t even know why they
were there.
‘Loud
noises, what are we shouting about?’
The
Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander forward and told him to explain the
situation. [cf. 1 Tim 1:19 & 2 Tim 4:14?]
Is it
possible this is the Alexander from 1 Timothy 1:19 and 2 Timothy 4:14? The
heretic? Who Paul had to kick out of the church and Paul says, ‘watch out for
Alexander the coppersmith who did me much harm.’ It would make sense for him to
be at a smith’s guild, idol makers.
He
motioned for silence and tried to speak.
But
when the crowd realized he was a Jew, they started shouting again
The
anti-Semitism here that you see throughout.
and
kept it up for about two hours: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Great is
Artemis of the Ephesians!”
They were
going around the stadium going “A-R-T-E-M-I-S” They had the t-shirt cannon,
they had the marching band come in to play the Ephesian fight song or whatever,
it was quite the pep rally. There only response to Christianity is just to
shout themselves house.
At last
the mayor [grammateus]
Which is
also exactly the right term.
was
able to quiet them down enough to speak. “Citizens of Ephesus,” he said. “Everyone
knows that Ephesus is the official guardian of the temple of the great Artemis,
whose image fell down to us from heaven.
Official
sponsor of Artemis. We know her image fell down from heaven, right?
Since
this is an undeniable fact, you should stay calm and not do anything rash. You
have brought these men here, but they have stolen nothing from the temple and
have not spoken against our goddess. If Demetrius and the craftsmen have a case
against them, the courts are in session and the officials can hear the case at
once. Let them make formal charges. And if there are complaints about other
matters, they can be settled in a legal assembly. I am afraid we are in danger
of being charged with rioting by the Roman government, since there is no cause
for all this commotion. And if Rome demands an explanation, we won’t know what
to say.” Then he dismissed them, and they dispersed.
That’s the
end of Paul’s time at Ephesus.
Conclusions
First of
all, what do we see at Ephesus? We saw the importance of the Holy Spirit. We
need to have the Holy Spirit; without the Holy Spirit you are not a Christian.
We should also have a regular person experience of the Holy Spirit. It should
be a regular part of our lives as Christians, if not you should talk to the
Lord about that, talk to a mature believer about it too.
We saw the
importance of teaching the scriptures as well, the Holy Spirit itself is not
enough to power this movement. It is the Holy Spirit and the word of God. They
set Apollos on the right track with the word of God, he explained, he taught
the twelve disciples of John the Baptist, he taught for two years there after
three months in the synagogue and the word of God was going out powerfully,
turning the hole area upside down,. It is worth investing in the word of God
and we need to keep that at the center of our instruction of others and our
ministry.
We saw the
reality of spiritual warfare. This was a town that was financially devastated,
people were pumping so much money into the fear of the occult, trying to
protect themselves. The spiritual realm is real, but we see even more than
that, it is the importance of having Jesus in your corner. That is something
you can have tonight, you can get Jesus’s Spirit to come and dwell inside of
you and then you can say, ‘greater is the one who is in me than the one who is
in the world.’