Acts 19:21-41
When we left Paul last time he was leading a major revival in Ephesus. People from all over the city were coming to Christ, and burning their old spell books and other magical items. Things were looking really good in Ephesus for Paul and his team.
This week Luke starts off with two verses that abruptly change the Paul’s direction and set up the last third of the book of Acts. In Acts 19:21-22 Luke tells us what Paul plans for the next leg of his trip and that he sets his eyes on Rome by way of Jerusalem. If you know your biblical geography well, you would notice he that the route Paul proposes is a bit odd. He decides to in completely the wrong direction first and then turn around and head to Jerusalem.
Luke does not record for us in Acts why Paul decided to use this route, but from the letters that Paul wrote at this time we can piece together the why. Paul is trying to promote unity in the worldwide church. In order to do this he goes to these churches and collects an offering for the church in Jerusalem. The basic idea is that the primarily Jewish church in Jerusalem would feel indebted to the primarily gentile churches that sent the offering, and the gentile churches would come to care for and about the Jewish church.
Paul ends up staying in Ephesus a good while before heading out on this church unity tour, and it appears to be because there were a lot of problems with the church at Corinth at this time. Both first and second Corinthians were written at this time from Ephesus, and there is indication of at least one, if not two more letters written to the Corinthians as part of this. Eventually that problem is resolved and as we will read next time, Paul will head out on his trip to gather the offering and head to Jerusalem.
If you have been reading Acts along with this study, by now you should be ready for what happens next. Acts 19:23 starts a section describing an attack against Paul and his team for preaching Christianity. Demetrius gathers up his fellow craftsman and they begin to plot against Paul. Paul was hitting them where it hurt most, their pocketbooks.
Ephesus was home to the massive temple to the goddess Artemis (aka Diana), and people would travel from all over to come and worship there. While there they would spend money at the local tourist traps on the items that the craftsmen would make, but that was changing. Apparently Christianity was having a large enough impact that this tourist trade was being affected and they were worried about their livelihood.
Demetrius being shrewd enough to know that he could not do anything about it merely by complaining that his sales were down changed his complaint to a more religious one. He uses this complaint to build an emotionally charged crowd, which pours out in to the street. We do not know what his plan ultimately was, but it would be easy to imagine that this was a lynch mob looking to kill Paul.
Paul wanted to go speak to this crowd, likely to attempt to preach Jesus to them and attempt to turn this into a massive win for the Kingdom of God, but his fellow workers wisely prevented him from this likely suicidal move. Even the pagan rulers of the city told him to steer clear of the crowd, and it appears that Paul wisely listen to their advice.
After this hand been going on for a while, an official of the town address the crowd. This official would be roughly the equivalent of a mayor. This mayor knows his people well and is quickly able to get their attention by uplifting the Goddess they were defending. Once he has their attention the calls out Demetrius and makes him the fool in this matter. The mayor tells them that if the Christians had done any wrong the courts were in session he should file his complaint formerly. He also points out that no one has any grievance against the Christians because none of them had done anything wrong. He closes by reminding them that their actions were likely to bring down the wrath of Rome on them if word got out, and then dismissed the crowd.
Through this narrative we can see that when Christianity is growing and strong it impacts all areas of culture. There is no halfway about Christianity. If it is real, it impacts everything, even the trinkets you buy when on vacation. The silversmiths in this account figured this out, and that is why they were so eager to stop the evangelism.
The fact that the leaders of the city, who appear to be from a cult that was known for worshiping the Roman Emperor as a god, are listed as friends of Paul tells us that the Christians were for the most part doing nothing wrong. The mayor points this out in Acts 19:37 and Acts 19:40. The Christians were under attack for simply living their lives as Christians.
The question then for us, is if Demetrius and his buddies were alive today would they be gunning for us as Christians? Or would they simply try to sell us some of their mini sliver replicates of the some great pagan holy place? I fear we have so marginalized our faith that Demetrius would have no need for a mob.
If God is really God, and Jesus really died for you, then it should impact your entire life, and not just your Sunday morning schedule. The church is loosing ground in the world and that is due at least in part to the fact that the church looks so much like the rest of the world no one notices it any more. At least here in America you could spend years working closely with someone and never know if they were a Christian or not.
If you are a Christian reading this, ask yourself this, based on how you act and what you do, why would anyone want to take on the commitment of Christianity? To surrender your life to Jesus is a major commitment that most would never do without good cause. They are looking to you and your life to see if it is worth it. So what are you showing them? Are you even different enough to be noticed?
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