The Riot

What would happen to the economy of the media? What would happen if Christians stopped going to movies and watching television shows and renting videos that included profanity, nudity, sensuality, adultery, brutality, or anything else ungodly, and instead focused on what Paul told us to focus on in Philippians chapter 4 verse 8, anything that's true, honorable, holy, righteous, think on these things. What if the Christian community just put into words, into life, the words of David and said, I will set no evil thing before mine eye.

We'd probably start a riot. Think about the times when you've shared the message of the gospel with family or friends, or maybe with strangers. Sometimes that can result in healthy conversation and debate.

Sometimes it might turn them away. But it's also possible that sharing the gospel will cause anger and resentment. That happened in the book of Acts and we're looking at that story today here on Wisdom for the Heart. This current series through the last chapter of Acts is from our Vintage Wisdom archives. Stephen Davey first delivered this message in 1998.

He's calling it the riot. We have seen the apostle Paul serve in Ephesus for some two years now. The results have been electrifying. We closed our study last Lord's Day with a look at the results in verse 19. We discovered them burning their books and their sorceries and their superstitious formulas.

The worth, as we talked about, was in today's economy based upon the average wage today of a working individual was somewhere between eight and ten million dollars. They burned it up. The Christians were throwing away all of their ties to their pagan surroundings, their pagan rituals, their pagan religion. They were now, because of this, becoming a threat to the Ephesian economy, which was based upon its temple worship and its paganism. We have seen Paul in this chapter, the 19th chapter of the book of Acts, involved in healing other apostolic, miraculous signs, as we talked about, validating the messenger and authenticating the messages originating from God as this apostolic community did. Also, exorcism. In our last discussion I mentioned the rise of the fascination that we have today with the demonic world, the misapplication of the experiences of the apostolic community of the believers today. What we need is a return to the study of the doctrines of Christ, the words of Christ, which Paul declares here are the divinely empowered vehicle or weapon for destroying the logical schemes of Satan. We need a return to the nature and character of God. What we need to be selling out of are books not on how to bind some demonic spirit over some sort of territory.

Please give us a reference from that one. And all kinds of misinterpreted and misapplied texts. What we need to do is have books selling out of the bookstores, and I hold hope for it, on basic Bible doctrine, books about God, his nature, his character, his attributes, books on and explaining this book, the Bible. I happen to believe, as I said last Lord's Day, that Satan enjoys the fact that Christians are so distracted by his kingdom and by his power, so caught up and mesmerized by his fallen angels. We're looking for them under every bush, and I should add to that we're mesmerized, it seems, by the good angels as well, so that we fail in our attraction to God's supremacy and God's power and God's holiness and God's wonderful grace and God's supreme kingdom of light, which has already conquered the kingdom of darkness. And to that kingdom we give our adherence and our delight and our joy and our study, the kingdom that endures forever and forever.

Well, that's my introduction for today. Now let's go back to Acts chapter 19. And we read in verse 23, And about that time there arose no small disturbance concerning the way, this early nickname of those who followed the man who claimed to be the way. I want you to skip over to verse 40 and look there. You can read where the town clerk ends the riot by saying, For indeed we are in danger of being accused of a riot in connection with today's affair, since there's no real cause for it. And in this connection, we shall be unable to account for this disorderly gathering. I want to read the ending here for you as well as the beginning, just to let you know that the Christians have not purposely created the disturbance, the riot, and the unbelievers have to come to terms with that.

They have simply acted and spoken like Christians, and the unbelievers have created the riot. Now, verse 24. For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsman. That means he was creating big business. These he gathered together with a workman of similar trades and said, Men, you know how that our prosperity depends on this business.

We get to the bottom line real quick. You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all. Imagine that. And not only is there danger that this trade of ours fall into disrepute, but notice also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis be regarded as worthless and that she, whom all of Asia and the world worships should even be dethroned from her magnificence. And when they heard this, they were filled with rage. They began crying out, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.

Stop here for a moment. Artemis was the queen of heaven. She was also considered the goddess of Earth and nature. Ephesus was the guardian city of this worship. This temple, the temple to her glory was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Surrounding the exterior of this temple were 127 massive pillars that were inlaid with precious jewels and covered with gold.

It was an incredible spectacle of glory and magnificence. Inside the temple was a huge altar, 20 foot square, and on that altar was a grotesquely configured deity. It was a black stone that supposedly had fallen from heaven, a meteorite in the fashion of a woman or fashioned by someone to look like it. People from all around the Roman Empire would make a pilgrimage to Ephesus. One week out of the year was there Mardi Gras would be a week of debauchery and immorality as they came to worship their goddess of fertility. While there were other temples and shrines to her to worship her in other parts of the empire, this was the main one. It was the worship of the goddess. And I want you to know that the worship of the goddess is not dead.

It wasn't new then and it isn't something that has ceased. As hard as it may be to believe, a revival of goddess worship is growing stronger every day even in our own country. When you read in the newspapers about the Episcopalians and the Methodists and the Baptists all wanting to gender neutralize the Bible and take out the masculine forms of God and alternate between he and she and replace references to our father with instead our mother, this traces its roots to ancient days. One of the expressions that most people aren't aware of is a movement that's about 30 years old now known as feminism that is deeply rooted in Gnosticism or goddess worship.

It is at its core a religious movement. While most people have bought the lie that it's just nothing more than wanting to get women out of the kitchen into the corporate world and give them equal pay, it's much, much deeper than that. Annie Laurie Gayler wrote an article for The Humanist ten years ago called Feminist Salvation. She wrote, let's forget about the mythical Jesus and look for encouragement, solace and inspiration from women.

She says this fascinating thing. Two thousand years of patriarchal rule under the shadow of the cross ought to be enough to turn women toward the feminists salvation of the world. The declaration of feminism that was crafted more than 25 years ago in November of 1971 stated their agenda and among these was the statement, quote, we must return to ancient female religions.

A man who sort of picked up the trumpet under the title of ecology is Al Gore who in his recent book called Earth and the Balance, Ecology and the Human Spirit is summarized by a man named Peter Jones who wrote Gore's involvement in ecology in his book is an expression of his belief as he teaches it in his book and the connectedness of all things and the great value of all religious faiths and his hope that ancient goddess worship will help bring us planetary and personal salvation. This ancient goddess worship that has created the underlying theme of feminism and many other things in our country wasn't new here and it isn't dead today. You could put all of it under a categorical term called Gnosticism. Gnosticism turned the creation account given to us in the Word upside down and taught that divine wisdom came through dame wisdom. In other words, there is a mystical heavenly woman named Sophia which is Greek for wisdom. Sophia worship has made front lines just in this past year in America. The Gnostics taught that Sophia entered the snake in the garden and that she taught both Adam and Eve the true way of salvation. The snake in Gnostic literature by the way is not called the tempter but the instructor. The serpent was in Gnostic literature the redeemer because the serpent was the incarnated woman who came and taught the truth of true salvation through the female goddess Sophia or dame wisdom. All you have to do is read current religious news to see the resurgence of Sophia worship. It is part and parcel of the gender neutralizing movement that is affecting even the Word of God and copies of gender neutralized texts have already been sold in our world today. The divine revealer according to Gnostic literature is feminine. Summarized well by Roman Catholic theologian Carol Christ who said, I discovered or found God in myself and I loved her fiercely.

That just sort of sums it all up there in that nice package. God is within you and once you discover the true God, the true God is feminine. This was recorded in a transcript that I read recently on the subject of Gnosticism where this author writes or actually quotes from Gnostic literature going back centuries old.

There's dame wisdom speaking. I am androgynous. I am both mother and father since I copulate with myself. I copulate with myself and with those who love me and it is through me alone that all stands firm. I am the womb that gives shape to all by giving birth to the light that shines in splendor.

I am the eon to come. I am the fulfillment of the all that is the glory of the mother. It should not surprise you that Gnosticism exalted in its day and does today lesbianism, homosexuality, anything that reverses the sexual norms that God has proclaimed in His Word is turned on its head and convoluted so that these roles are reversed. It basically takes then and now anything that God has said or does and turns it inside out and then it proclaims the reverse of that to be the truth. Well, if you want to see the reverse worshiped, if you want to see a society inundated by goddess worship, all you have to do is travel to Ephesus and take a look at a religion that was so perverse, so degrading that it affected the entire city. Furthermore, before we go back into the text, you ought to know that the temple of Artemis was so powerful in its day that it superseded even Roman law. The man committed a felony or a woman committed a felony that they could somehow escape the law and make their way across the Roman Empire to this temple of Artemis located in Ephesus that if they could reach the temple, no matter what crime they'd committed, no matter what hideous thing they'd done, they were granted immediate asylum. And so Ephesus is filled not only with superstitious sorcerers and religious fakery, it is filled also with felons who had escaped the law by making their way to the temple.

It was an unbelievable city. They had escaped the law by simply becoming worshippers of the goddess Artemis. Now look back again as Demetrius speaks in verse 27, and not only is there danger that this trait of ours fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis be regarded as worthless and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship should even be dethroned from her magnificence.

That's what was happening. Demetrius is the spokesman here. He is the protector of false religion and of religion's profit margin. An inscription, by the way, discovered in Ephesus around this time, A.D. 57, describes a certain Demetrius who was also, it says, warden of the temple. If it is the same man, then this would indicate he's not only the head of the silversmith union local, but he is also behind the scenes as a leader in this temple, a temple whose profit margin, according to his own words, was in jeopardy. By the way, this temple was so wealthy that it was the leading banking institution of this part of Europe. They received so much money and so many gifts from leaders across the entire empire and world. They were so wealthy, so opulent, that they not only collected deposits, but they made loans. This was the standing bank of Asia Minor. You don't mess with the bank, right? Demetrius' comments could be summed up this way.

Either Christianity is stopped or the bank goes bankrupt. For two years, Paul has been teaching in the hall of the tyrants. You remember him? Where was Demetrius then? Well, Paul isn't a threat. Let him teach all that he wants about this male redeemer, the God-man.

Big deal, no problem. But now, now it's different. Now it's affecting the pocketbook.

Step on a man's pocketbook and watch him scream in pain, right? You see, Christianity is accepted as long as it doesn't change anything, upset anything, or require anything. Christianity is okay as long as it just goes with the flow and doesn't create trouble. That's the kind of Christianity we want.

Can we make a little application here before we go further? Let's apply what the Ephesian believers were doing here that was affecting the economy of their city to maybe one little arena of economy that maybe we could affect in America. What would happen to the economy of the media? What would happen if Christians stopped going to movies and watching television shows and renting videos that included profanity, nudity, sensuality, adultery, brutality, or anything else ungodly, and instead focused on what Paul told us to focus on in Philippians 4 verse 8, anything that's true, honorable, pure, holy, righteous, think on these things. What if the Christian community just put into words, into life, the words of David and said, I will set no evil thing before mine eye? We'd probably start a riot. Well, that's too convicting.

Let's move on. We're about to have a riot in Ephesus. Why? Because Christians were affecting the industry of Ephesus. How?

By acting as if it no longer existed. So notice the mob escalates verse 29, and the city was filled with confusion, and they rushed with one accord into the theater, dragging along Gaius and Aristarchus. Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia. And when Paul wanted to go into the assembly, the disciples would not let him.

It also came, and also some of the Asiarchs, these are leaders who were friends of his, sent to him and repeatedly urged him not to venture into the theater. So then some were shouting one thing and some another, for the assembly was in confusion. And notice this, the majority did not know for what cause they had come together. Classic illustration of society. People tend to do and think what people tend to do and think. We don't know why we're here, but everybody seems to be here. We don't know what everybody's shouting about or troubled about, but boy, that troubles me.

I'm going to shout a little bit too. What an incredible picture of the broad road that leads to destruction. And many there be that they find it.

They just get swept into the current. Have you 7 13 now verse 33 and some of the crowd concluded it was Alexander since the Jews had put him forward and having motioned with his hand, Alexander was intending to make a defense of the assembly. Now stop here. First part of this verse could be translated differently, which gives us sort of the perspective of Alexander rather than the Ephesians. You could render the first phrase, some of the Jews instructed Alexander, which is fascinating having put him forward.

In other words, the Jews who lived at Ephesus were concerned that they'd be associated with Paul, the Jewish teacher, so that whatever happened to Paul would then be deposited on to their account as well. And so Alexander, evidently a leading Jew, steps forward to make a defense. He's going to say, look, we Jews of Ephesus don't have anything to do with this rabble rouser, this teacher of new doctrine. Well, we don't know him. Please don't put us into the camp with him. We have nothing to do with him. It's interesting that Paul refers to later in another epistle, this man named Alexander as a man who did a much harm could be the same man.

The tragedy, however, if you read between the lines is that Alexander is basically revealing that the Jews who lived in Ephesus had compromised in the true spirit of ecumenicism. You do your thing, we'll do our thing. We don't agree with each other, but let's not bring that up.

Let's just get along, shall we? So the Jews who were following a jealous God who would give his glory to none other had been silenced by their cowardice and they lived surrounded by a city of people who were worshiping this goddess and incredible immorality and Alexander does nothing here but desire to stand up and say, we don't want to cause any trouble. Continue in your idolatry and immorality is fine with us.

Just don't put us with Paul. It's interesting they don't give him a chance to say anything, verse 34. But when they recognized that he was a Jew, a single outcry arose from them all as they shouted for about two hours, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. In other words, they knew that Alexander represented this God. They knew that the Jews represented this patriarchal system.

Even though there had been a coexistence of Judaism and Artemis worship, there was no agreement. Imagine, for two hours now, 25,000 Ephesians in this open arena worship their goddess. They are chanting their praise to her almost with delirious passion. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians for two hours.

God help us to speak of him for two minutes. Verse 35, and after quieting the multitude, the town clerk said, men of Ephesus, what man is there after all that does not know that the city of Ephesians is guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of the image which fell down from heaven. Since then, these are undeniable facts. Interesting.

They're undeniable, he says. You ought to keep calm and do nothing rash for you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of our goddess. So that of Demetrius and the craftsmen who are with them have a complaint against any man. The courts are in session and proconsuls are available. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you want anything beyond this, it shall be settled in the lawful assembly. For indeed, we are in danger of being accused of a riot in connection with today's affairs, since there is no real cause for it. And in this connection, we shall be unable to account for this disorderly gathering. In other words, we'll have to answer to Rome.

And after saying this, he dismissed the assembly. The town clerk here becomes an unsuspecting biographer of Christianity. He inadvertently tells us a lot about the Christians in Ephesus, without meaning to. He tells us a lot about how they acted in the midst of gross immorality and idolatry, without really telling us. Did you notice what he said the Christians didn't do? Verse 37, they didn't spend their time blaspheming the false gods.

In other words, that wasn't the text of their message. They didn't steal from the temple. In other words, they didn't break the law. There is every reason to believe that the citizens of Ephesus, including the Christians, were required some sort of tax to provide for the overhead of the temple that was, after all, the Citibank.

The Christians' record was clean. They were paying their taxes. They were living godly lives, quiet lives, apart from the fact that they were declaring the truth of Jesus Christ. And they were creating huge waves.

How? One of my favorite authors by the name of Warren Weersby writes, Paul did not arouse the opposition of the silversmiths by picketing the temple or staging anti-idolatry rallies. All he did was teach the truth daily and send out as converts to witness to the lost people of the city. As more and more people got converted, fewer and fewer customers were available. Another author wrote, the Ephesian believers did not lobby the city authorities, picket the silversmith shops, or organize demonstrations against Artemis worship. Nor did they try to be popular to the masses. They preached and lived out the message and let the power of their changed lives confront and push out the old ways.

One more author, James Montgomery Boyce writes these words, how did Christianity triumph? How did Christians win the day? It was not by appealing to numbers.

It was not by playing on the emotions. The Christians did not circulate a petition to see if they could get 51% of the Ephesians to sign it saying, Artemis is no God and the God of the Old Testament is the true God. The Christians didn't hold a mass rally.

They did not send Christians into the amphitheater to do their thing. They did exactly what Jesus Christ had done and what he sent them into the world to do. They preached the gospel so that men and women got converted. And once they were converted, they taught them how to live for Jesus Christ. That's what they didn't do.

Now notice what they did do. According to this passage, verse 18, they lived pure lives. They refused, verse 19, to support ungodliness. Verse 20, they delivered the word of the Lord. Back in verse 19, they personally sacrificed for the sake of the gospel. You know, they could have had a yard sale, all this stuff. Imagine $9 million going into the coffers of Christ's church. No, they didn't want anybody else to have it either.

So they burned it all. In other words, they changed their world as they swung the sword of the Spirit. Can we change our world this way?

Yes, we can. If you're a student of church history, you have read of the Welsh Revival, haven't you? The social impact of the Welsh Revival was astounding, by the way.

The way it impacted that sliver of the British Empire. Judges were presented with white gloves. They had no cases to try. Historians tell us that in the Welsh Revival, about 100,000 people came to faith in Christ in about a five-month period. No robberies, murders, burglaries, rapes, embezzlements, nothing.

The district council held an emergency meeting to discuss what to do with the police now that they were inactive. Imagine that. I met a pastor a few months ago from Ireland who talked, and I asked him about the Welsh Revival and if he had studied it at all. He had, and he added the comment that it was interesting that while Christians had opposed drinking for so long, it was the Welsh Revival that made such an impact that the pubs all had to close down for lack of business. It was the gospel that changed their society from the inside out.

If you've read on the Welsh Revival, you know it swept into America in a limited fashion. I want you to listen to this article in the Denver Post dated January 20th, 1905. This is an unbeliever obviously writing, doesn't understand what's going on, but he still gives us a little bit of an insight into what was happening in our country. For two hours at midday, all Denver was held in a spell.

The marts of trade were deserted between noon and two o'clock this afternoon, and all worldly affairs were forgotten. Going to and coming from the great prayer meetings, thousands of men and women radiated this spirit which filled them. Seldom is such a remarkable sight been witnessed an entire great city in the middle of a busy weekday bowing before the throne of heaven and asking the blessing of the king of the universe. If the church wants to know what to do, it can take its cues from the believers in Ephesus. Ask the Ephesian believers who we're facing much more than we're facing now, even though we don't like what we're facing now, right? They changed their world by allowing God through Christ to change them.

Then they swung this sword of the spirit without compromise or apology by means of or inundated with prayer. They changed their world. Thank you so much for joining us today here on Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. We have a website you can use to learn more about us. You'll find it at wisdomonline.org. I also encourage you to install our app to your phone so that you can quickly and easily access all of our Bible-based resources. That app contains the audio and transcript of each of these daily messages. We also make available the archive of Stephen's Bible teaching ministry with the full-length sermons arranged by Book of the Bible. You can follow along in our daily Bible reading plan and more. The Wisdom International app will work with your smartphone, your tablet, or a smart TV.

It's free to install and use, and it's a great companion for your personal Bible study. If you've never seen it, I hope you'll take us up on our offer to send you three free issues of our monthly magazine. The magazine is called Heart to Heart. We send it to all of our Wisdom partners each month, and we'd be happy to send you the next three issues if you'd like to see it for yourself. You can sign up for it on our website, or you can call us today. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-482-4253. We're glad you were with us, and I hope you'll be with us for our next message right here on Wisdom for the Heart.