Acts, 18:1-22
Vern Peterman · Jun 26, 2005
Acts (2005), No. 25
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826232831835

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

What I want to do is we're first going to go through the questions, and that's Acts 18, 1-22 that Josiah covered. But before we do that, there's a slide series I'd like to have us step through. And what we're working our way into here is Paul's most substantial visit to Ephesus. That's what we're coming up on here. And Josiah covered some things last week that are so substantial in Athens. that we're actually going to, a few weeks from now, we've got a kind of a space in our schedule, and we're going to take some time to backtrack, because there was more in it that I'd want Josiah to have to be able to cover in one week, and so we're going to kind of backtrack and revisit some of those things. Anyway, we'll do that in a few weeks here. For now, here we're going to be starting on Paul's third missionary journey, so what we see is Josiah covered the The second journey, the end of the second journey. This takes us into the third missionary journey.

And what you see, he starts off from Antioch. When did he start off from Antioch before? Remember that? The first journey, right? He started off from Antioch. And then he headed through, and notice he goes through Tarsus. Not a mention of stopping there or anything. Real interesting. That's where he's from. every time passing through, and then he goes through the middle of what we call Turkey now, the area that's approximately Galatia, and headed towards, in the third journey, Ephesus. There's a network of Roman roads there. He possibly went through Colossae, but I would say less likely, and if he did, it isn't even mentioned. So most likely he'd never been to Colossae. And then he stayed in Ephesus for quite some time.

We'll take a look at the total amount later. It's from there that he heads off and does another loop, and then we'll get the story on that. Now, one thing that's interesting to take a look at, Ephesus is the one city that enjoyed the most apostolic attention and continuous apostolic involvement.

Why do I say that? Paul went there on his second journey. He spent time there on his third journey. He tells them in Acts 20. We'll read that in a few chapters here. He tells them in Acts 20 that he was there with them for three years. So he spent a good chunk of time. For Paul, usually traveling through, three years is a good chunk of time to spend with them. He says for three years, day and night, I presented you the whole counsel of God." So you're wondering how long it would take to present somebody the whole counsel of God. There you go. But, that's day and night.

So here's Paul, and he's starting off things there at Ephesus. Later on he writes to Timothy, 1 Timothy, he says, Ephesus right so here's Timothy at Ephesus, so there's additional attention basically Timothy was an apostolic delegate and Then later on we find that that's where John ends up going and it is also the place where the first of the seven churches Gets a message, so we have a period of time basically about four plus decades of of apostolic attention and ministry focused on Ephesus. They had a lot given to them in terms of continuity. They have, from any record that we have, the most and the most lengthy apostolic involvement. Paul went there a second, third missionary journeys. He spent a total of three years there. We mentioned that.

The longest discourse in Acts directed to Christians is recorded by Luke as Paul speaking to the elders from Ephesus. We have various discourses recorded in the book of Acts. It's the one to the church at Ephesus that is the longest one recorded directed to Christians. So it's the elders.

Paul urged Timothy to remain there to deal with the false teachers. He wrote at least one letter to the church at Ephesus. We have the New Testament letters, right? And he may have written others. Those are the ones that God determined to be preserved for our benefit. He wrote at least one letter, maybe more. It was one of the seven churches, and then Apostle John was there.

Ephesus has been excavated and opened for public tours. Doug Hallam is one who's been there and taken actual movies of Ephesus. And so it's a place where there's been lots of discovery and they keep things in a fairly open state so people can go around and look at it. There's quite a bit that's well preserved. It's also in a location that not only hasn't been disturbed but hasn't been covered up. Some places have that disadvantage where you go to try to excavate and it's covered by everything else that's there that's more modern, more recent.

Here's the harbor now because Ephesus, the reason that the old city was not built upon, was one of the things they struggled with even in New Testament times, they got a grant from the Roman government to fix it at the time, was the harbor kept silting up. The harbor would silt up and so now this harbor here is like six miles farther out than the harbor that they used during the time of the New Testament. Here's the theater. This is where in the end of Acts 19, They had the riot.

It holds the various estimates. I've seen anything from 25 at the low end to 50,000 at the upper end. I think it's a matter of how much do you want to get squeezed, you know? How tight do you want to sit? But at least 25,000 are the estimates. This was the theater. It was here that Demetrius, the silversmith, had initiated basically a near-riot. For two hours they chanted, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians, right here.

That road that you see kind of starting from the right part of the picture and heading out is towards the harbor and that's the ancient harbor that was filled with silt since that time. So now it's kind of a big grassy field. But previously, that was where the boats came in. It was an ideal harbor because it was so far inland. That's also the disadvantage, that it silted up easily. Here's another shot of the theater so you can kind of see what that looks like. Fairly substantial and fairly well preserved for something that's a couple thousand years old.

Here's the main street. It was along this street, as well as a few others, that they would have annual processions, parades, to the god of wine, Bacchus. Involved with that would be all kinds of things, that's why, and we'll see here in a minute. Processions, the festival of Dionysius was the other Other name, the God of wine involving all kinds of segments of society. They also got children involved in this thing. So kids from the youngest ages would be involved in this worship of the God of wine. So Paul said in 518, and do not get drunk with wine for that's dissipation. It's not just don't get drunk.

The involvement with it is people would go for a three or four day binge and They would tear animals to pieces while they're alive with their hands. A bizarre, crazy thing. So Paul's caution here is far more than just don't get tipsy. Far more extreme than that.

Here's the marketplace. This is the marketplace where Demetrius would have sold his silver statues of Artemis. In the middle of this marketplace, they had a fake tree of life. oddly enough. And this would also be the place where people would have bought and sold the magical documents that we'll read about that were burned, 50,000 pieces of silver worth. And here's the remains of the city hall where the town clerk would have worked, spoke at the gathering in the theater and got people calmed down after the near riot rose up.

Here's the Temple of Artemis. It was at the time one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It had over 120 columns in this thing. It was for the worship of Artemis. It had over a thousand temple prostitutes that worked out of here, and they had a safety deposit box system. What a crazy place to have safety deposit boxes, but that's what they thought was the thing to do. So it made Ephesus a major place for storage of something that you wanted to have kept safe. This is the site now. That's as good as it gets. Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and that's the way it looks now. So, pretty bad. I had another picture with a cow in it, but it just looked hokey.

Anyway, there's a legal quirk that we talked about when we were going through Ephesians. A criminal who could make it within a bow shot of the Temple of Artemis could not be charged with a crime as long as he got into that zone. Weird, huh? And so that's why Paul, unlike any of the other letters that he wrote.

He starts off, as we saw, getting into the imperatives. Don't steal. Stop stealing, is the way he put it. Stop your stealing. He didn't have to tell that to any other church, but here's why here. Because there was a whole bunch of people who gathered around the temple because there was a safe zone. They could steal as long as they made it back to that zone, they were okay. Couldn't be charged.

And so is a magnet for thieves and swindlers, and that's also why Paul, you know, I had other things, Ephesians 4.14, he talked about trick dice, and guys that were swindlers dishonestly. He who steals must steal no longer, but rather must labor.

Ephesus had its great building, and so in chapter 2, he makes reference to a building as a good word picture that they could relate to, because of this building they had that they were so proud of. Here's Artemis. Ephesus was just a mess, spiritually.

Fifty pagan deities that we know of. There may have been others. These are the ones of which we have either inscription or some written document recording it. All kinds of pagan deities. There's lots of influence from magic and astrology. When I say astrology, that garland around her neck are the signs of the zodiac. See that a little more close? Sagittarius and all those that you see there. Here's a magic text from the Roman Empire, and you'll have a copy of this very picture in your hand out there.

It spells out a combination of pagan and Jewish magic spells. Now, that's one thing that's kind of weird. We're going to see it here as we go through the passage, but the Jews were famous in the Gentile lands for being very powerful magically. And some people even pretended to be Jews so that they could market their magic better. Really strange.

So, Ephesians 121, far above every name that is named. What they would do is they would say, I, you know, you hold off some evil spirit on the power of this one and that one and they go and name a bunch of names. You know, here's this magic name and you call upon this name and that name. And Paul says here, Jesus is the name which is above all those names. You want to name some power to call something by and hold this evil spirit and that one off? Jesus is above all those that you can put on the list.

Here is, and we're going to see this Acts 19.22, you can barely read it here, but it's the Erastus inscription in Corinth. And we have the description here that he was indeed in Corinth. This appears to, not absolutely confirmed, but appears fairly solidly to be the Erastus that's mentioned there in Acts 19. He was a city official. And we have this handout here. We pass it out. Boy, by now it's been months ago.

So there's a few extra copies if you don't have it. It gives you the four places where we have the receiving of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. And you notice that there's not an entirely consistent pattern there. But it's helpful to take a look at it and see what the pattern is.

And there's also this handout. We have a few extras of that as well. And this is the list of high priests. That's going to end up being important in our discussion today. And you'll see why in a bit. And so this is it. We've got Ananias, who's the last one in the blue there. He's the one that tried Paul.

He is the high priest, the official high priest. What we're going to see is Sceva and his seven sons operated there in Ephesus, and Sceva called himself a Jewish high priest. Well, uh-uh. That was a marketing thing that he did, going around claiming to be some kind of a high priest, because there's one, one at a time, and they're in Jerusalem, not in Ephesus.

This is what I'm looking at, and I'll I'll take a look at that a little bit more before I hand that out. So anyway, let's get to the questions. Grab your AX18-1322 and let's take a look at it. We'll be starting at the question on page 3 here. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3, 1-3, And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you are not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?

So it becomes clear that through Paul, a year and a half with the believers in Corinth, that they were still infants in the Lord. What is the food measure of their maturity level? What the believers take in. What is the output measure of spiritual maturity with the believers in Corinth? How they live.

Alright, what did you come up with on that? How did Paul break down the, okay, you're not mature yet. What was his terminology? Yeah, you're still on a diet of milk. Okay, still on a diet of milk Nancy and I just this last you know, we got to see our newest granddaughter and yes, she's still on a diet of milk Okay, it is a measure of you know, what's the maturity level? She's not ready for any solid food. So what does Paul do? He's used the analogy that they're all going to relate to they're going to understand that that Look, you guys are still acting as though you were at a maturity level appropriate only to the taking in of milk.

So, that's what he's spelling out. Now, what does that look like? How do you measure that they're... How do you see that they're immature? How does he express that that comes out? How does it show itself? They're still fleshly. They're still fleshly. And what does that look like?

There's strife and jealousy going on amongst them. He says that's an indication of your maturity level, your spiritual maturity level. You've got strife and jealousy, then that tells me that's how mature you are. You're expressing that level of maturity. So he spells it out pretty clearly. Interestingly enough, that seems to be a fairly consistent pattern throughout the New Testament. Hebrews the end of chapter 5 beginning of chapter 6 same kind of thing refers to milk as being immature and then the meat as being for the mature and the maturity in Hebrews in that passage end of chapter 5 beginning of chapter 6 says meat and milk and it says meat is measured by discernment discernment okay and of course one of the problems that they're not having and excuse me that they are having rather in Corinth, and that is a lack of discernment. Big issue there, okay? Lots of problems here. Okay, how about question two? The church at Corinth had a year and a half of Paul's time, yet it appears from Paul's two letters to display quite a bit of immaturity, especially in the first letter.

Do we have evidence that Paul was still quite convinced that these people were saved? What is that evidence? Which verses or passages would give us that insight into Paul's view of them? Are there any that would cause us to wonder if some of them were not saved?

Your thoughts there? That's actually a pretty tough question. Anybody? What's that? Ah, he writes and calls them brethren. Good. Excellent point. Any others? Yeah? Ah, a temple. Yes, corporately as a temple and individually as a temple. He uses both that, chapter 3 and chapter 6. Yeah, correct. What else do we see that gives an indication of how he views them? He calls them saints right off. Yes, good point. As a matter of fact, beginning of Corinthians chapter 1, he says you're sanctified and he uses a perfect tense. completed past action, positionally they're already sanctified, put to their intended purpose, positionally. And it's permanent. It's not something they fall in and out of in their position. So these would indicate that they're believers. Is there any point that you're aware of where there's some question that he puts to them? Yes? No? Pardon? Yeah, as you look at it, they had lots of problems, didn't they? Yeah. In truth, what we see is lots of evidence of immaturity. Lots of evidence of immaturity.

And only at one point, and it isn't until his second letter, he asked them to examine, to actually see if they're of the faith. Now, that's not by and large statement, but apparently at least some of them there was some question. Enough expression of immaturity or inconsistency with their Christian profession that he thought you ought to consider that. Am I truly a believer? And so he does put that to them. Everything else though, he addresses them as believers.

He addresses them as believers that need to grow up, that they're immature, that it's maturity issue, he doesn't find people falling, you know, going back and forth, but he does ask them in the second letter to question, search, examine, to see if you're of the faith. All right, let's take a look at the next question there. Verse 3, why would Paul make mention of mirrors twice with the Corinthians, once in each letter, yet never mention a mirror with any other church? Given that Paul made tents, how would he know to mention the mirrors in his letters? He's a tent expert. Yeah. Sure. I think you meant Corinthians was known for the mirrors. Yes. Yes. Yeah. At Corinth, as he pointed out here at Corinth, famous for the mirrors.

So what does Paul do? Paul, the tent maker doesn't mention tents. What he does is he mentioned mirrors once in each of the letters and in no other letters. The only other reference we have to it is James, where James talks about a mirror and it's the Word of God.

He says the person who reads the Word of God and walks away unchanged and unimpacted is like the one who looks in the mirror and forgets what he looks like. And remember those first surface mirrors, they didn't have mirrors like we have now where you've got a plate of glass and then a reflective surface behind. It was first surface metal, and so a lot of them had some kind of polishing instrument attached to or accompanying the mirror so you could polish it up every time. Because you couldn't just pick the mirror up and look, you've got to go fix it. Alright, let's take a look at the second handout now.

This would be 18. 23 through 19 verse 41 basically finishes chapter 19 All right, so this is basically a start off on his missionary journey most of the content of it focuses on Ephesus only basically the first verse in the passage talks about his you know journeying through the cities where he had been and and then kind of zooms on to Ephesus.

It makes a leap ahead in this respect, and that's that it talks about what happened with Apollos before Paul got there, but still in Ephesus. So the whole focal point, with the exception of that first verse, the whole focal point of this entire passage is on Ephesus, even before Paul gets there. Alright, so now, what's the first thing, what happens in Ephesus before Paul gets there?

What information involved. He starts off on this, in fact let me get that up here. He starts off on this third journey, okay, and heads toward Ephesus. Apollos, yeah. Here's Apollos. Now one thing to remember about Apollos, interesting, he seems real comfortable traveling.

He's actually from Alexandria down here. Alexandria was a major Jewish center outside of Israel. Remember one of the rules of thumb we can keep in mind, there were at least twice as many Jews during the New Testament times outside of Israel as lived in Israel. So they had at least twice as many living in other places. One of those places was Alexandria.

Major concentration of Jews there. We don't know for certain. It is probably where Joseph and Mary took Jesus when they went down to Egypt to take, you know, take him out of Herod's realm until Herod died in March of 4 BC. Probably would have gone down to Alexandria, a logical place. because there was a major concentration of Jews there. They would have found people that are like-minded in that area. Okay, he was from Alexandria. He was, for reasons we don't know, in Ephesus. And how did he start off? He starts off and says everything right? Understands it all? No. What happens is he goes and he, as other groups, He goes in and he starts talking based on the ministry of John the Baptist. So far so good.

But, there's a couple of people that we've read about previously, Akilah and Priscilla, that are listening to him, and saying, that's pretty good, but there's something you need to know. And so they take him aside, they talk to him, and explain to him, You need to understand that Jesus indeed has come, the one John was pointing to, and he is the Messiah, the Christos. He is the Messiah, and he has died on the cross, and been buried and resurrected and ascended, and is seated at the right hand, and they would explain these things to him, and he'd go, ah! So he got it. And it's interesting, From there, having had things explained, he takes off and goes across over here to this area.

Heads over there. Alright, so here's Apollos. He keeps showing up. We'll see him mentioned a number of times from the very early part to the end of 1 Corinthians and then once more in the book of Titus. Alright, then the other thing is this Priscilla and Achilla. That's another group that we need to take a look at here.

She is called Priscilla repeatedly in the Book of Acts. Paul refers to her in his letters three times as Prisca. So it's kind of by a nickname. And so he refers to her by the nickname three times. So that's interesting. difference of authors there, and the fact that Paul is consistent is one of the things that points to the genuineness of those letters. Paul is consistent in calling her by this nickname, Kriska. Priscilla would have been more the longer, formal name.

Then, on page two, you have this kind of bulleted list here of places where John the Baptist is listed, and something to think about is 25 to 30 years have passed by the time we find John the Baptist mentioned here for the last time. So John the Baptist's influence has continued for some time now, hasn't it?

And, one of the other things we find out, here's Apollos, he's from where? He's from Alexandria here, and John the Baptist's ministry has impacted him. Now, where did John the Baptist carry out his ministry from any record that we have? Up in here, right? Here's the Dead Sea, there's Sea of Galilee, River Jordan would have been between those two.

So here is John the Baptist's ministry, and yet we find here's Apollos from Alexandria, and he's been impacted by John the Baptist, so much so to the point where he's talking about it two and a half to three decades later. We'll see at the beginning of chapter 19, Paul runs into about a dozen guys up here at Ephesus who are also impacted by John the Baptist.

So this John the Baptist guy has really continued to have an influence even after he's been taken out by the son of Herod the Great. So here's Herod Philip II, Herod the Great's fifth wife, one of the guys that goes through him. So here's John the Baptist continuing to have influence two and a half to three decades after his death. And it's interesting, but it also shows that John was indeed the forerunner.

He continued to have impact, he did point people, and that people who were, even at this late date, who were presented with the facts about Christ updated, that there's no indication that they resisted. They readily accepted the update, if you will. We have no record that anybody said, no, I'm sticking with the John the Baptist thing. I'm not going for the Jesus thing. No, what we see is consistent acceptance any time that there's any presentation of it. Okay. Any questions so far? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, good point. He had the stuff down.

And my guess is being from Alexandria, which is Greek speaking is probably able to roll off the Septuagint and tell people that's it. Here's where it is. They didn't have chapter and verse breakdown at that point in time. But he'd probably be able to say, you know, that's on Jeremiah the second scroll, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, and he'd just roll that out. And he'd say, here it is, boom. So here's a guy that just lays it out.

So what Priscilla and Akila did was, you're right Josiah, they gave him insight into what he already knew. That is also probably one of the reasons why he seemed so readily to just pick it up and he says, this is great news, I'm going to Corinth, okay? Yeah, good point. Good point.

He's taken off. He's heading over to Corinth. He says, I mean, I can't wait to tell those people over there. And we don't know quite, you know, what drew him there. But I would suggest one thing would be motivated by this discovery. He's just gotten tipped off on. Yeah, good point.

Paul then does some extraordinary miracles. There's kind of three points of introduction here before this riot starts. Paul comes in here after these guys who are followers of John the Baptist are introduced and speak in tongues and prophesy. They've been baptized with the Holy Spirit there. He does extraordinary miracles. Now it's interesting. It says extraordinary. It does that modifier. It doesn't just say miracles. So there are some remarkable things there.

Paul makes the point in 2 Corinthians 12 12 that the miracles he did were the signs of an apostle That that in part should give us some perspective Should we go around the Lord just does miracles all the time and men are just you know I'm about to rear in the car in front of me and it disappears or you know I'm I come down with cancer and I pray and it's just gone and you know my breakfast dishes are dirty and I just say clean them and they're clean right and Just all the time miracles left and right. Isn't that the way a Christian life is?

No. Paul makes the point here in 2 Corinthians 12.12 that the miracles are the signs of an apostle. Now how many apostles do we have in the room? I don't see too many hands going up. And the reason is that an apostle is a specific designation. And it was one of the signs of an apostle.

There are other requirements too. Example, Acts chapter 1. Peter doesn't say just eenie meenie miney moe. He says we need to pick someone who is a replacement for Judas and he needs to be what? He needed to have been somebody who saw the Lord. A requirement. Continuity of relationship.

So in a walk with the Lord and continuity of relationship, in addition to that, the apostolic sign, the validation would be the ability to do miracles. Miracles were not the standard fare for all Christians of all time, at will and at whim, but they were a validation that Paul was an apostle, and that's what happened here.

Now, we have this mention here of this Sceva, this Jewish high priest, and one of the points we make here is that there was, throughout the Roman Empire, a tendency for Jews who were scattered in Gentile lands. It was interesting, they're both, on the one hand, the Jews were looked at as a source of a lot of trouble, And we have record, right during the New Testament era, of major riots and bloody persecutions of the Jews, right in the middle of the New Testament era.

So they were looked at as a source of a lot of trouble. How much of it was really started by the Gentiles and how much of it was by the Jews is sometimes unclear. Claudius, 49 AD, booted all the Jews out of Rome. That's why Achilla and Priscilla were not in Rome.

So now, one of the other patterns we find is here's all the Jews, and the Jews were often involved in magical and sorcery and occultic activities. And people would even try to get Jews to come and bless their crops. If you're involved in agricultural activity, get the Jews to bless their crops. But once Christianity became legal, the Roman Empire then started to penalize you if you had Jews come and bless your crops, because they were trying to get rid of a lot of the pagan influence. So Jews were looked upon as magical, and we find evidences of them, the axe incident with the Samaritans, who were part-Jews. And then the slave girl, there was some involvement here with a spirit of divination, and that would have been in a community where there were Jews that were located. and the Jews would get mixed up with that.

Now, I also have a smaller version of what we showed on the overhead, and that's this Greek magical document. The magic documents were also very popular, and this was, again, what they would do is they would have Jewish and Greek and Roman and sometimes other names, different gods and angels and everybody they could list, and what you'd want to do is go call on these special names. And magic documents were especially valuable if you could claim that nobody had ever seen it before.

Now, how do you write it and do that? I don't know. That's hokey to me, but that's the way they marketed them. They were especially valuable. They'd show somebody and say, well, you want to get the really good ones that we're selling? And they'd take them back in the back of the booth. See this one? I can't show it to you. Nobody's ever seen it before. And then they'd kind of tease him like that. And of course the guy's just drooling to get his hands on this thing.

And so this was the kind of thing that would go on. And there would be lists, see this one's got some Roman gods and some Jewish ones and it's got some Greek names and you pronounce these names and you'll be safe. Next road trip you take, nobody will touch you. So it would be that kind of thing. So lots of these magic documents.

Because just like magic is used today, there was a lot of different spells and names and there was amulets that they would carry and special lucky charms and all sorts of things. And no exception here. The Sons of Sceva, as they come into this picture, just way off whack.

First of all, there's no Jewish high priests in Ephesus. We know who the high priest was. It was Ananias and So he was in Jerusalem, and he was Jewish, and he was of the tribe of Levi This guy is in Ephesus. We don't know what tribe is from he claims to be Jewish.

He's not the high priest He's a high priest of something else Somehow he's got seven sons. I don't know how he arranged that but seven sons that must have been looked at as lucky. I'm sure It wasn't okay the the sons come in and there's they're doing this exorcism And of course, in those days, people sometimes would get confused, you know, is this a disease or does this person have a demon in them?

And they're doing this exorcism, and in order to carry it out, because Paul's starting to have a lot of influence here, they say, we exorcise the demon because they're naming names, right? We exorcise the demon in the name of that Jesus that Paul preaches. We don't know Jesus, we don't know Paul, but we've heard of it. And that's all they say, and the demon responds. And the demon says, I heard of Jesus. I heard of Paul. Who are you?

And they proceed to flee from the house naked and wounded. By the way, running naked for the Jews was extremely disgusting and shameful and something you wouldn't do. So culturally, that would be really bad. So here's these seven sons, if they were indeed Jewish, who are running naked, fleeing naked out of this place. It was like a complete disgrace that they would do this, besides of which the exorcism didn't work. So, the interesting kind of cultural backdrop, it was a disaster to try to do that.

They had no basis for naming names without knowing the Lord Jesus personally. We say, as we pray here, and not for the sake of magic, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They tried to name the name, you know, the one that Paul preaches. They didn't know who this Jesus was. But doing it the magic way. the way they had learned, the way that was common in the culture. That's not what God has in mind.

They had about 50,000 silver pieces in the funds that had been spent on these magical documents that were destroyed. They're in Acts. Is that about 1919? That's about the verse we're at. And that's a fair chunk of change. You know, the price of silver keeps bouncing up and down. But you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's money. So people had spent, and this was a time when a lot of people were fairly poor, so people had spent a lot of money on these hokey pieces of paper. A lot of money.

Can you imagine? Once they're done, here they're burning this stuff and they think, man, what a waste. You know? I could have done something, you know? But instead they say, I'm not going to turn around and sell this stuff, because that's not going to help anybody else. This stuff is a bunch of garbage. I'm just going to burn it. But what a shame. Somebody tabulated the value of it, but they didn't sell it. They didn't pass it on to somebody else. Besides that, you looked at it. They didn't pass it on to somebody else, but instead they just burned it. That's what it's worth. That's as useful as it is. They got rid of it.

Now, the next major event that pops up here is Demetrius. What they did in those days is they had craft guilds, and the guilds would hold their meetings in the pagan temples, so they're definitely tied into the pagan temples. And since Demetrius made these statues of Artemis out of silver, and people would go buy those, and it's like the one we looked at there. That one wasn't silver, but similar.

People go buy those, and of course that was their money. And you get people, because it's a port city, right? People are passing through. There's a network of Roman roads that goes out there. That's why, by the way, I think the messages to the seven churches, the first one is Ephesus, because that would be the beginning of the road network where they would take the messages. Okay? So here's Ephesus, the first one. And it's a place where you'd have converging of port traffic and road traffic going in and out.

So at this place here, they're hoping to get lots of people coming and going to buy these silver or other materials, idols of Artemis, different sizes. Some of them I imagine even being small little lucky charm kind of things. So here's Demetrius. He may have been looking at his ability to kind of pull things together, head of a craft guild. because they'd have these various guilds. The craft guild we don't know but likely would have met in the Temple of Artemis that we saw the picture of there.

And so here he starts getting these people together because he's noticing sales are declining. See this is a marketing issue here. Sales are declining guys. Now what's our problem? And of course marketing guys are always looking for point the finger, right? So what do they do?

He goes and says it's Paul's fault. So he gets a bunch of people together, and they had this crowd headlong. This is not an organized, you know, hey, we've got a meeting at 2 o'clock, you know, it's at the theater, and we've reserved the theater. Instead, they have this mad rush. That's the way it's described. And it would have been that city. Let's see if we can get the picture up here. There. They would have gone rushing along the roadway coming up, not the one you see there going to the harbor, but along the side.

Then into the theater crowding the theater and all of a sudden and this thing bursts into two hours Can you imagine this two hours of great is Artemis of the Ephesians great is Artemis of the Ephesians? I mean, I just can't imagine but that's what they did yelling for two hours Trying to get the things settled down now Ephesus was a city that had a lot of privilege and They had a good relationship with Rome for the most part. There was a Roman governor there, but they had a fair amount of local control that was allowed. But you didn't want to get that lost, that local control, because then the Romans would come in and say, hey, we're taking over here. You guys can't keep this thing under control. The local officials didn't want that.

So you can imagine, here's the city clerk. He's down at that place we saw the picture of there. He's down there working away and somebody runs up to him. Hey, did you hear about the crazy mayhem that's going on out at the theater? No, I hate it when that happens okay, and so he was rushing down there and tries to get the whole thing settled down So he says look this Paul hasn't done anything wrong, and we've got courts.

We've got procedures for this You know you can handle this and he gets them settled down and tells them to get on their way There was the option of course that they start bringing in police forces to get them You know settle down, but he appealed to them and that seemed to get the thing quieted down and ended and So that's kind of the grand finale for Paul's time there in Ephesus.

What we'll find later on is he's going to talk to the elders from Ephesus once again in chapter 20, and that's going to be that major address, his last major address, very intense, very personal, very emotional, and also even with a note of danger to the church body there. So, very interesting how he puts that. And he even likely had a place in the selection of the elders and yet he noted to them when he met with them, from amongst yourselves, some will come and tear the flock in pieces. So, really intense letter. And then he says goodbye, a tearful goodbye to all of them. Okay, now let's take a look at the questions real quick. Brian's going to do the buzzer on us here, so we've got to get through this. Okay, your questions are on page four.

Why is it that spirit baptism and the gift of tongues, which is actually languages, that's what it means everywhere else, were recorded here in this passage? What are the things that made this event unique in the book of Acts and the New Testament? And why don't we find the gift of tongues more prominent among the writings of Paul and the other apostles? Okay, so that's for you to figure out.

Second question was why was Demetrius the silversmith upset by Paul's spreading of the gospel? If Greek and Roman religious character was not exclusive, one could worship as many gods as one wished, why would Demetrius be upset at the loss of sales of silver statues? And the third question, obviously Paul and his companions had a part in the near riot in the theater, and they were the focal point of the great contention that was quieted by the city clerk. Shouldn't Paul have been less disruptive? and more accommodating to the local culture. Why didn't he just apologize and allow matters to be settled so that they could go about things more peacefully? Think about that one. Any other questions, comments, exasperations, jubilations? Other thoughts? Yes? Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. Let's see if we can get some clarification here.

We see earlier in the Gospels where you see the word disciples is far more prominent. And the apostles becomes a term that you start to see in the book of Acts. Disciples is also used in the book of Acts, but as it goes on, it's more and more used just of those who are of the church believers, and not used of the ones we call apostles. What's the difference here?

Yeah, Tom. I can't knock it off by chapter or version, but somewhere possibly in one of the gospels of Matthew, maybe, that there was an estimate of 120 disciples and, well, 12 apostles. Sure. Things got fully developed. And that might give you a nutshell idea of what the difference is. Yeah. It boils down to this, I think, and you could look at it in more detail. A disciple was not a person who had a position to go out and send a message. A disciple is someone who is learning. And there was an entire Jewish set of traditions as to what a disciple was. An apostle is a special messenger.

And clearly, after Christ was crucified and buried and resurrected, they were sent out. He says, I'm sending you. They were sent out explicitly. And when you receive power, you should be my witnesses, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

So that apostle then was a special messenger. for one who was sent out. So it really describes a different role, and that's why you'll find the word disciple sometimes used for the twelve, but also later on in the book of Acts, you'll see it for people who are not one of the twelve at all, and maybe even Gentiles, because it means someone who is learning, someone who is learning under someone else. So that's the distinction there. The apostle then was one who was sent as a special messenger, and most often it refers to the twelve, you know, the original eleven after Judas was cut out of the picture, and then Matthias, in Acts chapter 1, added to complete the twelve, and then Paul calls himself an apostle repeatedly in his letters, and he is referred to as such in the book of Acts. Those were the ones who would have the official designation of apostle, of special messenger. Unofficially, that is not an explicit thing, other people could be called apostles as well.

An example would be the guy who carried the letter to Ephesus and Colossae. They were sent there with a special purpose. They were a special messenger. Tychicus took the letter to the church at Ephesus and the church at Colossae. He made that trip and it took months. especially to get the letter there, so he was, in that narrow sense, an apostle. He was a special messenger. Was he one of the apostles? No. But he had the role of, or the function of, a special messenger within the narrower definition of, here, get these letters to Ephesus and Colossae. Does that make sense? Yeah, right.

What we have now as missionaries, they would be special messengers in the sense that they're sent out. They would not be categorized with the original apostles whom the Lord himself sent. So it's different in that regard. Barnabas, for example, was in certain places, you'll see him called an apostle only in the sense that he's been sent out as a messenger, in this case along with Paul, from the church at Antioch. So it's a functional designation with a narrow definition, not the larger definition of this is one of the apostles, the one that the Lord explicitly and personally sent. So that would be kind of the difference there. There's an official designation of an apostle, and then there are those who would have some narrower definition, and yet still have the word applied to them, because they had some other special purpose, but not explicitly sent of the Lord. Isn't there a place where James is called an apostle that would not have been one of the patrols?

Right, right. And you can find several of those. James Barnabas is another one. He remained in Jerusalem. He didn't go anywhere else. And so he stayed there. It's interesting. You shall be my witnesses in. And Jerusalem is where he remained from any evidence that we have. Yeah, yeah. Good point. Other thoughts? Yes? No? Questions? Bafflements?

Alright, let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, it is amazing. We look at it as history, and yet if we step into the sandals, if you will, of those who walked these roads and went into these streets and places, it is amazing to see it as fresh and powerful and potent for them, and that this message indeed changed lives. It was not just absorbed into the culture, As a matter of fact, the apostles did everything they could to keep it from being absorbed. We see how powerfully you worked and how freshly the gospel was delivered and received. We thank you for what you've revealed here for our benefit because you love us. In Jesus' name, Amen.