I have been preaching from the Book of Acts for the last couple of weeks, and I am going to continue for today and next week. I have been preaching on passages that describe the early church’s relationship with money, possessions and property, because it is the stewardship time in our church. Today’s passage takes place during the apostle Paul’s third missionary journey. He is in Ephesus in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey along the western coast of the Aegean Sea. He has been there for two years according to 19:10, first preaching in the synagogue and when he got kicked out of there he taught in the school of Tyrannus (19:9). He was successful in proclaiming the gospel; many people came to place their trust in Jesus as Savior. It says in 19:20 “So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.” The success of the gospel preaching caused problems. In fact it cased a commotion. Acts 19:23 says, “And about that time there arose a great commotion about the Way.” 

“The Way” of course is a reference to the Way of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” The use of the word “Way” here emphasizes that the gospel is not just a set of beliefs, but a way of living. That is what makes the difference. When the gospel of Christ is preached and lived, it causes a commotion. Does it cause a commotion today? The answer is “yes” when it is clearly preached and lived. What kind of commotion does it cause?

I. First, the gospel changes the way people spend their money. When people give their whole lives over to Jesus, and God begins to control every aspect of their lives, then they will spend their money differently. That is the heart of the commotion caused in our passage. People became Christians, and it changed the economy of Ephesus, and got the local businessmen upset. It used to be when a Wal-Mart moved into an area, it would have devastating effects on the small businesses in the downtown district. You don’t hear so much about that any more because the damage has been done. My father was a small business owner. He ran an office supply store in the downtown section of a town in Massachusetts. I worked as a stock boy there during my junior high years. His business was greatly harmed when the big office supply places began appearing in the shopping plazas. All the little family stores in our town were hurt when the large shopping malls started springing up. Something like that was happening in Ephesus. Except that it wasn’t a superstore that had set up shop in town, it was the gospel.

The gospel of Jesus had come to town, and it changed people’s lives. They did not spend their money in the same way they had before. In particular the people no longer bought the religious statues and souvenirs connected to the worship of the Roman goddess Diana (also known by her Greek name Artemis.) Business had dropped off dramatically. When you hit a man’s bank account that is when he starts yelling. A silversmith named Demetrius started yelling. 

24 For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Diana,[a] brought no small profit to the craftsmen. 25 He called them together with the workers of similar occupation, and said: “Men, you know that we have our prosperity by this trade. 26 Moreover you see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are not gods which are made with hands. 27 So not only is this trade of ours in danger of falling into disrepute, but also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised and her magnificence destroyed,[b] whom all Asia and the world worship.” (Acts 19:24-27)

There are two issues mentioned here: money and religion. I am going to get to the religious aspect in a moment, but the main issue, as always, is money. Demetrius made money from the worship of Diana. That is why he mentions money first, “Men, you know that we have our prosperity by this trade.” And only mentions the worship of Diana later. In verse 17 he first says, “So not only is this trade of ours in danger of falling into disrepute,” then adds, “but also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised and her magnificence destroyed.” Follow the money. The gospel came to town and the flow of money changed. The charge brought against them later in the passage was that they were “robbers of temples.” They did not literally rob temples, but they withheld their money from them. This is what really got Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen upset.

The same is true today. Money reigns. How a person spends their money is a sure sign of where a person’s allegiance lies. Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21) Where is your treasure? How do you spend your money? In particular, where do you spend your “disposable income” or “discretionary income? Disposable income is the total amount you have left after taxes. Discretionary income is the amount after taxes and the fixed expenses of life (such as housing, food, clothing, health, etc.), also called necessities. How do you spend your “discretionary income”? After you have paid for the basics to keep body and soul together, how do you spend your money? Identify that and you will determine where your heart is? It is a good thing to think about during this stewardship season. If you have truly given your heart to Jesus, then your treasure will be there also. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The believers of Ephesus had given their hearts to Jesus Christ, and no longer spent their money the way they used to. That caused a commotion, and got the merchants upset. The gospel changes the way people spend money.

II. The gospel challenges the gods of the culture. There were two main issues in Ephesus. One was money and the other was religion. Ephesus was the center for the worship of the goddess Diana or Artemis. In fact at some time in the past a meteorite had fallen from the heavens and landed in the area. It was seen as a sign from the goddess and was enshrined in the temple, much like Muslims have a black stone meteorite enshrined in the Kaaba in Mecca. They say it fell at Adam’s feet, and they make a pilgrimage to Mecca each year and kiss it. In 19:35 it says, “the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Zeus?” The word “image” is not in the Greek text (that is why it is in italics in the NKJV). It literally says “that which fell down” from heaven. Maybe it was later carved into an image of the goddess or resembled the image of Diana the way people today imagine they see images of Mary in knotholes and stains on the wall and burnt pieces of toast. 

In any case Ephesus was the center of Diana/Artemis worship. The temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was a tourist attraction for all Asia and beyond. Diana/Artemis was the goddess of the hunt and of the wild. She was often pictured with weapons – bow and arrows - and surrounded by animals like deer, leopard and lion. But in Ephesus those historic aspects took backseat to her role as a fertility goddess. She was literally a sex symbol, and the images of Diana, which have been found in Ephesus and the area, make that very clear. I showed many of you slides of the images of Diana after I visited Ephesus a few years ago. So in Ephesus we have the goddess of sex, weapons, money, and wrapped up in religion. It does not take too much of a leap of imagination to see that these are the gods of our culture. 

The gospel of Jesus Christ came to Ephesus and challenged the gods and goddess of Ephesus. Listen to what the silversmith Demetrius says in Acts 19:26, “Moreover you see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are not gods which are made with hands.” The official charge brought against Paul and the others was not only that they were “robbers of temples” but also “blasphemers of our goddess.” (19:37) The gospel of Jesus Christ challenges the gods and goddesses of our culture and society. The big question is: does the church of Jesus Christ in America challenge the gods of our society? I don’t think so. It appears to me that Christians have accommodated our Christian values to the reigning gods of our culture. It is hard to tell the difference between a Christian and a nonchristian by the way we live. Too often we worship the same idols of money, sex and power, materialism and success, fashion and fame, groping after the same political and financial power as the nonbelievers around us. We spend our money and our time the same way nonbelievers do. American Christianity needs an apostle Paul to cause a commotion in New York City and Washington D.C. and Los Angeles and every other city and town in our nation. We need a divinely inspired commotion caused by the Holy Spirit of God in our land. 

III. Third, this commotion created an opportunity to proclaim the gospel.  Demetrius got the businessmen of Ephesus all stirred up because people were not spending their money in the old idolatrous way. They were not buying the silver idols. They weren’t paying for entrance into the famous shrine of Diana. They were saving it for more important things. What things? Christians were known in the ancient world for taking care of the poor and hungry, widows and orphans like the Bible told them to do, even those who were not believers.  They did it individually and also brought money to the church to use for people who had needs, similar to the way the Jerusalem church did, in the passages we explored the last two Sundays. Paul mentioned it in his letter to this Ephesian church. In Ephesians 4:28 he told them, “Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.” Christians worked for money not so they could spend it on themselves, “eat, drink and be merry” like the rich fool in Jesus’ parable, not so he could buy the newest toy that was marketed to them on TV Ephesus, but “that he may have something to give him who has need.” He goes on in the next verses to warn them against covetousness:

“But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” (Ephesians 5:3-5) 

Paul links covetousness with sexual immorality; he even calls covetousness a type of idolatry. Christians today seem to single out sexual immorality as a special sin more serious than other categories of sin, but we seldom mention covetousness. Here Paul mentions them both covetousness and sexual immorality in the same breath, “For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”

The Ephesian Christians were changed from the inside out in many ways, including financially. Their loyalties had switched from the idols of their culture to the true God. When the gospel movement got big enough to have a financial impact on the community, then nonchristians started to complain. They accused the Christians of all sorts of things. 19:28 says they were “filled with wrath.” They started chanting “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” They rushed into the theatre of Ephesus, (which is still there, and still a great edifice). It says that they didn’t even know why they were there. Look at 19:32 “Some therefore cried one thing and some another, for the assembly was confused, and most of them did not know why they had come together.” But the were “all in one accord” according to verse 29 in knowing that their goddess and their way of life was under attack. And it was those Christians who were somehow responsible for all this trouble.

All the Ephesians were gathered together in the theater. The theater, by the way, holds 25,000 people, about two-thirds the size of PNC Park, so you get the picture. This crowd has gathered has gathered not to cheer for the home team, but to express their anger against the Christians, who were seen as being against their city, their goddess and their prosperous way of life. What does the apostle Paul want to do? You would think he would run for his life. That is what he did in the early days when he was let over the wall of Damascus in a basket in the middle of the night in Acts 9. But the Paul of Acts 19 is a lot different than the Paul of Acts 9. This is an older, more experienced, more spiritual and more courageous Paul. Acts 19:29-31: “So the whole city was filled with confusion, and rushed into the theater with one accord, having seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians, Paul’s travel companions. 30 And when Paul wanted to go in to the people, the disciples would not allow him. 31 Then some of the officials of Asia, who were his friends, sent to him pleading that he would not venture into the theater.”

Paul wanted to go into the theater. Why? To preach the gospel! He figured he had a gathered crowd the size of a Billy Graham crusade. What a wonderful opportunity to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. But his friends would not let him do it. They knew Paul. They knew what he would say. They knew that if he went into that theater he would never come out alive. As the story goes on, the Jews send out a man named Alexander to talk to the crowd. We know of this man from Paul’s letters to Timothy, who was later pastor of the church in Ephesus. Alexander was a Jew with a Greek name; he was a coppersmith (2 Timothy 4:14). I Timothy 1:19-20 says that Alexander’s faith had suffered shipwreck. In 2 Timothy 4:14-15 Paul says of him, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works. You also must beware of him, for he has greatly resisted our words.” The unbelieving Jews sent this man forward, apparently afraid that the anger toward the Christians would spill over into violence toward the Jews. They figured that a man with a Greek name who was also a craftsman (and therefore in the trade guild like them) could reason with the crowd. But they saw through it. It says in verses 33-34 “And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward. And Alexander motioned with his hand, and wanted to make his defense to the people. 34 But when they found out that he was a Jew, all with one voice cried out for about two hours, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” 

Finally the city clerk quieted the crowd, threatened them with punishment from Rome if they continued in this city-wide disturbance, and dismissed them to their homes. Paul never got to preach that day. But he wanted to. This was his pattern. Draw a crowd and then preach the gospel. That is what Peter did on Pentecost and throughout the Book of Acts. That is what Jesus did in the gospels. The Gospel of John is organized in this pattern; Jesus performed a sign and then preached a sermon. Even though Paul never got to preach, this has a lesson for us. Use the opportunities we have to proclaim the gospel. 

The gospel of Christ causes a commotion. It is the nature of the gospel to be a scandalous to those who are perishing. It changes the allegiance of people from false gods to the true God. It changes the way they live, including how they use their money. And that commotion gives us an opportunity to proclaim the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ.