Acts 19:21ff

Metalheads

The longer I walk with Paul, the more I relate to him. Not his success as an evangelist, which I have not shared, nor his Apostolic power gifted to him by the Spirit, nor his incredible courage, which I doubt will ever be fully tested in my lifetime as Paul’s was.

But I relate to those moments when he exhibits impatience or pride or a sharp tongue. I recognize myself when he asks himself rhetorically why it is that he does the very things sometimes he does not want to do. Perhaps above all I relate to his words about himself in his second letter to the Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 10:10 “For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.””

I relate to this. First, bodily presence. I joke a lot, but I remember when I was very young learning that in the workplace or in politics or in any debate or popularity contest and in the world of dating, the preference of humanity is clear, the taller individual will always have an edge. It is a well known phenomenon when people are vetting a candidate for the presidency, height matters. People will instinctively consider a taller candidate to be more presidential, a natural leader, because of height. This was a difficult fact to come to terms with when I was younger. As a middle aged man with an established life it means almost nothing to me now, but it caused me anxiety as a young man. Paul was, apparently, also not physically large or impressive in any regard.

Then his comments on public speaking. People say about him that he can write a letter, and indeed can he ever. But that when they hear him in person it’s disappointing. His speech is of “no account”. We don’t know what that means, but eloquence was something people trained in professionally their whole lives at this time in the Roman Empire. And apparently Paul simply could not compete on that level. Maybe he had a weak voice, maybe he wasn’t quick on his feet in live debate or speech. Who knows? Maybe he struggled to show passion or to organize his thoughts when he was speaking extemporaneously?

But I too feel that I can write, and when I write I often feel inspired, but when I am leading a Bible Study or doing anything that requires me to think on my feet I frequently get brain freeze or confuse myself or don’t understand the questions people are asking me. 2 Corinthians 10:10 is my life verse.

Never forget this fact about Paul, that comes through in his writings and life story without any ambiguity, he loved people. Imperfectly, to be sure, but he loved God and he loved people. The Lord gave him a heart of flesh in place of stone. Just read the letters to Timothy to hear how much Paul loved him, and we can imagine that if we had letter from Paul to Lydia or Gaius and Aristarchus that these letters would be full of affection and concern as well. And the mob had dragged Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s travel companions and fellow believers into the middle of the theater and you can bet they weren’t planning on giving them medals. Life and death hang in the balance.

Paul wants to go in among the crowd. To do what, we don’t know. To defend his friends with his words, no doubt. Or perhaps to die with them, for Paul knows at some point he will die. At some point he will go to be with the Lord. Every riot, every arrest, every beating, he must wonder. Is this my moment to go and be with Jesus?

But his friends love him too. And as friends would, they recognize the uselessness of Paul entering that madhouse. Paul is viewed as the source of the problem and he would likely only increase the chances of his friends getting killed. So they hold him, and the text seems to indicate they physically constrain him from going in.

And that is worse. That is worse for Paul. It is one thing to be beaten or tortured yourself. But when someone you love is being threatened in this manner because of your words, what wouldn’t you do to trade places with them? This is a kind of torture that goes deeper than physical pain. In the past Paul has been in the prison with everyone else or on the receiving end of the whip like everyone else, or occasionally he is the only one who is beaten as he was in Lystra.

But this, I have to think, is worse. He is being protected by his friends, but I am sure his desire was to go and share the fate of his friends who were under threat. Paul, the man who sent Christians to their death in Israel, chafing at the bit to go and die with his fellow Christians far from his homeland.

Let’s turn and reflect a bit on Artemis right now. Not on her nature or the history of her mythology exactly but on what she represents in this text. The Temple of Artemis was for a time one of the 7 wonders of the world. It wasn’t just a temple for the Ephesians, it was the heart of Ephesus. Every year hundreds of thousands of tourists came to Ephesus to see the temple and the statue of Artemis that lay within it. It was ancient by the time of Christ and it wasn’t just the metalworkers who depended upon it. It was the tavernkeepers, the builders, the weavers and pretty much every trade. Take away the Temple of Artemis and what is left of Ephesus? It would be the equivalent of taking the U of I away from Champaign Urbana. Whatever you might think of the University, the bulk of CU’s economy and also identity revolves around the U of I.

Let us try and relate for a second to Demetrius. Imagine some new philosophy or belief was coming into CU and for whatever reason it entailed getting rid of the University. Actually, with the advent of AI, that’s not such a crazy scenario anymore.

You can imagine how all of us might react to that. Even if you don’t work directly for the U of I, if the U of I were to disappear the entire economy of CU would contract, severely. People would move away by the hundreds, by the thousands. Houses would be left abandoned. Crime and gambling and drug use and prostiution and all the desperate trades of the desperately poor would flourish. What would be left would be a shell of a city. If I were giving this sermon in cities like Flint or Detroit Michigan this would be an easy illustration because the offshoring of the production lines of the American automobile devastated those communities.

My point is that there was no separation in Ephesus of church and state and no separation of church and economy. These were all one and the same. And Jesus was a threat to the whole system.

What is surprising, I think, is that the Holy Spirit had drawn enough people to faith in Christ that the citizens were genuinely concerned for the heart of the city, the worship of Artemis.

Consider the headwinds pushing against giving one’s life to Christ. First of all there is simply the impressive weight of Roman paganism which built up to that point the world’s largest and most sophisticated empire. And the worship in the temple of Artemis must have been something to behold. There are no Sistine Chapels, there are no soaring Cathedrals built for the worship of Christ. If you want to worship Christ you go to someone’s house, or possibly meet outdoors. You will worship next to people of all backgrounds, including slaves or beggars. And the men and women worship together. Jews, Egyptians, Syrians, poor and rich, diseased or healthy, all together in a house…compared to the white pillars and inspiring statues of the Artemis Temple and the health and wealth of her virgin priestesses who were afforded pride of place for their solemnity, purity and devotion to their goddess. In addition to this from the other end of the religious spectrum you have the Jewish authorities, claiming to be representatives of God’s Word, reasonably so, with their synagogues and their education and Biblical knowledge, saying that Jesus is not the Messiah and that Christians are perverting their faith.

And yet, so many people were being drawn to Christ that the city was taking note and growing anxious. That’s incredible.

In fact, the growth of Christianity is difficult to explain. I have read a few authors that have taken a stab at it, but there is no compelling reason that people were so drawn to Christ other than He is Christ and those who hear His voice are His sheep who recognize their shepherd and are hungry to hear and follow God’s Word.

Atheist debaters like to say that most people are Christians just because their parents are Christians and statistically that may be true but obviously that can’t explain just how a crucified Jewish peasant (in the eyes of unbelievers) managed to conquer the Roman Empire with love and mercy.