Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION

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Good morning CrossPointe

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Today we are going to be in Acts 19:21-41

BACKGROUND

CONNECTION

QUESTION:

1) How do people change?

2) What should be our expectation as the gospel transforms people and culture?

Today’s passage from describes for us:

How people and culture are changed?

It also should help to shape our expectations as well.

Appropriate expectations are helpful right:

Marriage or when you’re starting a new job.

Marriage: Whose going to take out the trash?

Doing laundry?

Cooking?

Killing the cockroach or spider?

Whose cooking?

Laundry?

Ironing of clothes?

Job: How many hours do they expect you to work?

What exactly are their expectations?

Assumptions are NOT helpful, in marriage or in the workplace?

Yet, sometimes we can be at fault for assuming we understand and know how to apply spiritual truths.

How do people change?

Today’s passage is a description of what we too can expect when the idols of our culture are threatened.

How will culture respond when the gospel is preached?

How should christians act and speak in a culture that opposes the gospel?

PRAY

BACKGROUND

Previously in the Book of Acts

1:8 “empowered by the Holy Spirit, you will be my witness in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth

Chapters 1 - 7: Jerusalem

Chapters 8 - 12: Judea & Samaria

Chapters 13 - 28: Ends of the Earth

Last week we were in as the Apostle Paul was in Athens.

We saw how Paul engaged a culture full of idols - seeing and feeling the weight of a city saturated with idols

Paul proclaimed Jesus and the Resurrection - To the religious, the the everyday person standing in line at the market, to the intellectual professors of the day.

The message was the same.

We also learned that idolatry is more than images of false gods and goddesses carved into stone and precious metals, but they are also things we worship in our heart, according to .

DEFINITION of IDOLATRY:

“Is anything more important to you thank God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give”

Ephesus (Background)

Population of 100,000, this is 10x larger than Athens at the time.

It’s temple to Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the world… four times larger than the Athenian Parthenon.

Parthenon

230 x 100 ft.

58 columns

Temple to Artemis

425 x 225 ft.

127 Columns, each was 60 feet high

In the first account, Antipater of Sidon describes seeing the temple to Artemis this way, “I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, "Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand"

I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, "Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand"

The temple attracted many thousands of visitors each year, bringing additional wealth into the city.

EXPECT TRANSFORMATION

THE TRANSFORMATION (19:17-20)

19:1-10

Paul begins preaching for 3 months in the synagogue in Ephesus - the religious people continued in unbelief and began speaking evil of Christians.

Paul then spends two years preaching in a public hall and verse 10 says that all the residents of Asia heard the gospel.

19:11-16

God was doing miracles through Paul but then 7 sons of the Jewish high priest decided they wanted in on the action so they begin trying to rebuke evil spirits saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus that Paul proclaims.”

The evil spirit were like, “I know Jesus and I recognize Paul but not you.”

Attacked the men, tore the clothes off their body and the 7 sons became the 7 streakers that day.

READ 19:17-20

A story like this gets around town, even a town of 100,000 people.

More than just the humor of the situation, the bible says that fear and awe fell upon the people

There is power in the name of Jesus.

So much so that people bring their idols and books and burned them in the site of everyone.

Valued at 50,000 pieces of silves

Modern evaluation = $6 million

What caused the change???? - This is a dramatic transformation…

1 Piece of silver = 1 day’s wage

$15 per hour x 8 hours =

THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF NEW AFFECTIONS

New life in Jesus leads to transformation.

THE POWER OF TRANSFORMATION

I pray that we have an expectation that as the gospel is proclaimed - people’s lives will be transformed.

I also hope we understand how people change.

A story I read this week of Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.

Shortly after the Armistice of World War I, Dr. Barnhouse visited the battlefields of Belgium.

In the first year of the war the area around the city of Mons was the scene of the great British retreat; in the last year of the war it was the scene of the greater German retreat.

For miles to the west of the city the roads were lined with artillery, tanks, trucks, and other materials of war which the Germans had abandoned in their hasty flight.

It was a lovely day in spring; the sun was shining; not a breath of wind was blowing.

As Dr. Barnhouse walked along examining the German war material, he noticed that leaves were falling from the great trees that arched above the road.

He brushed at a leaf that had blown against his chest; it became caught in the belt of his uniform.

As he picked it out he pressed it in his fingers and it disintegrated.

Dr. Barnhouse looked up curiously and saw several other leaves falling from the trees.

It was not autumn.

There was no wind to blow them off.

They were the leaves that had outlived the winds of autumn and the frosts of winter.

Now they were falling, seemingly without cause.

Then he realized that the most potent force of all was causing them to fall.

It was spring; the sap was beginning to run; the buds were beginning to push from within.

From down beneath the dark earth, the roots were taking life and sending it along trunk, branch and twig, until that life expelled every bit of deadness that remained from the previous year.

It was, as a great Scottish preacher termed it, “the expulsive power of a new affection.”

1

This is a beautiful picture of how the new life in Christ expels the old and dead shell.

This new life in jesus caused believers to come together and confess their sins.

They brought with them symbols of their false worship and made a bonfire.