Acts 19 Sermon

We have an interesting passage before us this morning. There’s a lot going on and a lot to parse out. And while we can’t cover everything, I think the Lord has a message for us this morning that is both challenging and encouraging. Today we’re going to look at three temptations of the human heart. Three idols that tend to creep up in our lives. We find in this text the idol of livelihood or purpose, the idol of creed or worldview, and the idol of the crowd. For each of these idols, we’ll see how the appear in our lives, and we’ll look at how Jesus liberates us from their shadow. So let’s dive in.

Our passage begins by saying there was a lot of societal tension as a result of the Way, another way of saying the Christian church. What’s going on is that earlier in chapter 19, we learn that the church plant in Ephesus has burst on the scene, and they are wildly filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul is preaching the gospel all over town, and every day more and more people are joining the church, and experiencing themselves the pouring out of the Spirit. Christ’s healing ministry through Paul is so powerful that even handkerchiefs that he has touched and prayed over are healing people and freeing them from evil spirits. (Now, let’s first recognize that this was a unique time and a unique ministry. I do not recommend going out today and handing out your tissues to people for a number of reasons, not only theological.) But the point is that Jesus is doing amazing things through his church-plant in Ephesus!

And right before our text we are told this really fascinating story about the seven sons of Sceva. It almost sounds like one of the Twelve Days of Christmas, doesn’t it? “Seven sons of Sceva.” These guys were professional exorcists and clairvoyants who were ready to call on the names of any and every god or divinity in their invocations, and they saw what was happening in this church, so they start using the name of Jesus among many others. They try it on one guy, but the demon-possessed guy beats the snot out of them. And word gets around among the other sorcerers and magicians in town who were hearing the gospel being preached and seeing the power of the Spirit, and in response they burn their scrolls of incantations. And these weren’t worthless pieces of paper, this was their livelihood! This was their retirement! This was approximately the amount of 50,000 days of earnings. But they throw it away in view of the new life they had found in Christ.

And then we come to this guy, Demetrius. And he’s seeing what’s happening in Ephesus, and he’s saying, “We’ve got to stop this. These guys are saying that our gods aren’t real.” Now in Ephesus, the main deity was Artemis. Artemis was the goddess of the harvest, which in a primarily agrarian society was the main source of income and prosperity. So she’s the goddess that governs prosperity and livelihood, the means by which people live. And Demetrius sees the writing on the wall. If these people, like the sorcerers, start giving away their livelihood and turn to Jesus, well their goes his business, his prosperity, his livelihood. This is the idol of livelihood.

Now, pursuing livelihood is not a bad thing. We all gotta eat, don’t we? We all want to provide for our families. But our desire for livelihood is deeper than that, isn’t it? Because we don’t want to just work to survive, we want to have a purpose. We want to make a difference. We want to leave a mark on the world. Again, this isn’t a bad thing. We know that God has made us for a purpose: Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and tend to it. Livelihood isn’t a bad thing. But when our livelihood becomes the ultimate thing, when what we do becomes the primary source of meaning and value in our lives, that’s when it was become an idol. And this is a temptation that is always easier to see in someone else’s life and terribly difficult to see it in our own.

We’ve got a lot of educators at Redeemer, so if you wake up in the morning, and what drives you, what energizes you, is the idea that one day you’ll be known as the greatest teacher the county has ever seen, and years from now your students will look back on their time with you and say, “You are the reason I’m a doctor, a lawyer, a writer, etc.” If that’s what motivates you, that may be an idol for you. Same goes for any vocation you have.

For me, if what motivates me in this work of church-planting is to see our church become the shining example that every other planter should emulate, and our story be told at church-planting conferences across the country, if that’s what motivates this endeavour rather than the desire for Christ’s name to be glorified and his kingdom vision enacted in our county, than this has become an idol for me. And to be dead honest with you, it’s a struggle. Whenever the end of our purpose is anything other than Christ, than it very quickly becomes an idol of livelihood and purpose.

But Jesus sets us free from this idol, and the way he frees us is through adoption. Galatians 4 says this:

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Jesus sets us free from the idol of livelihood by adopting us into God’s family and royal children. Our primary purpose is not dictated by anything that we do, but by who we are. And because of what Christ has done for us, we are the royal children of God. Sons and daughters of the King. And everything we do flows out of that reality. Our primary purpose is to live as members of God’s family. Desiring a purpose and a livelihood is not bad, when we pursue them underneath and as part of our adoption in Jesus.

The end to which you grow a business, whether you’re in an entry level position or running the whole thing, it’s not to make a name for yourself or to beat out the competition, but rather it is to reveal the light of Christ in a dark place. The end to which you educate the next generation is not to demonstrate a superior intelligence or ingenious method, but as the beloved of God to demonstrate that love of God to the vulnerable. Our ultimate meaning and purpose and value is found not in what we do, but in who we are as God’s children.

Now, the second thing we see is how Jesus sets us free from the idol of creed. Look at verse 27:

“And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”

Now, you notice, that Demetrius never stops and asks whether what Paul is saying about Jesus is actually true. He never asks whether Paul is right that gods can’t be made by human hands, and that maybe everything that’s happening in the city is evidence of the presence of a true and living God who is Jesus. He never asks that question, does he? He is so thoroughly entrenched in his worldview, his creed of life, that he can’t even see that he could be wrong. This is where the idolatry of creed can creep in.

We are all trying to make sense of the world, and to assist us in that endeavor, we all tend to live by some kind of creed, we all live according to a series of beliefs that helps give structure to our surroundings. But if the way we understand the world replaces Jesus, then it can quickly become an idol for us.

A great way to think about this is to ask yourself, can your creed, your worldview, can it save the world? Can it bring resolution to life’s gravest problems? Think about it with me: do you believe in American exceptionalism so much that you think America can save the world? Can democracy save the world? Capitalism? How about equality? Can that save the world? Our answer has to be no! Only Christ can save the world and only Christ can bring resolution to life’s gravest problems. A lot of people are celebrating the election of a man like he’s a savior, and a lot of people are mourning the defeat of a man like he’s our only hope. If and when we believe that any system of thought other than the work of Jesus can save the world, we have elevated our creed to become an idol.

Jesus sets us free from the idol of creed by reminding us that the only way to truly understand the world is through him. Look at John 1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

John calls Jesus the Word, or in Greek, the Logos. Now, in the Greek mind, Logos was more than just something that was said or written down. They believed that there was a guiding principle, a pervasive reality that governs the whole world, and guess what that reality was called? The Logos. What John is saying is that what governs the whole world, providing it structure, giving it meaning, is Jesus. He is the one who makes sense of the world, which means if the creed by which you live does not include the reconciling work of Christ, your creed cannot be true, and you will continue to be disappointed and restless in life. The only way to be freed from that is to hear the gospel anew. This is why our church affirms the creed of the church - we are reminding ourselves of the only true creed, the only true worldview, the only true way of making sense of everything.

Now, the last idol, is the idol of the crowd. Look at verse 28:

When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul’s companions in travel. But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples would not let him. And even some of the Asiarchs, who were friends of his, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater. Now some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together. Some of the crowd prompted Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward. And Alexander, motioning with his hand, wanted to make a defense to the crowd. But when they recognized that he was a Jew, for about two hours they all cried out with one voice, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

The idolatry of the crowd is powerful, and it has led human beings to do terrible things throughout history. Notice in the passage, most of those in the crowd did not know what was going on. They had no clue. All they knew was that this was an opportunity to riot about something. This was an opportunity to be enraged about something. They saw an opportunity and an excuse to be offended.

We do this all the time don’t we? We live in an age where people love to be offended. We love to be angry. We’ve got an enormous amount of information at our fingertips, which means we tend to know a little about of lot of things, but we rarely know much about anything, but we love to talk about things we don’t know much about.

It begs the question: why do we feel like we have to have a position on everything? Answer: because none of us have really gotten past middle school. We all want to be with the cool kids. We all want to like what they like, hate what they hate, and rarely do we stop and think if we even agree with them or not, or even if we know enough to make an actual assessment. We all still want to sit with the popular kids.

Underneath the idolatry of the crowd is the desire to be accepted and to belong. But Jesus sets us free by accepting us into the family of God. Do you realize that if you are in Christ, the Lord of the Universe is looking at you right now and declaring over you that you belong. You belong because Jesus has made it so, and there is nothing that can upend that. The crowd has no power to change your identity in Christ. No matter what they say or don’t say about you, you belong if you are in Christ.

You are freed to live as a person of peace. You don’t need to worry about what the crowd thinks of you or whether you need to take a stand on something that you know very little about. You don’t need to be enraged because the crowd is. Your identity is secure in Jesus, and you can operate in the world with a peace that passing the world’s understanding.

So we see three idols in this passage, and three ways that Christ sets us free from them. Christ sets us free from the idol of livelihood by giving us an identity not built on what we do, but what he has done for us. Christ sets us free from the idol of creed by reminding us in the gospel that he alone governs, saves, and undergirds the foundations of the world. And Christ sets us free from the idol of the crowd by securing our identity as the beloved sons and daughters of God. Where in your life do these idols appear? Where do they tempt your heart? What might Christ want to say to you today, to lead you down the road of healing and freedom?