What can Christianity do to a city? What influence can Christianity have on a population when wholesale numbers of people become Christians? What would a radical work of God in a city look like?
In Belfast in the 1920s, an evangelist WP Nicholson preached the gospel. And the Belfast Shipyard owned by Harland and Wolff had to build a shed, called “the Nicholson shed”. Why? Because all the newly converted shipyard employees returned the tools they had stolen, and a new shed was required to house all the returned tools. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP_Nicholson)
Let me give you an example closer to home. Do you know when the ground record for the Melbourne Cricket Ground was set? It was not for the 1956 Olympics. It wasn’t for an Ashes Cricket match, nor for an AFL grand final. It was set in 1959 when evangelist Billy Graham visited Melbourne for 4 weeks. It is reported that over 143 thousand people crammed into the ground, spilling over onto the playing surface. And an extra 4 thousand were served outside by hastily set up PA speakers.
Over 3 million of the 10 million population in Australia heard Billy Graham.es to Jesus.
Every TV station covered his visit prime time, and millions heard his radio addresses. In Sydney, 57,000 people responded to his message to give their lives to Jesus. The ABC compass program, no friend of evangelical Christianity, recently said this:
“Billy Graham’s crusade [in 1959] was said to be responsible for a nationwide drop in crime rates, alcohol consumption, and for 3 years afterward, a fall in the number of illegitimate children.” (http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2484481.htm)
May we see such a response to the gospel in our life times.
Our reading today shows the effect of wholesale conversions on the city of Ephesus. When Paul preached the gospel in Ephesus over 3 years, there were far reaching effects. Those effects hit the economy, the polity, and the hip pockets of the city. Radical repentance that cannot be denied was widespread.
The events of our reading occurred during Paul’s so called third missionary journey. Paul has travelled overland by foot. Eventually he reaches the Roman Province of Asia Minor. On the Agean Coast is her great trading port of Ephesus[1]. 300,000 inhabitants, and access to places further afield.
Paul previously had briefly visited Ephesus during his return leg of his second missionary journey (18:19-21). He dialogued in a synagogue, but couldn’t stay. So Christianity had come to Ephesus before the events we read about. Not only had Paul himself briefly ministered there. But Paul also had dropped off Priscilla and Aquila there. So Ephesus had the benefit of that dynamic husband and wife team. And also the powerful Apollos arrived in Ephesus, preaching what he knew about Christ, and received further instruction from Priscilla and Aquila. The brothers then sent Apollos over to Greece to encourage the disciples there. So the first signs of Christianity have seemingly sprung up with little of Paul’s personal ministry.
However, the picture Luke paints is that something was missing in the Ephesian church before Paul came along. The young church seems to lack some of the basics. It has not been built on the proper foundations.
What do I mean? Well, firstly, we have the strange story in chapter 19 verses 1-7. Paul finds 12 disciples somewhere in Ephesus. They seem to have been disciples of John the Baptist. But they didn’t seem to have listened to John the Baptist. For John the Baptist said:
"I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. (Luke 3:16 NIV)
Yet they can say to Paul:
"No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." (Acts 19:2 NIV)
We didn’t really listen to John the Baptist all that much.
However, Paul remedies this. For not only does he instruct them about Jesus, but when he places his hands on them, they are indeed baptised with the Holy Spirit[2]. Just as Peter and John lay hands on the Samaritans, so they receive the Spirit (Acts 8:17). So Paul lays his hands on these Ephesians, and they receive the Spirit.
Here is the Ephesian Pentecost. The 12 men remind us of the 12 Apostles on the day of Pentecost[3]. For both sets of 12 spoke in other languages and prophesied[4]. And just as God did big things on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, so God will do big things in Ephesus in Acts 19 and 20.
The second suggestion that the church’s foundations in Ephesians were not properly set up is seen in the wash up of the 7 Sons of Sceva incident. These men were misusing Jesus’ name in trying to drive out evil spirits. But they received a humiliating beating. And this became widely known in Ephesus. Jesus’ name was magnified and held in honour.
And we read the result for the church in verses 18 to 20:
Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas. In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power. (NIV)
Some of the believers in Christ had been living a double life. They had become syncretistic. Sure, they believed in Jesus Christ. But they also had kept practicing their sorcery, their magic. For Ephesus was a centre of this sort of witchcraft.
We of course, don’t have witchcraft and sorcery and magic, do we? We live in modern Australia. Wrong.
We have a relative who sends my wife ‘Good Health and Medicine’ magazines. It is a magazine about basically women’s health. At least, that is how it is marketed. But 32 pages of it are given over to astrology, tarot cards, psychics and clairvoyents.
Or the woman who pulls in front of me with ‘White Witch’ signs on the back of her car. Or when I go to public libraries and try and find a bible, it is very difficult to find anything except Spong and Theiring. But I tell you I see on the shelves plenty of new, crisp books on witchcraft and sorcery – a whole set of Fiona Horne books.
Sydney and Ephesus probably aren’t that different. When we as a society reject Jesus Christ and his benefits, we will inevitably have people in our community turn to witchcraft, which then becomes mainstream.
Friends, what is on your shelf at home? What DVDs and CDs are you listening to? What web sites are you visiting? What are you into that is inconsistent with being a Christian? Is it witchcraft? I’m not talking about make believe –Wizard of Oz, Narnia Chronicles, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter – children’s fiction with witches and dragons and giants and unicorns and magic wands in them. I’m talking serious magic and occult material, wicker and witchcraft, tarot and psychic, séances and contacting the dead using mediums.
My daughter came home one day from school to report that most of the girls in her year were performing oujie boards in the playground. All harmless fun, until they freaked out.
We are Christian. Jesus has emerged from death, so we must not go anywhere else except him to find out about the other side of death. Jesus is in control of our destiny, so we need to trust him, not some psychic, with our future. Jesus has power over Satan and every demon. So we must not be seduced by his lies. Our Lord Jesus wants us to completely break with all this.
There are some things we just cannot on-sell. We cannot give them away as gifts. We can’t say we have them for the purpose of research or criticism. You cannot give them to Salvos or Vinnies. Because some types of books are evil, the only thing we can do is destroy them, hence, the book burning.
Pornography is in the same category. It is wrong because it is lustful, it is untrue, it is addictive, and it teaches the wrong things about sex.
This is the bite of repentance. Realising that I cannot salvage anything from this dreadful mistake. All I can do is fess up, burn it up, receive God’s forgiveness, and start afresh.
That was the real, costly repentance that occurred at Ephesus. It cost them the equivalent of about $5 million dollars. It should have occurred when they first became Christians. It didn’t. But through the powerful ministry of the Spirit associated with Paul, it happened later.
That is real Christianity. We too must make sure we don’t have any secret deeds of darkness. The way to defeat them is expose them. The secret gives it power over us. Whoever conceals his sin will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them finds mercy.
Ephesus is the high point of Paul’s ministry as a free man in Acts. Paul will stay 2 years straight in Ephesus. He will preach in the Synagogue for three months (Acts 19:8). And then, when some malign Christianity, Paul will take the disciples from the Synagogue. Church and Synagogue separate. Paul will occupy his own lecture hall. And every day for 2 years Paul will preach the gospel in that hall (Acts 19:9-10). Here is Paul preaching freely and not going to jail. The result of this strategy in Acts 19:10 is clear:
This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. (Acts 19:10 NIV)
When I call this settled local ministry ‘peaceful’, I don’t mean that it is without opposition or persecution. That would be too much too expect, this side of glory. Paul says later that everybody who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12). But it is opposition and persecution that does not destroy the church, but strengthens it. It is just enough opposition to provide ‘resistance’ but not enough to crush gospel preaching from that area.
He says in 1 Corinthians, written from Ephesus during this time:
But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me. (1 Corinthians 16:8-9 NIV)
Paul knew from experience the great benefit that a peaceful society and quiet lives are for gospel preaching. So he wrote to Timothy in Ephesus:
I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone -- for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4 NIV)
Peaceful society leads to salvation because we can freely preach the gospel. And as a result of this long period of relatively peaceful work, ‘all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord’. It is not surprising that by the time the Apostle John wrote his Apocalypse, the book of revelation, there are churches in each of the seven major cities in Asia Minor.
Paul’s preaching and ministry affected the assets of the church members. The witchcraft books have had to go. And after two years it also challenged the Ephesian economy. And an important aspect of the economy outside the church was the religion of Artemis worship. Let me re-read verses 23 to 29:
23 About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. 24 A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in no little business for the craftsmen. 25 He called them together, along with the workmen in related trades, and said: "Men, you know we receive a good income from this business. 26 And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that man-made gods are no gods at all. 27 There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited, and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty." 28 When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" 29 Soon the whole city was in an uproar. (Acts 19:23-29 NIV)
It had to happen. Christians in trouble again. This time, the pagans were upset. The gospel had made such an impact that it affected the economy of Asia minor. People were becoming Christians and had stopped flocking to the pagan shrines. The gospel freed them from bondage to statues and idols. And the tradesmen, who profited from pagan idolatry, were not happy. And they struck back.
Of course, in our society, modern Australian society, we don’t have little statues. We think the economy itself is God. Whatever is good for the economy is morally good. Whatever is bad for the economy is morally bad. And woe betide us if we say that anything that is good for the economy is bad in God’s sight. Like gambling and pokies and our alcohol culture and our insatiable desire to be entertained. Say that a billionaire is going to set up a gambling school in our area, and the new gambling school will recruit from our high schools, because the latest theory about how to become the richest person in Australia is that gambling is recession proof. Say 1000 kids in our area get jobs. Say it is good for the economy, and it brings money into the economy. So we all conclude, if it’s good for tourism, if people have jobs, then it is morally good. It is in the national interest. Because Australian society is materialist at heart. And 'good' is what keeps us prosperous and dulls the boredom and maximizes pleasure.
And in a similar way, here we have the Ephesian artisans, the silver smiths and allied trades, speaking out in defence of their trade and their god, the multi-breasted fertility god, Artemis, also known to the Romans as Diana.
After the riot, Paul couldn’t stay in Ephesus. His two years of peaceful ministry were over.
This is a reminder to us that if a door of peaceful ministry is open now, it may not always be so. Open doors can close too. So let’s make the most of the opportunities and freedoms that we have.
A few years later Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians. It is a letter full of thankfulness and reminders of God’s grace and mercy in Christ. But it also contains reminders of where they had come from.
Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible (Ephesians 5:11-13 NIV)
Remember the public book burnings in Ephesus. Remember when you came out of the closet. The way to deal with sin is to confess, expose, and then forsake.
Our beloved city of Sydney, with in excess of 4 million people, is a diverse multi-cultural sprawling mass of western humanity. Judging by our news and popular media, our interests are materialism and pleasure seeking, with the minimization of pain and maximization of comfort as our profound goals. Perhaps there is also a tilt of the hat also to lifestyle, sport, family, health and the environment.
What could Christianity do to this city? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Mardi Gras become unviable due to lack of numbers and interest? Wouldn’t it be great if the sporting teams got upset because they couldn’t get enough people to fill a team on a Sunday. Wouldn’t it be great if the shops didn’t open on a Sunday because everyone was too busy at church, and they had to run campaigns to try and get people to shop on Sunday. Or publishers ditched their occult and new age lists because people were uninterested. Or that young people in our local high schools aren’t interested in working in a casino because they want to spend their life on something more significant than gambling, something of eternal significance. Then we will face opposition… opposition that we have not yet experienced. But we will know that the gospel has made a difference where it needs to… at the grass roots level.
May it come to pass. Let’s pray.
[1] Ephesus was the most important city in the Roman province of Asia. The city was on the Agean coast in modern day Turkey. The ancient city is a ruin being excavated. The area is now, of course, part of a muslim country. Ephesus was a great commercial city. This is the province with the 7 cities to which Jesus sends his letters in Revelation 1-3. The patron fertility goddess of the city was the many breasted Artemis (Gk) = Diana (Latin). It was claimed her image had fallen from heaven (Acts 19:35). Her temple ranked as one of the 7 wonders of the Ancient world until it was destroyed by the Goths in 263AD: Colin Hemer and Michael Green’s article on ‘Ephesus’ in the NBD, 327.
[2] Note Calvin’s view that there was no rebaptism by water, but the laying of Paul’s hands followed by the experience of speaking in tongues and prophesying constituted the ‘baptism into the name of Jesus’. Calvin’s view has not been adopted by recent commentators, all of whom see the reference to a rebaptism in water.
[3] Although the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost fell on the 120 and not just the 12.
[4] Following Johnson, contra Witherington and others.