Acts 19:23-42
“Confronting Idols”
Dear Friends of Jesus Christ,
(Recently I came across an interesting story that relates to this passage – source lost.)
An American man went to India to visit an Indian pastor and his wife. They went
on a tour of some of the religious temples. The Indian pastor and his wife showed their
visitor the various idols that many of the Indians worshiped. It all seemed silly to the
American man – these lifeless man-made constructions – why would anyone worship
them? As the tour continued, the visitor invited the Indians to visit him sometime in
America. To which the pastor’s wife responded, “We don’t really like going to America.
There are so many idols over there. Your people – they bow before their television sets
in their living rooms and they go to stadiums to worship their favorite sports teams. They
turn the female body into an idol. They put their hopes in their money. They build their
dream homes. And then they eat and eat and eat and eat some more. We don’t like being
around all of that idolatry.” Except for a few details that I added, this is a true story.
Today’s text is about idolatry. It’s hard not to be condescending toward such
unsophisticated idolaters as the Ephesians. They worship the image of Artemis, a
character of Greek mythology. How uncivilized. How unscientific. How backward. We
know better than them! Or do we?
First, the background. Paul comes to Ephesus on his third missionary journey.
He starts the journey, around 53 AD, visiting the churches planted during his first journey
– Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, etc. Then he visits and revisits the churches planted during his
second missionary journey – first Ephesus, then the Greek churches of Philippi,
Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and Corinth. Then he heads home. He spends only three
months in Greece. He spends two years and three months in the city of Ephesus. What
does he do there? We read in the first part of Acts 19 that Paul finds twelve disciples
who have been baptized in John the Baptist’s baptism, but have not been baptized in the
name of Jesus. Paul baptizes them and the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they speak
in tongues and prophecy. Then Paul goes to the Ephesian synagogue. For three months,
he argues persuasively about Christ and his kingdom. Some of the Jews become
obstinate and refuse to believe and even slander the Christian movement. So Paul leaves
them and goes instead to a lecture hall where he and other disciples have daily
discussions with each other and non-believers for 2 years. The text says that all the Jews
and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. God is also at
work driving out demons and healing people through Paul. A number of people who had
practiced sorcery, convert to Christ and then publicly burn their sorcery scrolls. The text
says that the value of the scrolls was 50, 000 days wages.
At the end of Paul’s 2 ¼ years stay in Ephesus we come to today’s passage.
“About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way.” A silversmith named
Demetrius calls a union meeting of all the craftsmen and workers who participate in the
making of silver items for the worship of the god Artemis. He fires them up, telling them
about how Paul has been leading so many people away from Artemis. He tells them that
this is a two-fold problem: “First, we’re losing income because Artemis is being
discredited and less and less people are buying our products to worship her. Second,
Artemis is being robbed of her divinely deserved worship.” These workers become
furious and they begin shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” They might as
well also shout, “Great is our business that makes us money” for they have made a false
god of both Artemis and the money they get from others worshiping Artemis.
Who is Artemis of the Ephesians anyway? She was a character of Greek
mythology. She was a daughter of Zeus. And perhaps more than the others, she is
difficult to understand because of her complexity. She was both a virgin hunter and a
mother god. She was both a protector of children and violent toward those who offended
her. She was worshiped around the empire, but the city of Ephesus made a special claim
of her. They built a temple for her a mile and a half northeast of the city that was
discovered in 1869. It was a massive and stunning feet of ancient engineering. It was
425 feet long and 225 feet wide. It had 127 white marble columns, many of which rose
62 feet high. Since it was made with marble, it sparkled brilliantly in the sun. It seemed
transcendent. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. In the inner
sanctuary was an image associated with Artemis. It was thought that this image fell from
heaven. People around the world come to Ephesus to worship Artemis at her great
temple. And this Paul, who talks about this Jesus, is discrediting her and threatening
people’s livelihoods.
“Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Soon the whole city joins in the chant and in
the riot. They all rush into the 25,000 seat theater and continue shouting all the louder.
Some people who have joined in don’t even know why they are there. Wild emotion
takes over reason. A Jew named Alexander tries to address the crowd to distinguish his
people from the Christians. The crowd wants none of it. Both Jews and Christians deny
Artemis. And Artemis of the Ephesians is worthy of devotion! For two hours the chant
goes on. Two hours. “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” It’s pandemonium.
The madness continues until the city clerk is finally able to quiet the crowd. He
needs the people to settle down. Otherwise Rome will hear of it and they’ll all be in
trouble. He makes a passionate appeal, on the one hand upholding the greatness of
Artemis; on the other hand, telling the crowd that this is no way to settle a grievance.
There are courts to settle these matters. Let the riot stop. Go home.
What shall we make of this text? We are made to worship. One way or another
we will worship because we are wired to desire the transcendent. We are wired make
something or someone ultimate. We are wired to invest the depths of our beings in
something or someone. History has shown this. The Israelites never abandoned the
Lord for nothing. They turned to other gods. In modern times, the great atheists keep on
predicting the demise of religion in an age of science. But religion is only growing.
There is no sign of the end of Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism or Christianity around the
world. In the west, the humanists will claim that they have moved past worship. But
they have not. They worship the gods of self and creation.
Jesus Christ has come to redirect our worship to the only transcendent being who
will satisfy: The Holy Triune Creator God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The grace of
this text is Jesus Christ working through Paul and others to save people from the
blasphemy and ignorance and dissatisfaction of man-made gods. The grace of the text is
Jesus Christ pointing people in Ephesus to himself – the God-man who gives forgiveness
and abundant, eternal life.
The challenge of the text is our continued flirtation with man-made gods. We are
like the Israelites. We want God and (fill in the blank). Why? Because the true God is
so silent and so slow to fulfill us completely. We have deep longings in us and finding
satisfaction for these in God requires serious prayer and devotion. It requires a long
process of sanctification. It’s so much easier and faster to hook up with money or family
or work or football or food or entertainment or just plain self. Why not get into bed with
God and these other gods? After all, these false gods are fundamentally good things.
That’s the problem with idolatry: We turn good things into ultimate things. We seek to
use good things in God’s creation to satisfy deep longings that only he can satisfy. And
most of the time we are not even aware of it. Do you know how you can tell if something
is an idol? Fast from it for a significant period of time. If it’s hard for you to fast from
food or sports or television or the internet, then that thing is an idol. Is it hard for you to
be alone, away from people? People are an idol.
Listen to what some of the great figures of church history say about idolatry:
“Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that ought to be
worshiped.” – Saint Augustine
“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your god” - Martin Luther
“The human heart is an idol factory” John Calvin
Now listen to the words of a contemporary theologian J.I. Packer:
“What other gods could we have besides the Lord? Plenty. For Israel there were the
Canaanite Baals, those jolly nature gods whose worship was a rampage of gluttony,
drunkenness, and ritual prostitution. For us there are still the great gods Sex, Shekels, and
Stomach (an unholy trinity constituting one god: self), and the other enslaving trio,
Pleasure, Possessions, and Position, whose worship is described as "The lust of the flesh
and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16). Football, the Firm, and
Family are also gods for some. Indeed the list of other gods is endless, for anything that
anyone allows to run his life becomes his god…”
Our main contemporary idol is self. We want to please self. Me. Me. Me. Even
as we don’t say it, we think it. Me, Me, Me. What can I do for me? It is hard to get over
this kind of idolatry, in part, because we are so blinded by it.
We need the words of Jesus: “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”
and “Whoever saves his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”
We need to try pouring ourselves out for God and others every day. When you try that
you will experience the pushback of “self” that so resists this kind of denial. Then you
will see your idolatry of self. Only those who fight against their sins, understand sin.
Only those who fight against the idolatry of self, come to understand it and then get free
of it.
Matthew 16:24-25 is your application text this week: “Then Jesus said to his
disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross
and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life
for me will find it.” That is the challenge this week. It is an anti-idolatry challenge.
Your comfort and hope is that Jesus Christ does not leave you on your own to
fight the self. He has sent the Holy Spirit. You are a new creation to some extent
already. And Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, will help you to deny yourself. He will
convict you. He will guide you. He will eventually give you joy in self-denial. He will
give you his life more and more. If you will only completely abandon yourself to him.
My friends, Jesus Christ saves us from ourselves and the idolatry of creation. He
gives us his life, which is the best life. May we give ourselves totally over to him. And
may he satisfy our every deep longing. Amen.