Acts - Week 10 / Tuesday

Reading for today: Acts 19:21-41

"I must visit Rome also." A divine necessity was laid upon him. Later on in Acts we find that this was indeed pleasing to the Lord for Paul to go to Rome. However, Paul did not yet know how he was going to get to Rome. But from this point to the end of the Book of Acts, Rome is the objective in view. He didn't go to Rome directly because he felt a responsibility to visit the churches in Macedonia and Greece again. Paul had a great passion to care for the churches that he had helped plant.

One of the churches he spent time discipling was in Ephesus. But it was there that his work and ministry caused a near riot. Because the gospel was making inroads into the lives of the people of Ephesus, they were giving up their idol worship. This was not good news for the makers of these idols, which represented Artemis, the fertility goddess of Ephesus.

When the idol makers realized that their livlihood was in jeopardy because of Paul's message, as well as the band of preachers and teachers who travelled with Paul, they started raising a ruckus, and stirred up a great deal of anger against Paul and his companions.

At this point, the Jews put forward Alexander out of the crowd with the intention of instucting them. They wanted him to explain that the Jews were not responsible for what the Christians were doing. But when the crowd recognized he was a Jew, they drowned him out with their cries---for two long hours!

Finally the town clerk, who was a citizen of Ephesus that served as their official contact or liaison with the Roman government officials in Ephesus, quieted the crowd. He pointed out that the men they had brought into the amphitheater were neither temple robbers nor goddess blasphemers.

It is important to note here that Paul had been nearly 3 years in Ephesus, but there was no evidence that either he or the other Christians ever said anything against the temple or Artemis. They simply kept preaching the good news of Jesus Christ in a positive way, and the sale of the images and shrines automatically fell off.

As a Christian, do the people around you know more what you are against or what you are for? Is our message a positive or negative message? These verses give us a good picture of what can happen when we stick to the message of Jesus. That message is more powerful and life-changing than we can possibly imagine!

Tomorrow: The sermon that killed a guy!