Do you ever look at the world and wish that you could make it a better place? There's much in the world that is not good. There are people who are broken and who struggle. Governments pass laws that are unjust. There is plenty of criminal activity, ranging on a spectrum from vandalism through to robbery through much worse.
There are churches in this country who wake up one morning and discover that planning permission has just been granted for an enormous mosque to be built just the other side of the street from where they meet. One church that I was a part of many years ago had discovered one day that there was a planning application for a large lap dancing club just a few streets away, and they were distraught and fought to try to prevent this from happening.
How can we fight the things that are not good? How can we transform our society to make it a better place?
Now, if you're here this morning as a Christian, you know something really important that I need to remind us of. And if you're here still looking into the Christian faith, this is really important that you understand—that this is what the Christian faith teaches. And that is that the problem with the world starts in our own hearts.
Christians, we're not people who are basically sorted, basically good, basically healthy, who then look down our noses at the rest of the world and just go, I wish the rest of the world could be as sorted as I am. That is not what Christianity is all about.
Jesus taught really, really clearly that the reason the world is broken is because we are broken. And a Christian is somebody that God has reached down into their life to forgive them. He's given us new hearts that we don't deserve. He's made us new people, and then gradually, little by little, he transforms us to become the people that he wants us to be.
But we're not content just to have God make us people gradually. We want better as well. We want others to know what we have received as kindness from our God. And today we are going to think about how that can happen.
Last time, if you were with us, we looked at the first half of Acts chapter 19 together, and we saw that the Apostle Paul spent nearly three years in the city of Ephesus. And today we have events that occurred right at the end of his time in that city. These were the events that led Paul finally to move on from Ephesus and on to the next stages of his life.
And as we look at these verses together, we're going to see three things about how the gospel and the culture of the world around us interact with each other.
So here's number one.
The gospel transforms whole cities.
The gospel transforms whole cities.
Here's what happened. Luke tells the story really well. Augustina read it really clearly, so you hardly need me to tell you the story, but let me just draw a few details out.
The silversmiths in Ephesus had a really good trade going, and along with their related craftsmen in related trades, they all came together one day, led by a guy called Demetrius. Demetrius—perhaps he was the sort of guild leader in Ephesus for all these trades—and he acts as their spokesman. He points out to the craftsmen that they have it good. They have a good income; it's a profitable business.
They'd been making silver models to sell to tourists. Ephesus was a major travel centre, and all the roads converged—even the coastline—and people would travel through, and they made a huge income selling little silver trinkets for the people who passed through Ephesus.
We don't quite know what these things were. Perhaps they were little models of the Temple of Artemis. The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus has been excavated. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—on a scale of the Pyramids of Giza. It was roughly the size of two modern-day rugby pitches placed next to each other, held up by—now I forget the number, I think—127 stone columns, 60 feet high. When you think this was an ancient world without cranes and steel and all, it was an extraordinary building that just—your jaw dropped when you saw it.
So maybe they made little silver models of the temple, or maybe models of Artemis. We read later in the chapter that her image fell down from heaven. Now, what people think that was, was probably a meteor—a bit of space junk had landed in Ephesus. Only it looked a bit like a person. So, sophisticated people that they were, they concluded that this stone tells them at last what their goddess looks like. So they could now, in an informed way, make statues of her, including miniatures that could be sold for profit.
They had a good thing going, these silversmiths.
On the other hand, though, they had the Apostle Paul. And the Apostle Paul had been preaching for three years that gods that you have made by human hands with a chisel and various mechanical tools are not actually gods. And their income was taking a hit. They were noticeably losing trade because people were no longer worshipping Artemis. Instead, they were worshipping Jesus Christ. And so they were stopping buying the pieces of silver.
Now, Demetrius was a shrewd worker. He knew how to play people. And he knew that filing his company's annual report at the end of the year with a little paragraph buried near the bottom from the auditors, raising question marks about the going concern status of the company, would not exactly help solve the problem. He needed to be a little bit more canny than that to get the city to be sympathetic.
So he moved on from arguing that their profits had been dented, to stressing that Artemis herself was in danger of suffering. She could lose her worldwide reputation, and so could the temple. Now, at this point, the people are beginning to become on his side, and they're sensing that this is a problem that must be solved.
Note the three references in this chapter to the whole province of Asia.
So, in verse 27, we hear that there is a danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited—the goddess herself, who is worshipped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.
There's Artemis—she's worshipped throughout the province of Asia.
But then there's verse 10, last week's reading, where Paul was in Ephesus in the lecture hall of Tyrannus for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
So there's the competition, you see. Artemis is worshipped throughout the province of Asia, but now everyone in the province of Asia has heard the word of the Lord.
By the way, this is the Roman province of Asia—roughly modern Turkey—not the continent of Asia.
And then verse 26 is the third reference: 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.
So in this battleground for Asia, Paul is winning and Artemis is losing. And so there is uproar. The craftsmen cry out, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!
There's a lovely little touch in this passage. In verse 25 he stresses that we receive a good income—no small income. And therefore, Luke says in verse 23, there was a great disturbance—there was no small disturbance in the city—because what they lost was no small income.
What this shows is that the length of time that Paul was in Ephesus, preaching every day, meant that people across the province were becoming Christians, and in such vast numbers that the silversmiths noticed. Enough people were becoming Christians to impact which trades were making money and which trades were losing money.
This passage invites us to have a big vision for our evangelism. We long to see people become Christians—at least I hope you do, I do. But this passage wants us to set our horizons bigger than your friends and family and neighbours becoming Christians. It is much, much bigger than that.
Yes, we want to see God transform other people's lives in the way that he's transforming ours. But we also want to see God transform Scarborough. We want to see God transform the school that you go to. We want to see God transform the company that you work at. We want to see God transform the housing development on which you live. We want to see God transform the business section of Scarborough—on South Bay, around the Old Town.
We want the way that people spend their time in the leisure parts of the town to be changed and transformed. We want Scarborough to become a different place. That is the vision.
We want to see God transform North Yorkshire and South Yorkshire and Sheffield and West Yorkshire as well. We want to see God transform the United Kingdom. We want to see God transform the world.
Now, what you do stays the same. What you do to see that happen is this: you share the good news with your friends. You join Shahin and others in the church to knock on some doors in the area around this building and invite them to come and discover what it is that we do here on a Sunday, and the God that we know.
We as a church run events at which people can come and hear about Jesus. It's the same old stuff that we've been doing. But what's changed—what's fresh here—is the vision to get behind as we do that.
This is a vision that should excite us. It is bigger. Our horizons are wider than we are perhaps being used to.
So what do you do if this church discovers one day that a 5,000-seat mosque is to be built on the other side of Dean Road? What do we do?
What do you do if your church hears that a large, modern, new lap-dancing club is about to open a couple of hundred yards away? What do you do?
What do you do if the government of our nation passes legislation saying it’s okay for doctors to kill the elderly to prevent them becoming a drain on the Health Service?
What do you do?
Do you fight it? Yes, you bet you do.
We need good laws—laws that protect human beings and especially protect the vulnerable. That means the very young, the very old, the very sick, and the weak.
But fighting is only part of the answer. The most important part is this: preach the good news of Jesus Christ.
We work and we pray to see people become Christians—in such numbers that these things we don’t want to see in our town simply go out of business. Why? Because no one wants to go to them anymore.
Now, this is the long-term answer. It's not a quick fix. But that’s what we do. Rather than screaming that certain things shouldn’t be allowed—that will get people hurt—we work for a day when those things can’t survive, because too much of the town is Christian.
That’s bigger than just thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were another 30 of our friends in here to make us a bit bigger?” It’s about transforming whole cities, whole regions, whole cultures—as the gospel takes root.
The gospel transforms whole cities.
Whole cities hate the gospel.
So here’s what happened next: Demetrius and the others had a grievance, and they spill out onto the streets. The crowd gradually grows and funnels into the theatre.
Now don’t think Stephen Joseph Theatre—think Roman amphitheatre. It’s dug into a hillside on the edge of Ephesus. It’s been very well excavated and survived well. Modern estimates put the seating capacity at 24–25,000. A bit bigger than Hall A at the Street.
Imagine that full. Wembley Stadium full. Full of a crowd.
At this point, the non-Christian Jews are getting a bit jittery. Why? They also believe there is only one God and that Artemis isn’t real. And they’re thinking, “We believe that too... and we’re about to be accused of being part of all this. That wouldn’t be good. Let’s try and distance ourselves from Paul.”
So this guy Alexander gets sort of shoved up the front. “Tell them this. Tell them! Tell them it’s not us—it’s just Paul!”
But as soon as they realise who he is, the poor guy can’t get a word in. And you get two hours of chanting:
“Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
And it doesn’t stop.
It’s almost like watching newsreel footage from some totalitarian countries, where people feel intimidated into supporting their undemocratically appointed leader. Huge rallies, chanting in support of the supreme leader.
Only, it isn’t that. These people want to be there. They’re proud to be Ephesians. Proud of Artemis. This is from the heart—chanting in loyalty. And they won’t shut up until the city clerk eventually quietens them down.
This was utter confusion. Mob rule. Red-blooded chaos.
Luke even says most of them didn’t know why they were there. They just followed the crowd through the streets, sensing good entertainment, maybe a fight, and thought, “Let’s go see what’s going on, lad, shall we?” And they joined in the shouting. No idea what was happening—just caught up in it.
You see, when the gospel starts to bite, people feel the cost. When it starts to affect your income—you feel it. When it affects your gods—the things you worship, hold dearest in life—you feel it.
When you become a Christian, many of you know this pressure. You’ve reached that point in your growth where you realise Jesus is interested in your priorities. He’s interested in your money—how you earn it, how you spend it.
You realise you might earn less going forwards because of choices you’ll make. And there's that little moment when you think:
“Did I actually sign up for this? Do I really want this? Or is it going to cost too much, and I’m just going to quietly back away?”
In Ephesus, that was the problem. Lots of people were persuaded and followed Jesus—enough to transform the whole city. But not everybody.
And here’s the snag: there were people who were not persuaded. They knew what Paul had taught, but they didn’t want to follow him. Yet they were being asked to pay the cost too. They hadn’t said yes to Jesus—but they were losing income because others had.
The more the gospel bites, the more it transforms you, the more it transforms this town, the more others will start to notice—and resent it.
That’s true in schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods. If the gospel starts to transform those places, not everyone will be pleased.
Some of us live in households where not everyone is a Christian. And you already know—without me telling you—how easily others resent what you do because of your faith.
So let me say something really important: don’t get me wrong. Part of what Jesus wants is for you to be a good husband, wife, son, daughter, parent, brother, sister. Don’t ever use loyalty to Jesus as an excuse to neglect those people God has asked you to care for.
But if you follow through—consistently loyal to Jesus—no matter how loving, kind and godly you try to be, there will come a point where the transformation in your life is resented by others.
It’s unavoidable. And for you, I’m afraid, it’s literally closer to home than for others of us.
Let’s be under no illusion: if God continues to bless the ministry of this church, the character of the town we live in will be transformed. It will be noticed. And not everyone will like it.
We’ll increasingly find ourselves on the receiving end of opposition—and even hatred.
We want the gospel to spread. We want it to transform us and the area we live in. But the more it happens, the more opposition we’ll get.
And Luke is saying to us: Be prepared—that is what will happen.
Now, let’s just notice how the people of Ephesus expressed their hatred.
Let’s talk for a moment about Artemis.
Maybe you’re an expert on Greek legends—I’d love you to teach me more about Artemis later, because I’m not.
Artemis was the Greek name for the one the Romans called Diana. She’s a slightly complicated goddess. In Greek mythology, she was the daughter of Zeus, twin sister of Apollo.
But here’s the odd thing: the Artemis of Greek legend seems a little different from the goddess worshipped in the province of Asia, where her temple was focused. She seems to have some different traits.
So it’s tricky to work out exactly what she stood for—but here’s the general consensus.
She was particularly the goddess of two things: hunting (and, with that, care for and husbandry of wild animals and nature), and childbirth.
Bizarrely, she was a virgin who had apparently experienced childbirth—a sort of paradox.
But when you put it all together, she stood for nature, animal instinct. And this was reflected in the way she was worshipped, and the practices that took place at her temple and beyond.
So as this mob converges with such an anger and a rage that if they had got hold of the Apostle Paul, they would literally have ripped him limb from limb. They oppose... they—sorry—they’re not opposed. They look like, resemble, a pack of dogs or a pack of wolves.
Well, that is not an accident, because that is the kind of goddess Artemis is... was. That was the kind of way that you would defend her. So when the unbelieving world feels threatened, they will oppose the Christian church. But do not expect them to do so with Christian character. Do not expect, when we face opposition for the things we believe and talk of, do not expect that opposition to come to us with truthfulness, honesty, integrity, patience, gentleness and kindness.
These are the characteristics, the personality traits, that come from knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, who is those things in himself. Expect instead the opposition to come in ways that reflect the values of the gods that others worship.
Now at times, we too will want to defend our faith. We want to fight back, hold our own. We all want to defend the God that we believe in. And as we do that, we need to be really careful that we don't copy the world around us in the way that we do it. We defend our faith in ways that reflect God's character—with an integrity, with a kindness, with a gentleness that is not shown by those who oppose us.
It’s very easy, if a hard ball comes back—it comes at you—to return it in the same spirit. But we mustn't do that. And as we work through the next chapters of Acts, we will see lots of ways in which Paul defends the faith. And it's markedly very different. And I believe Luke is setting up a deliberate contrast to the kinds of ways that he is opposed and treated.
One last little comment on this. Luke wants us to see this riot as an act of worship. This is more of the same point really—the character of what's going on. This is what happens when you worship a different god.
Just think for a moment about the word church. The word church is what we're doing this morning. We are a church. The church just means an assembly or a gathering—that's what the word literally means. And it's acquired this kind of specialist religious use—that this is what it means when Christians gather together to worship their God. The gathering of Christians on a Sunday morning is church, capital C.
But actually, the word assembly—well, we use it in other ways, and so did they. It can mean the local parliament—it did back then. And actually even today, we talk of, in devolved government, of the Welsh Assembly—the parliament in Wales that decides on matters devolved to the Welsh. But we get that use in this passage here.
Verse 39: "If there's anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly"—ekklesia. But we also get the word for church in two other verses in this passage:
Verse 32: "The assembly was in confusion," and
Verse 41: "After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly."
The riot is literally a church, but it's a very different kind of church because it's a very different kind of god driving that church.
So whenever we gather to worship God, to eat together—as we will do next week—to defend our faith, whatever it is, let's make sure that people looking in see the character of the God that we worship and not the character of the little gods that others worship.
Whole towns hate the gospel.
Number three—this is a really brief point just before we close—is that hatred helps the gospel to reach cities.
Hatred helps the gospel to reach cities
Hatred, we've just thought about, helps the gospel to reach cities. So as a final little brief point...
So, end of last week's reading—verse 21 says the time has come for Paul to leave Ephesus. He resolves to go to Jerusalem; from there, to Rome. And we know from elsewhere in the New Testament, his next ambition from Rome was to plant a brand new church in Spain. That's where he's going next.
Verse 22 says, but he didn't go immediately. He sent Timothy and Erastus on ahead, but he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer.
That's the end of last week.
Beginning of next passage—chapter 20, verse 1:
"When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia."
What finally got him to move on? The uproar. The riot. The hatred. That was his cue that now it really is time to move.
We see this regularly in the book of Acts. When people oppose the gospel, that is the catalyst that sees the gospel spread. You get it with Stephen—the first Christian martyr, the first person to be killed for their faith in Jesus. What happened after Stephen was killed? The church—the Christians—were scattered from Jerusalem, Luke says, and they preached the good news wherever they went.
And we will see lots of examples of this in the coming chapters of Acts as well.
It happened in China in 1954. The recently appointed Communist government expelled all Western missionaries from China. And everyone in the West, rather arrogantly, saw this happening and thought: “Oh no—a new government that hates Christians, and they've sent all of us out who were looking after them. This will kill the church in China.”
Thirty years later, the doors opened, and we were all allowed back in. And what did we discover had happened in the pressure cooker that was Communist China? Explosive Christian growth.
Now I think I'm correct in saying this—someone tell me later if I've got it wrong—I think it's right. The country in the world today in which the church is growing faster than in any other country is Iran, in which Christians are singularly hated and persecuted.
This is the consistent pattern. This riot, this chaos, this uproar is what moves Paul out of Ephesus and to his next phase.
It’s so easy to be discouraged by opposition. But we've seen it's inevitable—that gospel growth leads to opposition. But here's the truth: that opposition is what actually drives the gospel out.
God holds in his hand the kings and queens of this world. The wise ones recognise God holds in his hand nations. God holds in his hand courts, local councils, planning authorities—God holds them in his hand. And what looks to us like something trying to stop the gospel is actually all part of his plan. It’s part of what God is doing to see fresh growth in his kingdom.
Conclusion
So I want to set an exciting vision before you this morning. I'd love us to keep sharing our faith with those around us. But I want us to catch Luke's vision as we reach out.
Yes, it’s wonderful to give a few individuals salvation for eternity—let's not play that down. That is an amazing gift to give somebody: salvation—eternity in heaven, not hell. That is a wonderful thing to give them.
But we are doing something much bigger than that. We are part of God's project to transform Scarborough, to transform Yorkshire, to transform the UK, to transform the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. As people become Christians, it transforms whole cultures.
But this comes at a cost. At a cost to us, and at a cost to others—for which we will be blamed. But it’s God's project. And even when it's costly, the very price we pay is part of the wonderful God's plan to take this good news onwards, outwards, and to the ends of the earth.