In today’s message we study Acts 19 and continues into chapter 20, focusing on Paul’s travels.
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00:00:00Welcome to Studies with Stearman.
00:00:06Join us as we look deeper into the Bible.
00:00:10Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching.
00:00:15And now, here's Gary.
00:00:18We've been going through Acts, which is a history.
00:00:22In fact, that's what the word Acts means in Greek.
00:00:25Pracheis means history, usually viewed as a history of the Apostles.
00:00:32But I'm viewing it as a history of the action of the Holy Spirit of God.
00:00:36And we have been going through, week by week, looking at the way the Holy Spirit is operating
00:00:42through the early Apostles.
00:00:46Now here's the thing, and here's the lesson that I think is the lesson we really should
00:00:51receive.
00:00:53People tend to look at what the Holy Spirit has done, historically.
00:01:01And they tend, at that point, to make that a standard practice.
00:01:09As though that's all the Holy Spirit does.
00:01:15Like if the Holy Spirit did a certain thing at a certain time during the lives of the
00:01:20Apostles, that's what the Holy Spirit does.
00:01:22If the Holy Spirit did a certain thing in a certain city, when Paul did a certain thing,
00:01:29that's what the Holy Spirit does.
00:01:31And you tend to take those examples and say, well, that's the way we learned about the
00:01:37Holy Spirit, and that's what we should be expecting today in our Christian walk.
00:01:45And nothing could be further from the truth, because there is nothing normative about the
00:01:49action of the Holy Spirit, at all.
00:01:52You can't look at what happened to somebody out here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at a
00:01:58certain church at a certain time, and the Holy Spirit did a certain thing, and infer
00:02:02from that that that's what the Holy Spirit wants to have happen right here.
00:02:07You can't do that, because the Holy Spirit operates and does what He wants to do when
00:02:11He wants to do it, and we don't control Him.
00:02:15Just as Jesus said to Nicodemus, you know, the wind comes from where it will, it blows
00:02:19to where it will, and you can't control the wind, nor can you tell where it's coming from,
00:02:24or where it's going.
00:02:26That's still true today, and yet people, and I'm not going to name any names, but I'm sure
00:02:31names are rotating through your mind right now, people tend to try to catch the Holy
00:02:35Spirit in a bottle and resell it, if you know what I mean.
00:02:42And that's not what we should be doing.
00:02:45We should be doing exactly what Paul did, and what happened to Paul, as we have seen
00:02:51week after week, studying the book of Acts, Paul and the others tried to do this, and
00:02:59the Holy Spirit said no, and they tried to do that, and the Holy Spirit said no, and
00:03:04they tried to do some other thing, and the Holy Spirit said yes, so they did that, and
00:03:09then they went somewhere else, and they tried to do something else, well that didn't work,
00:03:14and bit by bit by bit, they were guided along by the Holy Spirit to go where He wanted them
00:03:19to go, how He wanted them to go, and when He wanted them to go, and they didn't control
00:03:26Him, He controlled them.
00:03:30Bottom line.
00:03:33And you know, I would rather have it the other way around, I'd rather be able to say oh Holy
00:03:38Spirit, do such and such in my life, and have it happen.
00:03:43Oh Holy Spirit, I am really a little bit light in the pocketbook, please fill it for
00:03:50me in the next week or so, and glory, hallelujah, the pocketbook gets filled up in the next
00:03:55week.
00:03:56You would love to be able to control the actions of the Holy Spirit, but in fact that does
00:04:01not happen.
00:04:03Now there are some slight modifications to that statement, because on occasion you can,
00:04:13you can cause God to act in a certain way, and there are many, many examples of prayer
00:04:19throughout the Bible in which the diligent prayer of the saints resulted in a certain
00:04:24kind of action by God, but that's not controlling God.
00:04:29And so with that thought in mind, let's continue our study, because that's what I think we
00:04:35should be getting out of the book of Acts.
00:04:39Just look at what happened to the apostles.
00:04:43We've been going through Acts, and we have seen a number of different things happen,
00:04:50and today we are ready for Acts 23, or 19, Acts chapter 19, verse 23.
00:05:00I remember last week talking about the early part of Acts chapter 19, where Paul met a
00:05:08certain couple who said they hadn't even heard there was such a thing as the Holy Spirit.
00:05:16In fact, he met a group of people who had not heard of the Holy Spirit many, many years
00:05:25after Pentecost.
00:05:27Paul was still having to introduce people to the concept of the indwelling and the leading
00:05:34of the Holy Spirit.
00:05:36After that event, Paul contracted with Tyrannus in the city of Ephesus, and for two years
00:05:45he used a building, and apparently the school of Tyrannus was on the main avenue in Ephesus
00:05:51from what historians tell us.
00:05:54And so for two years, the Lord allowed Paul to have direct access to the Ephesian population,
00:06:00which was an enormously influential population.
00:06:04Just to review, remember that Ephesus is called the landing place.
00:06:08It had a huge harbor.
00:06:11It had global international traffic.
00:06:13It was a very wealthy city.
00:06:14It was politically important to the Romans.
00:06:18All kinds of people came and went through the city of Ephesus, and they spoke every
00:06:24language on planet Earth.
00:06:27And in the process of meeting and greeting all these people from all the different places
00:06:33on Earth, the apostles were given the ability to speak in native languages that they had
00:06:40not studied before.
00:06:43They could speak to passersby.
00:06:46They could minister.
00:06:47They could evangelize.
00:06:49Paul, during his stay at the school of Tyrannus, also worked as a tentmaker.
00:06:57Later on, as we're going to see today in Acts chapter 20, he actually refers to his tentmaking,
00:07:03and he refers to it very emotionally.
00:07:05He was very much attached to his craft as a tentmaker.
00:07:11But while he worked, and we saw this last week in Acts 19, 11 and following, God wrought
00:07:17special miracles by the hands of Paul so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs
00:07:23and aprons, and diseases departed from them, evil spirits went out from them.
00:07:28Paul's sweaty hankies, his sweaty workers' aprons actually carried the sweat and filth
00:07:34from his body, and they went forth and had a measure of the Holy Spirit on them.
00:07:40Now, is that normative behavior today?
00:07:43I don't think so.
00:07:44There's, I mean, if I'm working out in my garage and I wipe my forehead with a hankie
00:07:49and it gets really dirty, I don't think you, and I might also have blown my nose on it,
00:07:54by the way, I don't think you really want that hankie.
00:08:00It's not going to do much for you.
00:08:03Even if I prayed for an infusion of the Holy Spirit upon that dirty handkerchief.
00:08:07And the point here is, and we're going to say this again and again and again, the things
00:08:13that you see the Holy Spirit doing from one time, one place to another time, another place
00:08:19are not to be considered normative.
00:08:25Holy hankies of the dirty variety are not to be considered normative.
00:08:31It would be nice if you could formulistic or formulaically develop a system whereby
00:08:38you could send out articles to people that would be infused with the Holy Spirit.
00:08:43What a great shortcut that would be.
00:08:45But no, that's not to be the case.
00:08:48What we're looking at in the book of Acts is rather a history of how God moved by His
00:08:53Spirit at various times through history to do various things.
00:08:58Is He still doing those things today?
00:09:00Yes, He is.
00:09:02The Holy Spirit is still moving today, I think, as powerfully as He ever did in the days of
00:09:07the apostles.
00:09:11And you might be thinking, well, I don't see all those miracles.
00:09:14Well, maybe you're not looking in the right place.
00:09:17There are miracles, my friends.
00:09:19There really are.
00:09:21Now moving down to the place that will introduce our study today, verse 21 of Acts 19, after
00:09:34these things were ended, Paul purposed in the Spirit when he had passed through Macedonia
00:09:41and Achaia to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.
00:09:46So he sent him to Macedonia, two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus,
00:09:52but he himself stayed in Asia for a season.
00:09:58So we find now Paul is in Ephesus at the school of Tyrannus.
00:10:07He's operating what I believe to be the very first in history, the very first theological
00:10:17institution.
00:10:19It's a theological seminary in downtown Ephesus at the school of Erastus.
00:10:27From that school, he wrote 1 and 2 Corinthians.
00:10:33In fact, you might make a mark in your margin right there in Acts 19, verses 20 and 21,
00:10:39where it says, So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.
00:10:43And verse 21, where it says, After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the Spirit.
00:10:49Right in that gap between verses 20 and 21 is when Paul wrote 1 and 2 Corinthians.
00:10:57And remember, he wrote those letters across the Aegean Sea, sent those letters across
00:11:02the Aegean Sea to Corinth to try to deal with some of the problems in the Corinthian church.
00:11:09And believe me, he was having problems with the Corinthians.
00:11:13Now we won't go into all the problems he had with those people, but he had problems with
00:11:17them of every kind.
00:11:20And he sent Timothy over there with the first letter.
00:11:25He wrote the second letter, which was the hottest letter he ever wrote.
00:11:31And then in 2 Corinthians, he begins by apologizing for the second letter.
00:11:35He said, I'm afraid I was too emotional when I wrote that, and I'm sorry I said some of
00:11:39those things.
00:11:41We don't have the second letter today, it's been lost.
00:11:44But we have 1 and 2 Corinthians, which is really 3 Corinthians.
00:11:50But since we don't have the second letter, we call 3 Corinthians 2 Corinthians.
00:11:542 Corinthians is a hot letter that Paul later apologized for.
00:12:00And I'm saying this to say that Paul dealt with real problems with real people.
00:12:05He got hurt, he had dust-ups, he had arguments, he had disagreements, he had people who just
00:12:12spat in his face, and he kept on keeping on.
00:12:16And this, to me, is the lesson.
00:12:19Life will do some dirty things to you, it'll do some great things to you, but in the
00:12:24process you're going to find that you get sand kicked in your eyes from time to time.
00:12:28So did Paul, so did Luke, so did Timotheus and Silas, and all these guys had their problems,
00:12:36but they kept on going.
00:12:39Well here's one of the problems.
00:12:42After verse 22, so he sent unto Macedonia two of them that ministered to him, Timotheus
00:12:46and Erastus.
00:12:49But he himself stayed in Asia for a season.
00:12:52Timothy took the Corinthian letter over to the Corinthians, while Paul stayed in Ephesus.
00:13:01By the way, this Erastus who's mentioned there was one of Paul's close confidants, and a
00:13:07Christian convert who was a Greek.
00:13:14And Erastus is a historical personality.
00:13:17And he's a very, very wealthy Greek who was the reigning authority, you might call him
00:13:25the mayor of Ephesus at the time.
00:13:31And in fact there are inscriptions still extant which show that Erastus was a real person
00:13:38who really existed in Ephesus.
00:13:42There is one famous paving stone that's engraved with the name of Erastus that says that Erastus
00:13:47contributed the funds that allowed for this section of paving to be laid.
00:13:56And that stone is still there, so that you can read it to this day.
00:13:59So Paul made converts not only of just the ordinary everyday people, but also people
00:14:06that as we shall see when we go on a bit, were some of the high and mighty in those
00:14:13regions.
00:14:16Verse 23, and about the same time there arose no small stir about that way.
00:14:21Now this is where we left off a couple of weeks ago before we took a detour.
00:14:26That way is Luke's way of referring to Christianity.
00:14:31When Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father,
00:14:36but through me, he is the way.
00:14:42He is the truth.
00:14:44And Luke, taking that literally, referred to Christianity as the way.
00:14:50And I think that's probably as good a name for Christianity as you can come up with,
00:14:57except that you don't want to adopt that name for your denomination.
00:15:01You don't want to start calling yourself the way.
00:15:04Actually that's already been done.
00:15:07And some of you may remember the way.
00:15:12But what should we call Christianity anyway?
00:15:18Luke called it that way.
00:15:21There's the famous story of John Nelson Darby, George Wygram, and the early brethren, who
00:15:26back in the 1840s and 50s started a theological movement that later came to be known as the
00:15:36Plymouth Brethren.
00:15:38And essentially what it was was a Bible study movement.
00:15:43And it was the first thing of its kind that had ever been done since the days of the apostles.
00:15:49Wygram and Darby and others said, you know what we need to do?
00:15:56We need to develop a study system so that everybody can study the Bible, the Greek,
00:16:02the Hebrew.
00:16:04We need to develop concordances, like what later came to be known as the Strong's Concordance.
00:16:11All these study aids were developed by this group of men in England under John Nelson
00:16:17Darby, and they started meeting, and there's the famous story which I've told many times,
00:16:25in Plymouth, England.
00:16:27And they became so influential that a reporter from the London Times came to interview Darby,
00:16:35and during the process of the interview he said, well, what do you call your group?
00:16:40Darby said, well, we're just a Bible study group.
00:16:43We refer to each other as the brethren, because that's what we are, we're brothers in Christ.
00:16:49But we don't have a name, per se, nor do we want one.
00:16:53We don't even want to be called a denomination, because we're not.
00:16:56We're just Christians studying the Bible, and developing systems so that other people
00:17:01who haven't gone to school can study the Bible, too.
00:17:06Well the reporter from the Times wrote his article about the brethren who meet in Plymouth,
00:17:14and during the process of his article he began to refer to them as the Plymouth Brethren.
00:17:20And so he bestowed upon them a name that they did not want.
00:17:24We don't want to be called anything, but to this day they're called the Plymouth Brethren.
00:17:29And there's a denomination called the Plymouth Brethren, and that was Darby's wish that was
00:17:35to the contrary.
00:17:36We don't want to be called anything.
00:17:39We just want to be effective ministers of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:17:46Well that was the exact feeling that the apostles had.
00:17:52And so in verse 23, about the same time there arose no small stir about that way, is Luke's
00:17:59way of saying, you know, people disagreed with us.
00:18:05And there they were, in the same city where resided the great temple of Diana of the Ephesians,
00:18:13one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the temple of Diana was just a phenomenal
00:18:17place and people came from all over the world and by land and by sea to worship at the shrine
00:18:25of Diana.
00:18:29Horrific worship practice, by the way.
00:18:31You don't want to hear about it.
00:18:32I mean, it's bad.
00:18:34But nevertheless, people thought that they could gain something by worshiping Diana.
00:18:40For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought
00:18:46no small gain unto the craftsman.
00:18:48And by the way, these little silver Diana figurines, some of them were brass, bronze,
00:18:57some of them were silver, the more expensive ones, were little goddesses that you would
00:19:03take home after visiting the temple of Diana and you put one up on your kitchen window
00:19:09ledge or whatever and do obeisance to Diana in your daily life, because after all, she's
00:19:15the provider of your good fortune, your blessing.
00:19:20So you know, say, good morning, Diana, you know, I'm going to put this piece of fruit
00:19:23up here on the ledge right beside you, please accept this.
00:19:28And I mean, you had Diana worship going on, the goddess of fertility.
00:19:32And so here's Demetrius, the silversmith, who made lots of money making these little
00:19:38shrines.
00:19:39Verse 25, whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, said, sirs, you
00:19:45know that by this craft we have our wealth, moreover, you see and hear that not alone
00:19:51at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, and that's a big statement, throughout all
00:19:58Asia Minor, going all the way over to Greece, all the way back to Antioch of Syria at the
00:20:07east end of the Mediterranean, that's a large chunk of territory.
00:20:12And he says, almost throughout all Asia, Paul has persuaded and turned away much people
00:20:17saying there'd be no gods which are made with hands, which, by the way, is one of the centerpieces
00:20:25of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:20:27God is not a god made with hands, he's not a god that you can see and touch through any
00:20:36method of worship, but rather he's a god perceived through faith.
00:20:43Verse 27, so that not only this our craft is in danger to be reduced to nothing, but
00:20:51also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence
00:20:57should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth.
00:21:02And it's true, people came from all over the civilized world to worship at the temple
00:21:07of Diana, and that would have included places like the southern tip of South Africa, the
00:21:14British Isles, all of what is today called Europe, all the way over to the Indus River
00:21:21and the regions of southern India, what is today Persia, Pakistan.
00:21:32When he says all the world, that's what he's talking about here.
00:21:36So the Christian faith in AD 56, which is about the time this happened, has spread and
00:21:42taken root in virtually all the civilized world.
00:21:47And finally, the people who make the shrines are catching on, oops, you know, this Christianity
00:21:53for a while we thought it was nothing, but it's really beginning to catch on.
00:21:59And we need to do something about that.
00:22:04And so Demetrius fans the flames.
00:22:11Verse 28, and when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath and cried out, saying,
00:22:18Great is Diana of the Ephesians.
00:22:20Now, when you see that chant, and that's what it is, in English, Great is the Diana of the
00:22:29Ephesians, in Greek, megalihi artemis ephesian, what that chant means is, we acknowledge Diana
00:22:39as a true goddess.
00:22:41That is to say, she is our God.
00:22:45So it was a religious chant for them.
00:22:48It was like an assertion on their part that Diana is real and she has real power.
00:22:58Great is Diana of the Ephesians, and the whole city was filled with confusion, and having
00:23:03caught Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions, in travel, they rushed
00:23:08with one accord into the theater.
00:23:11Now that would be the great amphitheater in Ephesus, the ruins of which are still there
00:23:16to this day.
00:23:18Every city had an amphitheater, one of those semicircular stepped amphitheaters with a
00:23:23huge stage down at the bottom, and they were designed for acoustic clarity so that you
00:23:28could stand down on the stage and everybody in the whole amphitheater could hear you.
00:23:34So all this crazy crowd runs into the amphitheater, and the ringleaders of the mob would have
00:23:41been down on stage shouting at this milling crowd.
00:23:46And when Paul would have entered in unto the people, the disciples suffered him not.
00:23:54They grabbed him.
00:23:55They wouldn't let him go in there.
00:23:56He wanted to run down on stage.
00:23:59Hey, let me go in there.
00:24:00I'll talk to him.
00:24:01And he would have.
00:24:04And the people who loved him said, uh-uh, you're not going in there.
00:24:07You will not come out alive.
00:24:10And they restrained him.
00:24:11That's the word actually in the original here in verse 19, or verse 30 of Acts 19.
00:24:17His disciples wouldn't let him go.
00:24:21And praise the Lord for that, because he had a lot more work to do after that, believe
00:24:26me.
00:24:28And certainly the chief of Asia, which were his friends, sent unto him, desiring him that
00:24:34he would not aventure himself into the theater.
00:24:37And here's another reference to people like Erastus, who was the town marshal, the mayor
00:24:49of Ephesus.
00:24:52But Paul also apparently had converted other people called Asiarchs here in verse 31.
00:24:58In English, the chiefs of Asia, plural, certain of the leaders of Asia.
00:25:06Now these Asiarchs would have been the equivalent today of our senators, congressmen, representatives
00:25:12of various kinds, and they were important and wealthy people.
00:25:16And these guys, who were his friends, sent to him, desiring him that he would not adventure
00:25:21himself into the theater.
00:25:22out of that mob, you will not come out alive.
00:25:28These important bureaucrats, these politarchs, these political representatives, whoever they
00:25:34were, were afraid that Paul would be killed.
00:25:37Now this gives you some idea of how they viewed Paul.
00:25:42Paul had come and taught at the school of Tyrannus for two years, and he had already
00:25:46endeared himself to many of the people in the city.
00:25:50And some of the important leaders of the city, 1932 here says, some therefore cried
00:25:57one thing, and some cried another, for the assembly was confused, and the more part,
00:26:03that is the majority, knew not wherefore they were come together.
00:26:08They didn't even know why they were there.
00:26:09They were just, they liked a good shouting fest, and they were following other people
00:26:14who were shouting, and they all ended up at the theater.
00:26:18But what they were shouting was praise and worship to the goddess Diana.
00:26:26And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward, and Alexander
00:26:29beckoned with a hand and would have made his defense to the people.
00:26:33Alexander, the prevailing opinion about him is that he's one of Paul's converts in Ephesus
00:26:39and an important man who apparently would have some weight with people in the city,
00:26:45and so they put him forward.
00:26:47But when they knew that he was a Jew, that is the crowd found out, all with one voice
00:26:53about the space of two hours cried out, great is Diana of the Ephesians.
00:26:59In other words, they were shouting praise to their goddess in this amphitheater, which
00:27:04is located not far from the temple of Diana of the Ephesians.
00:27:09They're saying, megalihi artemis ephesion, which means our goddess Diana is the real
00:27:16thing.
00:27:17She's really, she is really real and she really will bless us.
00:27:23And this other thing called the way, and I'm not sure it had been called Christianity at
00:27:29that point, this worship of Christ is not the way.
00:27:36Verse 35, and when the town clerk had appeased the people, he said, you men of Ephesus, what
00:27:42man is there that knoweth not how that the city of Ephesus is a worshiper of the great
00:27:48goddess Diana and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?
00:27:52One of the artifacts in the temple of Diana, according to secular history, was a meteorite.
00:27:58A large meteorite had fallen and it became an object of worship.
00:28:02They had put that in the temple of Diana.
00:28:06And you know, this, in the old world, this was a thing that was very often done in temples.
00:28:10They would find meteorites thinking that anything that fell from heaven would have
00:28:14to have a blessing on it.
00:28:18And so they would, you know, take the stone, put it on a cart, take it and build a temple
00:28:23around it and worship the stone that fell down from heaven.
00:28:27And that's kind of fascinating.
00:28:29There's a place in the world today where people make pilgrimage constantly.
00:28:33Every year over in Mecca, they go to visit the Kaaba, you know, and they march around
00:28:40and around it.
00:28:42And the Kaaba is built around a meteorite, which is visibly placed so that it's within
00:28:52view of the crowd who comes to make pilgrimage.
00:28:55So it's not uncommon to worship these meteors.
00:28:59This is, of course, Diana was affiliated with the god Jupiter.
00:29:06She was the sort of the feminine equivalent.
00:29:09And that would be Zeus in Greece, in Greek.
00:29:14So it's Diana and Jupiter in the Latin, and it is Artemis and Zeus in the Greek language.
00:29:26But however you cut it, you have these two chief figures, the god and the goddess of
00:29:32heaven, being worshiped here.
00:29:35The image of Jupiter and the goddess Diana.
00:29:39Now this town clerk, this guy here called town clerk in the King James, is called a
00:29:47grammateus in Greek.
00:29:51And he is sort of the town records keeper, if you will.
00:29:54He's the town scribe.
00:29:58He's responsible for the form of decrees that are first approved by the Roman Senate and
00:30:05then sent for approval in the popular assembly in which the grammateus would often preside.
00:30:11And they had local senates as well as the Senate back in Rome, where important people
00:30:17would meet and laws were made.
00:30:20So the guy speaking out here in verse 35, this grammateus, is a very important scribe
00:30:27who passes on Roman decrees to the people of Asia Minor.
00:30:34And these decrees having been passed, the grammateus would then stamp and seal these
00:30:39in the presence of witnesses, and when this was done, like when Roman law was presented
00:30:49to the people in this region, it would always be done in the presence of all the town people
00:30:58on stage at the local amphitheater so that everybody would see that a certain law or
00:31:05rule had been proscribed, prescribed, put in force.
00:31:13And the amphitheater being the forum for these legal ceremonies was considered to be very
00:31:19important to the Roman government.
00:31:22That is to say, there was a bureaucracy in Rome that ruled over all the amphitheaters
00:31:28in the Roman Empire.
00:31:29It was the Roman Bureau of Amphitheaters.
00:31:32And this town clerk would have been an agent of that bureaucracy.
00:31:37This man, this grammateus, or town clerk as he is called, feared for his life.
00:31:45Acts 19, verse 36, when the town clerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus,
00:31:54what man is there that knoweth not that the city of Ephesus, the worshipper of the great
00:32:01goddess Diana, of the image which fell down from Jupiter, seeing then that these things
00:32:05cannot be spoken against, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly.
00:32:11And so the town clerk is standing up and saying, all right, cool it, people.
00:32:16And what he's really saying is, we can find ourselves in trouble with the empire if we
00:32:23let this demonstration get out of control.
00:32:26This man was a politician.
00:32:28His fear was that the laws of the Roman Empire would come crashing down on Ephesus.
00:32:34And he's not cooling the crowd because he loves Jesus or because he's a believer.
00:32:39He's cooling the crowd because he's afraid that the Romans might send a garrison in to
00:32:44stop the rioting.
00:32:47And guess who would be the first killed?
00:32:48It would be the town clerk, because he failed to keep the peace.
00:32:53And that's just the fact of the matter.
00:32:56The reason this is placed in the book of Acts the way it is, is so that we can see the reality
00:33:02of the gospel going forth in the days of the apostles.
00:33:08They were not men who had everything running their way and for whom everything went splendidly
00:33:15and they never had a single problem.
00:33:17They were men who fought the very same kind of problems against unbelievers, against politicians,
00:33:24against bureaucrats, as we do today.
00:33:29And so if we suddenly find ourselves under siege by bureaucrats who say that we can't
00:33:36hold a meeting like on a Sunday morning in our home to praise the Lord because that would
00:33:41make us officially a church and your section of town is not zoned as a church, therefore
00:33:45you can't meet there, well, this is nothing new.
00:33:48This has been going on for 2,000 years.
00:33:50I mean, it's been a battle between the politicians and the believers since the birth of the church.
00:33:59He says you ought to be quiet.
00:34:02Verse 37, for you have brought hither these men which are neither robbers of churches
00:34:11nor yet blasphemers of your goddess.
00:34:16What he's doing here very subtly is saying you don't have a legal charge here to do what
00:34:22you're doing.
00:34:24Be careful.
00:34:25You ought to be quiet and think about what you're doing because in order to do this legally
00:34:30we've got to have a legal charge that we can make against these people.
00:34:37Wherefore if Demetrius and the craftsmen which are with him have a matter against any man
00:34:41the law is open.
00:34:43What he's saying here is if you want to make a legal charge, the court is now open and
00:34:48we will hear a legal charge under Roman law.
00:34:54And there are deputies.
00:34:55Let them and plead one another.
00:34:58You make a legal charge, the court's wide open.
00:35:01Verse 39, but if you inquire anything concerning other matters it should be determined in a
00:35:05lawful assembly.
00:35:08For we are in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar there being no cause
00:35:13whereby we may give account of this concourse.
00:35:16In other words, we can't justify ourselves to the officials of the Roman Empire for having
00:35:21created this riot and the crowd heard him and they said, eww, this guy could be right.
00:35:29We better break this thing up because, you know, if you invoke the wrath of the Roman
00:35:34Empire you're in deep trouble.
00:35:37And when he had thus spoken he dismissed the assembly.
00:35:41So guess what won the day for the Lord Jesus Christ?
00:35:46A Roman town clerk and Roman law.
00:35:54Roman law won the day for Paul and the others.
00:35:57Now isn't that interesting?
00:35:59Of course it was the Lord using Roman law, but it was Roman law.
00:36:04And why is this in the book of Acts?
00:36:07To show us that the Lord has many, many ways of operation.
00:36:13The Holy Spirit of the Lord works even through Roman city clerks who are called at a certain
00:36:21time to say we better be, we better cool it here lest we fan the flames of riot.
00:36:30And then verse six we have a little change of scene.
00:36:34I'm going to say a few words now, Acts 20 verses one through six are six little verses
00:36:46that if you wrote about them, if you extracted Acts 20 verses one through six out of the
00:36:52Bible and sat down to do a historical documentation of what happened during the events of these
00:37:06six verses, it would take a book, like 200 page book maybe, to describe everything that's
00:37:13happened here.
00:37:16So the assembly is dismissed, Acts 20 verse one, and after the uproar ceased, Paul called
00:37:22unto him the disciples and embraced them, departed for to go into Macedonia, and when
00:37:27he had gone over those parts and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece
00:37:34and abode there about three months.
00:37:37You see how compressed and compacted we have here a history that takes Paul into Macedonia.
00:37:50Well, how do you get to Macedonia, you know?
00:37:57You take a ship, buy a ticket, get on a ship there in the harbor at Ephesus, you sail out
00:38:12to the north, and you go up through the islands, Mytilene, Lesbos, Troas, you go up to Samothrace,
00:38:23you go up to Neapolis where there's a seaport, you get off the boat there, you hike or get
00:38:31a ride in an ox cart or however you go about another 50 miles over to Philippi.
00:38:40And in the process of taking this boat tour up the coast of the Aegean Sea, you get off
00:38:49several times.
00:38:51And at each stop, traditionally, Paul, and we have this later on in Acts chapter 20 because
00:38:59Paul reverses his course and comes back the same way.
00:39:04As you go and make these various freight stops, because these boats were all trading boats
00:39:10as well as passenger boats, you would get off and you would witness in each of these
00:39:16coastal cities.
00:39:17And that's what Paul did here.
00:39:20And so you have here Paul departing for Macedonia in verse 1 and verse 2, and when he had gone
00:39:31over those parts and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece.
00:39:41That's huge.
00:39:43Verse 2, which is just a very tiny condensation, encompasses maybe, who knows, some weeks,
00:39:58maybe a couple of months, maybe three months.
00:40:00And then after that, after he came into Greece, he abode there three months, and when the
00:40:08Jews laid wait for him as he was about to sail into Syria, he purposed to return through
00:40:14Macedonia.
00:40:15So in verses 1, 2, and 3, we have Paul leaving Ephesus, sailing through Chios, Mytilene,
00:40:26Lesbos, Troas, Andromedium, Samothrace, up toward Philippi.
00:40:35Then he would go to Neapolis, then he would go to Philippi, and then he went through Amphipolis,
00:40:40Thessalonica, and Berea, and then from there he went to Larissa and passed Mount Olympus,
00:40:47and from there he went to Athens, stayed there for a while, and then he went to Corinth.
00:40:53And that's in verses 1, 2, and 3.
00:40:57It's a huge trip.
00:41:00And the reason I'm just taking a little time with this is to show that Acts is an extraordinarily
00:41:05condensed history.
00:41:08There is so much more going on than you really think about when you read these little verses.
00:41:17And there's this little footnote, he stayed in Greece, now when it says Greece in the
00:41:23text here it means Achaia, and probably Corinth.
00:41:30It could be either Athens or Corinth, but most historical scholars say he went through
00:41:34Athens then down to Corinth and he stayed there for three months.
00:41:39And guess who were waiting for him?
00:41:41The same people he had had trouble with the first time he went through Corinth, the people
00:41:45who always gave him the trouble, the Hellenistic Jews.
00:41:50They were always ready to try to defeat the Gospel.
00:41:52Why?
00:41:53Because they were Gnostics, and Paul was teaching the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that Jesus
00:41:59was born of a virgin, that He was the fleshly incarnation of God Almighty, and that He
00:42:08lived on earth for over 30 years as a man.
00:42:13And He was killed as a man, and He rose from the dead in the flesh, and He went to heaven
00:42:17where He resides today in the flesh.
00:42:20And the Hellenistic Jews hated that idea.
00:42:23They couldn't stand it.
00:42:28Gnostics really offended them, and they were his chief enemies.
00:42:32And so here he is, he comes down to Greece, he stays there about three months, and again
00:42:38he would be ministering to the Corinthians there, and when the Jews laid wait for him
00:42:43as he was about to set sail into Syria, now why would he be setting sail into Syria?
00:42:52What would happen here is he purposed in his mind to sail straight east across the
00:43:01Mediterranean and go back to the home church, which is Antioch of Syria.
00:43:08Remember on this third missionary journey, he had left Antioch of Syria, he had gone
00:43:16on foot all the way across Asia Minor, he had stayed in Ephesus for over two years,
00:43:22now he travels around the north end of the Aegean, all the way over through Berea and
00:43:28south to Athens and then to Corinth.
00:43:35He doesn't want to reverse his course and go back the same way he came because he is
00:43:40anxious to get back to Jerusalem, okay?
00:43:46So he plans to sail directly to Syria, which would be a journey of less than a week by
00:43:52boat.
00:43:54You can sail from Corinth right across the Mediterranean Sea to Antioch of Syria, which
00:44:01has a seaport, and he'd be right back to the home church, which is what he really, really
00:44:05wanted to do.
00:44:08Except that didn't happen.
00:44:12And there accompanied him into Asia, Sopater of Berea, and of the Thessalonians Aristarchus
00:44:19and Segundus, Gaius of Derbe, Timotheus, Asia, Tychicus, and Trophimus, and these going before
00:44:29tarried for us at Troas.
00:44:31Now I know this is complicated, but here's the deal.
00:44:35Paul's intention is to go back to Troas and then either by boat or on foot through Mysia
00:44:44to go back to Ephesus if he had to, but he didn't want to.
00:44:50He wanted to sail to Syria.
00:44:54So what happened?
00:44:57The people who had wanted to go back home again saw themselves in danger.
00:45:05And here, there accompanied him into Asia, Sopater, Aristarchus, Segundus, Gaius, Timotheus,
00:45:17Tychicus, and Trophimus.
00:45:24These people had gone back and said, okay, Paul, we're going to wait for you at Troas,
00:45:29and when you come, we'll see you.
00:45:36That's what happened instead of his desire to go back home to Syria.
00:45:45This is another example of the Holy Spirit redirecting Paul's pathway.
00:45:52Why did it have to be redirected?
00:45:54Because the Jews laid wait for him as he was about to sail into Syria, and he had to take
00:46:00another pathway.
00:46:04He had to, again, and he's done this many times before, he had to go into hiding.
00:46:10So what ends up taking him much, much longer than he had originally planned is a trip all
00:46:18the way back north.
00:46:19He has to go back up through Berea and Thessalonica and Amphipolis and Philippi and back to Neapolis.
00:46:24He has to catch a boat, and he has to go over to Messiah and Troas, and that's where all
00:46:32these people are waiting for him.
00:46:34Verse 5, and we sailed away from Philippi after the days of the unleavened bread, and
00:46:42came to them in Troas in five days, where we abode seven days.
00:46:50And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul
00:46:54preached to them, raising a part on the morrow, and continued his speech until midnight.
00:47:03So in the first five verses, we have this incredible condensation of a travel plan in
00:47:11five verses.
00:47:12That's why I said a minute ago, if you wrote those five verses in a book, it'd have to
00:47:17be 200 pages long to record everything that Paul ever did.
00:47:22I mean, and you really would love to read that book.
00:47:26It would just be fascinating reading to see what they did here, what they did there, who
00:47:31they talked to, how many converts they made, what do they do to appease the Romans.
00:47:37I mean, there's just all kinds of things you never even hear about.
00:47:41So, we sailed away from Philippi after the days of the unleavened bread, that would be
00:47:46Passover, that would be the spring, and we came to them in Troas in five days, and we
00:47:53abode seven days.
00:47:55And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul
00:47:59preached to them.
00:48:01Let's say a little bit about the first day of the week here.
00:48:07And much is made of this in Christian circles, because people say, well, first day of the
00:48:13week.
00:48:14Why do we go to church on the first day of the week?
00:48:16Because the Ten Commandments say, remember my Sabbath to keep it holy, which means we
00:48:21really should go to church on the Sabbath, which is the seventh day, Saturday.
00:48:28And many people have adopted the fashion of going to church on the seventh day to honor
00:48:34the Sabbath.
00:48:36And they say that in order to really be in God's will, you have to be a Sabbatarian,
00:48:41you have to go to church or gather in the name of Jesus on a Saturday.
00:48:47And there are a number of seventh-day churches, seventh-day Baptists, seventh-day Adventists,
00:48:52and there are seventh-day Presbyterians.
00:48:54There are all kinds of seventh-day people who say that you have to honor the seventh
00:48:59day.
00:49:00But over and over again, when we see the disciples doing something, having a love feast, or as
00:49:07in here, coming together to break bread, which would be a...by the way, that's kind of a
00:49:14culturally Jewish idea, coming together to break bread, is the idea of sharing that which
00:49:23we have in common.
00:49:25And out of this, by the way, comes the idea of communion.
00:49:30And we see again and again that the first day is the big day for these people.
00:49:38The first day of the week is when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came down to the sepulcher,
00:49:47just right after sunrise.
00:49:50The first day of the week is when Jesus appeared.
00:49:53The first day of the week is when He rose.
00:49:56The first day of the week was the time when the disciples gathered together.
00:50:04John chapter 20, they are mentioned as having gathered in a room on the first day of the
00:50:11week to worship.
00:50:13In 1 Corinthians 16, 2, upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him
00:50:24in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.
00:50:28And then Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 16 to talk about these regular meetings, which
00:50:33apparently took place on the first day of the week.
00:50:36And the idea of the first day, as we have mentioned many times, is that that's the big
00:50:42day in creation, when God said, let there be light.
00:50:46That was the first day.
00:50:48The first day of the week was when the Lord gave His covenant to Noah.
00:50:59He gave the law to Moses on the first day of the week, on Pentecost.
00:51:06David, the king of, King David was born on the first day of the week, and he died on
00:51:11the first day of the week.
00:51:14And his kingship is remembered because of that day.
00:51:20He was born on Pentecost, died on Pentecost.
00:51:23The festival of first fruits, which is typical of Christ's resurrection, occurred on first
00:51:29fruits, the first day of the week.
00:51:31And of course the Holy Spirit was given to the church on the first day of the week, and
00:51:35so there is this incredible long tradition concerning the first day of the week, and
00:51:40we find it referred to periodically.
00:51:43Now, is it a legality where you read in the Bible, except thou meetest on the first day
00:51:50of the week, yea, that even thou shalt be in sin?
00:51:54Is there a verse like that in the Bible?
00:51:56No.
00:51:58Not there.
00:52:01There's no law that says you have to meet on the first day of the week.
00:52:05But there is a Christian tradition of meeting on the first day of the week, because that's
00:52:09when the Lord arose.
00:52:11And we are no longer under the law of Moses, and so we are not bound to the Sabbath.
00:52:18Indeed, we are not bound to the Ten Commandments, because Jesus said, a new commandment I give
00:52:23you, love the Lord thy God, love your neighbor as yourself.
00:52:26That's it.
00:52:27It's a two-part commandment, and that's the only law that you're under.
00:52:33And by the way, can you create a law concerning love?
00:52:36Well, no.
00:52:37Love has to come through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, but that's another story.
00:52:43So they come together on the first day of the week, and Paul's preaching here.
00:52:50Verse 8, and there were many lights in the upper chamber where they were gathered together.
00:53:00And there sat in the window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep
00:53:06sleep.
00:53:07As Paul was long preaching, he sunk down to sleep and fell down from the third loft and
00:53:12was woken up dead.
00:53:13Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves, for his
00:53:17life is in him.
00:53:18And when he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long
00:53:23while, even till break of day, so he departed.
00:53:28And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted.
00:53:31Again, that's the writing of Luke.
00:53:33Luke writes in these peculiar negative phrases, not a little, which means a lot.
00:53:40And that's one of the reasons that you know it was written by Luke, because he traditionally
00:53:44uses phrases, inverted Greek phrases like that.
00:53:48So Paul's preaching.
00:53:51The way they used to build homes in Asia Minor was that they would build a house around an
00:53:58atrium, so that you could not see the inside.
00:54:02The yard of the house would be enclosed by four walls, or maybe six walls of a house,
00:54:08and you'd have a first floor, second floor, third floor, each floor having a balcony that
00:54:12would face down into the atrium of the home.
00:54:17And it was a very sensible design.
00:54:20When you went in and locked the door, you were sort of in your own little world with
00:54:24an atrium in the middle, and there would be a loft up here, a loft in the middle, and
00:54:30a ground floor, and they had torches.
00:54:35And Paul is down there on the ground level preaching, and up there on the third loft
00:54:40is Eutychus.
00:54:43Eutychus, by the way, in Greek means lucky.
00:54:47I just think that's amazing.
00:54:52There's lucky up there on the third loft.
00:54:56And he falls asleep and goes right over the rail, boom!
00:55:00Landing at the feet of Paul.
00:55:03And he's dead, maybe broke his neck, I don't know, and the Spirit of the Lord does a work
00:55:09here.
00:55:12And this is good, because this is Paul's sort of last act before he goes back to Rome.
00:55:19Because the next thing we see Paul doing is bidding farewell to the Ephesian elders at
00:55:28And he says, this is the last time any of you will ever see me.
00:55:32I'm going back to Jerusalem.
00:55:35You'll never see me again.
00:55:37And there was this incredibly pathetic time of weeping and mourning, because he told them,
00:55:46you're never going to see me again.
00:55:47They loved him a lot.
00:55:49But just before that, there's this event with Eutychus.
00:55:53He's falling down, and Scripture says he fell down and he was dead.
00:56:00And Paul said, don't worry about it.
00:56:02His life is in it.
00:56:04He woke up.
00:56:05They broke bread.
00:56:07They ate.
00:56:08They talked a long while, even to the break of day.
00:56:10And I'll tell you what, if you had something like this happen to you, you'd stay up all
00:56:14night, too.
00:56:15It'd be an exciting event.
00:56:17Everybody's praising the Lord, and there's Eutychus in the middle and eating and just
00:56:22feeling just fine.
00:56:24But, you know, this is not normative.
00:56:28Again, I have to say that you can't expect somebody today falling down, breaking their
00:56:34neck, and dying.
00:56:35You can't expect them to be raised up like Eutychus was.
00:56:39It's not normative behavior.
00:56:42But from time to time, the Holy Spirit performs special acts when needed to move the church
00:56:50in a particular direction.
00:56:52And we should always behave as though one of those special acts could occur at any moment,
00:57:00which it could.
00:57:02I mean, it could happen here now.
00:57:05Somebody could fall down and break their neck or fall down dead of a heart attack, and we
00:57:09could pray for that somebody, and they could be raised from the dead.
00:57:13It could happen here today before we leave this building.
00:57:17But you shouldn't consider it normative, shall we say.
00:57:20That is to say, it's not the business of the church to go around doing spectacular things.
00:57:26It's the business of the church to do the work of God.
00:57:31You know, from time to time, for example, there's the episode of Peter back in Joppa.
00:57:37You remember there was a woman who was a disciple.
00:57:41Her name was Tabitha.
00:57:44And she lived at Joppa.
00:57:46She died.
00:57:47She was a pillar of the community.
00:57:49Everybody was weeping for her.
00:57:51And the apostle Peter was in the city of Lydda at the time.
00:57:57He heard about the death of Tabitha, and he went over to Joppa, and he went in and prayed
00:58:03for her and raised her from the dead.
00:58:06And the net effect of that was to steer the course of the church from Joppa to Caesarea
00:58:14on the seacoast for the next 10, 15 years.
00:58:16In other words, what Peter did there had a very special effect on the growth of the church.
00:58:22Likewise, here in Troas, when Eutychus was raised from the dead, there was a very special
00:58:30thing that happened in that section of Asia Minor that had a very beneficial effect on
00:58:35the church.
00:58:36And don't get me wrong.
00:58:40I really believe the Holy Spirit can still do these things today.
00:58:44I have seen people who were dying who have been healed and are not only alive but incredibly
00:58:52well today, years later, just by prayer.
00:58:57So it does happen.
00:59:00On the contrary, we're not to go around billing ourselves as special people who raise other
00:59:07people from the dead.
00:59:09We don't do that to make money or to get attention or to build a ministry.
00:59:15We don't try to trade on what the Holy Spirit does to make ourselves look better than we
00:59:22actually are.
00:59:24And nobody knew that better than Paul.
00:59:26Now, we're going to have to quit today because of time, but as we go on, Paul is on his farewell
00:59:33journey from Asia Minor back to Jerusalem.
00:59:38And the events that befall him in Jerusalem are just truly amazing.
00:59:45And again, they are directed by the Holy Spirit.
00:59:51Remember, Paul wanted to go back to Antioch of Syria.
00:59:58And he couldn't.
01:00:00He had to take another pathway.
01:00:02Now he's in Miletus.
01:00:03He wants to go back to Syria.
01:00:06He's going to Jerusalem.
01:00:10He would like to do one thing.
01:00:12He ends up doing another.
01:00:14Invariably, this begins to happen to Paul and others.
01:00:18Why?
01:00:19Because the Holy Spirit is directing their footsteps.
01:00:22If you have plans, and here I'm talking to myself as much as anybody else, if you have
01:00:28plans and things don't go according to plan, then you say, wow, God's not answering my
01:00:36prayer anymore.
01:00:38Actually, it may mean that God is really answering your prayer if things don't go according to
01:00:44plan.
01:00:45Because the Lord may be using the Holy Spirit to change your plans for your own good and
01:00:51for the good of people around you.
01:00:53And that's the lesson, I think, to be learned in the book of Acts.
01:00:57Well, I wish we had more time, but that'll do it for today.
01:01:14I'll see you next time.