Boice on Acts 19

I've been working my way through Acts with the help of James Boice's Expositional Commentary. We've also been studying Acts in our Sunday School class. Luke devotes a sizeable chunk of Acts to the planting of the church at Ephesus, probably because it was such an important city of the Roman Empire. Ephesus was a port city of around 300,000 known for it's football field sized temple of the goddess Artemis/Diana (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) and a 25,000 seat amphitheater. We read about these locations in Acts 19. After two years of preaching and teaching by Paul, God was moving mightily and the church was growing, but Boice notes that the motivation that finally stirred up significant opposition to the gospel was not religious or political, but economic. A riot ensued. How did the early church make such an impact that idol worship, and the economy that depended on it, fizzled out across the Roman Empire within a generation of these first Christians? Boice explains and makes a pointed application for us today:

The riot in Ephesus, described in Acts 19:23-41, was a proof of Paul's success. If Paul had come to the city and had simply made a tiny, little beginning, with only a few people meeting perhaps somewhere in a home, the riot would not have happened. Such a movement would have had no impact on Ephesian society. But the fact that there was a riot and so many people got stirred up in defense of Artemis is proof of how successful the preaching of the gospel had been.

There had been a strengthening of the Christian community, first of all. That is, not only had the gospel spread so that many had become Christians, but the Christians had become serious about being Christians. Maybe that is where we ought to start when we think in terms of social reform today: with the transformation of Christians. These Christians had come under the power of the Spirit of God through the preaching of the Word so thoroughly that they were convicted of sin, confessed it, and then actually brought out and destroyed the things that were opposed to Christianity. These things were magic scrolls in which incantations were written, and they were very valuable (see Acts 19:19).

What followed after the Christians got serious was an impact on the society so strong that the riot described in this chapter was the inevitable reaction by those who resented it. Christianity had impacted their business. That is where people are hurt most, in their pocketbooks. Christians certainly and perhaps other people too simply lost interest in the pagan temples.

Let me suggest that if our Christianity is not affecting the economy of our world, we do not have much Christianity. I know we do not like to hear that, because we tend to think that our economy is the product of our Christianity. We think of the Western world as being Christian and therefore capitalistic, and there is some truth to that. At the same time, when Christians live as Christians, it will affect how they use their money, there will be an impact on the economy (negatively for some), and inevitably there will be hostility toward Christians, as there was here.

How did Christianity triumph? How did Christians win the day? It was not by appealing to numbers. It was not by a play on the emotions. The Christians did not circulate a petition to see if they could get 51 percent of the Ephesians to sign it, a petition saying, "Artemis is no goddess, and the God of the Old Testament if the true God." The Christians did not have a mass rally. They did not send Christians into the amphitheater to do their thing, the way Demetrius and his crew had gotten people together to do his thing. They didn't sing emotional songs. They did exactly what Jesus Christ had done and what he had send them into the world to do: They preached the gospel so that men and women got converted, and once they were converted they taught them how to live for Jesus Christ.

Do you want to make an impact on the world today? Do you want to turn this economy of ours upside down? That is the way. It is by teaching the Word and by following hard after Jesus Christ. It does not take large numbers; a small group can do it. Many small groups have.

*James Montgomery Boice, Acts: an Expositional Commentary, Baker Books (1997)