Idol Breakers | Acts 19:11-41

seated.

Hey. Well, my name is Joel. It is good to have you here, guys today. And we're going to be in acts chapter 19. Acts chapter 19. And as you are making your way over there, I want to share my favorite demon story with you today. In fact, in fact, I would go as far as to say that I really appreciate what the demons do in this story.

All right. You're not going to hear me say that very often, if at all. But. But this story is actually one of my favorite stories in all the New Testament that we get to look at here today. And it's going to be this a story that really just happens in the middle of what is a move of God in the city of Ephesus.

The city of Ephesus, as we talked about last week, is in the midst of something of God doing something here. And we're eventually going to look at this book of Ephesians. I was written to this church just a few years after these stories, but before we get to the book of Ephesians, we want to look at and see what did God do in the midst of it to create what ended up being the first megachurch, what ended up being one of the the central hubs of Christianity in the first few centuries?

God started in the most unusual ways, and that is a really good reminder, because for many of us as well, God works in unusual ways. And yet, even if we feel like it's an unusual way that we do not understand it, we can still know that God is doing something in our midst. Amen. And so let's go ahead.

We're going to read a few verses. I'm going to invite you to stand up and read just a few verses, kind of the main verses here today before we look at a longer passage. So we're going to be in act 19. I'm actually going to start about halfway through verse 17, if you can find that here. And it says in fear fell upon them all in the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.

And many of those who were now believers came confessing and devolving their practices in a number of those who had practiced magic arts, brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and they counted the value of them, and it found out that it came to 50,000 pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

You may be seated. This is the word of the Lord. We're going to start to see how God is going to do that. Now God is going to make his name great in the city of Ephesus, and also how he is going to make his name great in northwest Arkansas, in Bentonville, in your school, in your home, in your workplaces, with the connections that you have as well.

And so let me just remind you a little bit of the context, because we got 30 verses today and I gotta go quick. So I'm going to remind you very quick here of what happened last week that Paul came to the city of Ephesus. He found some believers, but they did not understand the full gospel yet. And so as he now came into the city of Ephesus, he's like, hey, have you guys heard of the Holy Spirit?

They're like, no. He's like, just wait, you're gonna this is going to be awesome. They receive the Holy Spirit. And then for the next two years, he goes and simply just has a Bible study. He has a Bible study probably every afternoon. But over the course of those two years, people start getting saved. One after the next, after the next, after the next.

It wasn't anything supernatural from the outside point of view. It was just a group of people that came together, got excited about the Lord, believed in the Lord, and then went out and told others. And in the midst of God doing something in the ordinary, he starts to do something extra ordinary. And so let's go back up to verse 11 of chapter 19.

Start out this passage here, and it says that God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul. Now notice the Luke who wrote this letter. He has good theology. That's why he's in the Bible, right? And notice, it's not that Paul is doing the miracles, even though that's what everybody could see, that Paul was doing miracles. But it wasn't really Paul.

It was God that was doing the extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul. Right. And so this is just a good reminder. When we see something good happening, it's not that it's us that makes it happen. It's not by our own ability or a spiritual maturity or anything else like that, but rather it's God that does all these things, but then he allows us to take part in it.

So now we start to see that that it's by the hands of Paul. So much so in verse 12 is amazing. It says so even the handkerchief or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick in their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them. So during these two years, the Apostle Paul was a tent maker.

In the day he actually still paid the bills by. He didn't accept support, so he would actually go, and he would work as a tent maker and make tents. And then in the afternoon he'd go and lecture, and then he'd come back and by making some more tents. And so inevitably what was happening is like as he was making tents, he would take off his apron, hang it up.

He would go, like, put his hankie down. He'd come back and they were gone. And at that point there, you know that there's some guy in the back of the tent that's just like, I bet there's something in those things, right? And like the moment that he walks away and he dropped his hankie, he's going over and he's like, Carol, rub this on your cataracts, you know, and it's like there's some type of miraculous thing that was so powerful that even just something touching the apostle Paul, it was doing amazing miracles.

Diseases started to leave, evil spirits started to come out. And so now we start to see that God is doing something amazing. What started out as simply nothing, nothing miraculous, just a normal Bible study. Then God starts to faithfully and extraordinarily move. But the moment that we start to see God do something amazing, we start to see some other spiritual attacks.

And so let's start to read some of these verses are amazing. Verse 13, it says, then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists. That sounds like a fun group, right? Undertook to evoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I adjure you by the by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims. And so these guys, these guys would have been the TV evangelists of the day, right?

These dudes would have been the ones that said, hey, if you just saw your seed of $10,000 for my plane, you will be blessed. These are those type of guys right now, and they start to see all the attention going to Paul and all the focus going to Paul, and they want a little bit of a piece of that.

Furthermore, nobody's probably coming to these guys anymore because they don't really have any power anyway. They were just doing some sort of lame magic tricks while Paul was actually sending out spiritual demons from people, and they were trying their hardest, but they couldn't do it. And so finally they come up to the bright idea of being like, hey, what if we just try the Jesus thing too?

And so it says, I drew you by the by the Jesus. When anybody says the Jesus, you know that they don't actually know Jesus. Right? And in this moment now that notice, it doesn't say our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It doesn't say the great and powerful creator of the universe, Jesus. No, it's like the Jesus who Paul talks about.

They're they're hoping by just saying the name Jesus that something good will happen. And unfortunately, sometimes that's about as deep as our theology goes sometimes too. And sometimes we'll sing songs and and we'll talk about the name of Jesus. And that's good. But really, the only way that the name of Jesus has any power is if there's also a relationship with Jesus.

Right? Like half the people that say the name Jesus are using it as a curse word. And so there's no actually power and just a sound, just the syllables that make up that name, but rather it's the power comes from the relationship that we have with Jesus. And so now they start to cry out or they start to try to do something.

And it says in verse 14, seven sons of the Jewish high priest named Sheva, and we don't know who this high priest was, but apparently he had seven sons who would travel around trying to make a quick buck by sending out, sending out demons. And these seven sons were doing this as well. But in verse 15, but the evil spirit answered them, Jesus, I know, and Paul I recognize.

But who are you? Listen, I love this response so much. It means a couple things. Number one, they come to this evil spirit. There's seven of them now, right? Like picture, like seven brothers, one evil spirit. They come up there like. But the Jesus who Paul talks about, we command you to come out. And then that demon just looks Adam's like, ain't that cute, boys?

He's like, I know, I know, Jesus. They're probably think he's like, yeah, I was there in heaven. I was one of the fools that followed Satan down into this world. Instead of staying up there in heaven with Jesus. Like, we know who Jesus is. He's the creator of the universe. We know all about him and Paul we recognize, which I just love because it means that demons are around here gossiping about people.

Like, right? It's like, did you hear what? Did you hear what Paul did to Steve? You know, it's like, here comes Paul, there goes the neighborhood. Like it's it's all going downhill as soon as Paul walks in. And so now this is idea that they're like, this demon knows about Paul. And what an awesome privilege that would be.

It's like, I want to be the type of Christians that demons are being like, stay away. Stay away from grace point people. They mean business right now. And that's essentially what he's doing. Like, I know Jesus, I recognize who Paul is, but who are you? And that's the moment that those seven guys would have wet their pants. Probably.

I don't know what you would do if you're talking to a demon right then. And he says, who are you? How would you respond? And that moment they realized that they had no power over this demon because they had no connection to Jesus Christ, who has the power over those demons. And in the man in verse 16 says, the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them, overpowered them.

How many of them were there? Seven. One demon verse seven. Guys jumped on them, overpowered them, so they fled out of the house naked and wounded. And listen, I am not much of a fighter. I have not been in very many fistfights in my life. You probably wouldn't have hired me if I did. But here's one thing I know about fighting.

If you go into a fight and you're wearing pants and you leave and you're no longer wearing pants, you lost that fight, brother. Like seven dudes just running out of the house naked like this is. Things did not go according to plan, I can tell you. I can tell you that much right now. And in this moment, we look at that we like, and we're like, I don't know whose side I was rooting for.

Was I rooting for the demon? Was I rooting for the false teachers like I don't it doesn't really feel good on either side. And yet look at what God does with this story in verse 17. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, and fear fell upon them all. In the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.

Yeah, you probably would hear about the seven brothers running around naked after they got beat up by a demon, and that story started to spread. And then God does something amazing, even with that, and people start to say, oh man, they're like, they're actually are dark forces around here. They're actually are demonic forces. And yet those guys don't have power.

But when I look at Paul in his followers, they have power over these things. And now fear starts to set over all of them, which is a reference. Holy. All that says that God is doing something in the midst in his name starts to be great. And in verse 18, and many of those who were now believers came confessing and devolving their practices.

Notice not only were people coming and believing in Jesus, there's now also there's a lot of believers all around who had started to follow Jesus, start to to believe in him. And yet they were also holding on to some stuff, holding on to some dark practices, holding on to things that they should not have been doing. As we're going to see here in just a moment.

The city of Ephesus was actually very much known for the pagan idolatry. They had a giant temple. The Temple of Artemis was one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was really what people thought of when they thought of the city of Ephesus. This was so ingrained in their culture that this would have been what they were raised in.

And yet, even though they followed Jesus, they were still holding on and doing all of these other practices right now, in the same way that many of us we believe in Jesus, we follow him. We want to follow him. We say, I'm going to forsake it all, except for the sum of those things in my life that I try to hide away from everybody else.

That maybe, maybe the church and pastoral doesn't know about, the church doesn't know about, maybe my spouse doesn't even know about. But I'm still holding on to these things. It says even those guys, those Christians, they start to see God as moving and they start to come and confess this, bring it out into the light, devolve it, say, hey, we've been hanging on to this, but we don't want it anymore.

And that's when you know that God is on the move. That's when you know there's never going to be revival that breaks out. There's never going to be a a spiritual awakening in your family. If there's still a sin hidden in your family, there's still sin hidden in your heart. You can't control the other people, you can't control anybody else.

But you can control yourself. And until you learn, you're never going to be able to actually be close to God. And till you get to a point where it says, you know what? I'm going to simply confess the sin. I'm going to bring it out to the light, and I'm going to lay it down. And it's only then, only then do you find the freedom on the other side.

And they start doing this and God starts to move. And in verse 19 it goes on to say, and the number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and they counted the value of them, and found it to be 50,000 pieces of silver, which is approximately $5 million worth of material today thrown in a fire.

Do you remember there's a very specific age group that this illustration applies to only. But if you grew up in the 90s as a teenager, you might have been invited over to a what was called a CD burn, I think, and the youth groups would all gather around and they would tell you, like they bring all your secular CDs, you know, like Metallica and the demonic in-sync band or whatever it was, you know, and then you'd come and you like, throw the CDs in the fire and it would crackle and hits and never would be like, it sounds like a demon in there, you know, it's like, I think that's where this came from.

But in this reality, like, they had these dark things that they said, no, you know what? We don't want this anymore. Let's get rid of it all. And in the middle of a city now, they're burning $5 million worth of material. So the word of the Lord continued to increase in prevail mightily. And it wasn't. It wasn't until they said, you know what?

All of these dark things in the corner that we're hiding, that we don't want anybody else to know about. It wasn't until that was brought to the light and gotten rid of and walked away from. It wasn't until that moment did we start to see a move of God happened. And for all of us that want to see God move in our families, I want to see God move in our own life.

I want to see God move in our workplace, in our schools. And all of that move of God is not going to happen until we start to say, I am done with all of those other things. See, a move of God requires the removal of the false gods in your lives. A move of God is always going to require the removal of false gods in your life.

So what are those false gods? What are those idols? What are the things that you value more that you say, I can't let go of? This is who I am. This is. I've tried to get rid of this so many times, but I can't. It's not until you expose it to the light, throw it in the fire and walk away, and then you will start to see God move in a mighty way in your family.

Mighty way in your life, mighty way in this church. But yet all of that now happening, $5 million thrown in a fire that's going to start to to get some attention now. Meanwhile, Paul, he's always thinking he doesn't care about getting a big church. He just wants to reach people for Jesus. So in the next few verses, it just kind of a it tells us a little bit about what he was doing in this mix here in verse 21, it says, now after these events, Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia, and that's kind of northern Turkey and Greece and go to Jerusalem.

And after I've been there, I must also see Rome. So he's going to go to Jerusalem, he's going to go to Rome. This is eventually what he does, but he's going to take a different way to do it. And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Er, says he himself stayed in Asia for a while, so he's now trying to figure out what his next plan was.

But while he is trying to do that in verse 23, it says, and at that time there was no little disturbance concerning the way whenever the Bible says that there was no little disturbance, it means there was a big disturbance for a man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business, a lot of business to the craftsmen.

Now, I don't know too much about Demetrius, although there is he is actually listed in some archeological records. We don't know too much about it, but just judging by his name, he sounds like a mob boss to me. All right, so that's how I kind of picture this guy should be on Sopranos or something like that. But here's this guy named Demetrius, and he likes to make idols.

He was actually probably the the head of the craftsmen association there. And there was this temple of Artemis. And whenever you thought of the city of Ephesus in the ancient world, you actually thought of this goddess named Artemis. Artemis or Diana as she's known to the Romans. She was known as a Greek goddess of fertility. And so you would actually go in and you can just imagine what type of religious practices that they would have, what type of sacred things that they would do inside the temple.

If it's a Greek goddess of fertility, the awful, awful, awful things that would go on inside of that, like, in fact, I'm going to show you some pictures of the temple in just a moment here. But. But I wanted to show you a picture of of actually the statue of Artemis, this 30ft statue that would have likely been in that temple.

But you can't because it's just it's not appropriate for mixed company like it was that it's just disgusting. It's awful. And yet that's the people that they were trying to worship. That's the goddess that this area was known as. And here's Demetrius, he actually makes these little silver shrines of some sort that people would then buy and then go take home after they pilgrim to Ephesus, and they'd take home these little silver shrines, and they would worship these little silver shrines.

But here's the problem. He just saw people all throughout the city go and burn all the shrines that he just made. They probably just laying all over the ground. Now nobody is buying his shrines anymore. Nobody is buying these little idols anymore. And that's a problem for him in the other craftsman. So he gathers all the craftsmen together.

And in verse 25 it goes on to say, these he gathered together with the workmen and similar trades and said, men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And there it is. There's the real idol, see, because in reality, even though his entire trade and his entire life was wrapped up to serve this false goddess Artemis, in reality he could care less about the little idols that he was making.

He knew that they weren't gods, but now he cared about the wealth that he was losing because of that. See, in reality, what's true for us was true for them as well. Is that the idols you can see are just symptoms of the unseen ones, that there's always something a little bit further down. It's always something a little bit underneath the surface here.

See, because we can see certain idols, we can see certain struggles. We can see sometimes, like we can definitely see it in our own life, and we often can see it in the other, like when we see the middle aged dude coming in and it's like the nice new convertible. It's like, okay, he's going through something, right? Like we can we can kind of see some of that.

But in reality, like the thing itself is not really part of the problem. It's whatever is underneath that. See, back then, if you were to look at what was going on with that temple of Artemis number one, it was the Greek goddess of fertility, which means that they were all about sexual debauchery. That's how they would worship.

And it was this awful, lust filled moment for them to go to that temple. It was much, a lot about sex. It was. It was a lot about money. As we just saw Demetrius say, he's like, this is actually bringing in a lot of money for our area and a lot of money, like we are wealthy individuals. Why?

Because of this temple back here. So we have sex, we have money. And then, as we're going to see in the next few verses, that they are known throughout all of the entire world, there's so much prestige that comes with the city of Ephesus because of this temple. So they have sex, money and power where there may not always because people were different back then, right?

See, the greatest idols we can see as well is sex, money and power. But yet I would say that there's probably something even underneath all of that for us. See, in reality, when we look at this desire for sex and this desire for lust, it's really just a desire for love, isn't it? It's a desire for love. But yet we misplace it.

Because if we have a if we actually have the right relationship with God, then we can start to have the full commitment, full contentment, and full love from the father that we don't necessarily need the relationship, but rather when we do get in a relationship, we're not looking for that other person to give us anything, but rather we can simply just give out of love to the other person.

That's what a good marriage is. It's not about the lustful taking of somebody else. It's loving, giving yourself. And so for us with sex, it means then that when we have a if that's one of those dark things in the back of our corners that we're trying to hide, it probably means that we misunderstood, that we have unconditional love from God, that we have everything that we need.

And so for our sexuality, it's simply something that we get a freely give over to our spouse. But there's a miscommunication. There's a misunderstanding somewhere. Likewise for money. You have this on this slide here. Money is a desire for security, a desire that says, you know what? I want to be secure. I want to know that I have enough money provision for myself and for my family.

What's really happening? Whenever you're saying, no, I need more money. I can't give to church. I can't give away anything. Why? Because what if I run out of money? What we're really saying is, God, I don't trust you enough to provide for me. I need to do it myself. And now we're desiring the security. It's this false God that says I need to provide for myself.

And Sid is simply just trusting that God will do all of that for us. And the more that we start to trust that God is going to provide, the more generous we become and the more generous we become, the less we get worried about the money. Because every time that I've ever been generous, every time I've given to the church, God has always provided listen.

I'm constantly on a diet that means that God has provided too much food for me. And yet, how many times have I been worried, God, are you going to provide? We often want to have power, which is just misplaced identity, misunderstood identity that says, no, I want things to be about me. I need to feel important. I need to feel valued.

But in reality, our value and our importance comes from the fact that we have a relationship with God the Father. Like, I don't have to prove myself anymore. Whenever I finally realize God himself adopted me as a son, what more do I have to prove than that? Like my position and my worth comes from the fact that God has loved me.

And when we start to understand these things, we can start to let go of these surface idols, because we start to see everything that we need is ultimately found in God. Everything you need, and whatever those idols are, there's something underneath there that is only going to be fulfilled by God. Not another car or not another relationship or not another promotion.

Those will all be not enough. We find that God is enough for all of us. That's what was going on in Ephesus. And that still goes on here today. In verse 26, we start to see this still continue to play out. This is Demetrius still talking now. And he says, and you see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, that modern day Turkey, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that the gods made with hands are not gods.

What nerve! Right? This would be essentially like if if all the drug dealers in Northwest Arkansas got together and they all gotten some drug dealer named Demetrius, I guess gets up and he's like, guys, nobody's buying our drugs anymore because of grace point. Like, what are we going to do? That's that's what's happening there. So panic that their entire livelihood is falling apart.

Why? Because this little guy named Paul is having such an impact through the power of the gospel that nobody wants to buy their false gods anymore. Oh, if we could just see something like that in Bentonville, in our community in, in verse 27, and there is danger not only that, this trade of ours may come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the Great Goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be disposed of her magnificent she whom all Asia in the world worships.

They say we're kind of a big deal, but in reality, if Paul keeps doing the things that he's doing, nobody's even going to come to Ephesus. People are going to forget about us. Nobody will care about us. We'll lose the power that we have. And when they heard this, they were enraged and were crying out. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.

So that the city was filled with confusion, they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Arcticus, Macedonians who were Paul's companions in the travel. And so now they get so enraged that they start to say, no, we're we're the best. We're the city of Ephesus, and in our God it's Artemis is greater than any other God that there is.

They start to yell, Great is Artemis of Ephesians. Great is Artemis of Ephesians. They go and they find two guys, which I feel bad for these guys. They like nowhere else in the Bible, but apparently they just knew Paul and they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so they grabbed Gaius and Arcticus, who probably had no idea what's going on.

Come drag them inside of the theater of that day. Now, if you go to modern day Ephesus or the ancient city of Ephesus here today, you would see that there is actually one of the greatest theaters in the ancient world. The city of Ephesus is incredibly well preserved, so you can go and see almost all of these sites still today.

Let me show you this picture of this theater. This is at the top of the theater. It seats 25,000 people. That's one of the biggest theaters in the ancient world that's bigger than the the Bud Walton Arena, I'm pretty sure. And so, like this. Imagine just being thrown in the middle of something like that. There's now 25,000 angry residents all screaming, great is Artemis of the Ephesians.

Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. In that moment now, whatever small group that there was, whatever kind of undercurrent that there was for Christianity, this was not a good time to be a Christian. In fact, you're probably thinking to yourself, especially if you're gay as an arcticus inside of that theater, you're thinking this, we're done for it like we are dead.

The movement of Christianity in Ephesus and all of Asia is dead in this moment. But what they didn't realize is that that opposition didn't mean that God stopped working. That opposition meant that God was working. The opposition is evidence that God is moving in your life. It really is. Listen, some of you guys have never experienced true spiritual, spiritual warfare, and the reason why you've never experienced is because you go to work and nobody at work knows your Christian, and then you come home and you watch Netflix for a few hours.

You don't pray, you don't get you don't, you don't sacrifice. And if you do all of that, you then you go to bed, you wake up the next day and you do it all over again. Like, why would Satan bother with you? But here's the warning for those of us that truly are the believers, we have to say, no, I'm going to, I'm going to go out and I'm actually going to fight the battle.

I'm going to go out in the midst of all the opposition. If it's me. Verses 25,000, okay, in that opposition doesn't mean that God isn't working. That opposition means that God is working and Satan is noticing. So stand firm. Stand your ground. This is what Paul did. I love Paul, it says, but verse 30, but when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, there's 25,000 angry people that all no doubt wanted to kill Paul.

And he hears that, and he's like, there's 25,000 of them in there. That sounds like a great church service. Let me go preach. Right. And Paul one verses 25, that's that's how much Paul believed in the power of the gospel. He's like, if I die in there, so be it. But I want to preach. But thankfully, he had some friends and even some of the some of the leaders in that area who are friends of his, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater.

Verse 32 now some cried out one thing and some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not even know why they had come together. I love this so now there's like 25,000 people. If you've ever been to like a mob or right, or something like that, like half the people don't even know what's going on.

There's one guy in the back like Freebird, you know, it's like we we don't know what's going on here. People are just screaming and shouting and all of this. Yet some of the crowd prompted Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward, and Alexander, motioning with his hand, wanted to make a defense of the crowd. So Alexander steps up.

He's like, quiet, everybody quiet! Verse 34. But when they recognized that he was a Jew for about two hours, they all cried out with one voice, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. In their mind, Christianity and Jewish. The Greeks didn't know the difference at this moment, and so they saw it was just a Jewish man. They thought he was one of the Christians there.

And so again, for two straight hours, great is Artemis of the Ephesians, great is Artemis. So the Ephesians, they said, I've been at football like that. That takes some effort, but that's how passionate they were. And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, Men of Ephesus, who is there, who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis in the sacred stone that fell from the sky.

Seeing then that these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash.

They believed the city of Ephesus. I don't know if a meteor ever fell there or what, like how this myth started. But they believed that there was a rock that fell from heaven, and that rock that fell from heaven was ended up being coming, the idol that was inside the temple. And so they built this entire temple around it.

It was one of the ancient wonders of the. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was a magnificent building. So much so like, let me just show you one artist rendering of what this building would have looked like. It was the size of a football field. It was bigger than the Parthenon in Greece.

The entire world would have known how great Artemis was. Inside of there is just awful, awful idols that people would go in and spend their life's worth just to beg this goddess to give them fertility for the children, just to give them fertility for the crops to give them. They would come here and now there's worshiping. And so this town clerk, this more or less mayor of the town comes in.

He's like, you guys know how powerful Artemis is. Look at that temple down the street. Nobody can deny her greatness. Nobody can deny her. Magnificent. She is great. And do you really think that these little Christians are going to have an impact on this? One of the greatest buildings that's ever been built for the first thousands of years of civilization?

He goes on to say in verse 37, we're almost done here, for you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemous of our goddess. If they're for Demetrius and the craftsman with whom have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open and they're pro councils. Let them bring charges against one another. Thankfully, now he's starting to understand this is getting out of hand.

I'm going to try to calm this down. And he was the mayor of the city and had the authority. He said, nobody can nobody can actually diminish Artemis power. So everybody calm down. But if you seek anything further, verse 39, it shall be settled in the regular assembly. For we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.

And when he had said these things, he dismissed the Assembly in a very anti-climactic way to interact. He says, the Romans, you know, they don't really like 25,000 people making over. We're in danger. Now, the Romans coming in with their armies and settling this for us. So please go home. And they all start to disperse. Disperse with this idea in their mind.

That Artemis is great. This goddess is the greatest goddess that you could ever imagine. That she was the. She is the one who gives new life for them. She is the one who brings the crops for them. That there was nothing in the entire world that could defeat Artemis. If you look at this temple one more time here, like it?

What? What could what could a few Christians do against this? This magnificent, this thing that would have taken hundreds of years to build? They were so confident. The reason why they started to give up on all their persecution of the Christians was in reality, they looked at this and said, nothing can ever overcome this.

Which is why I love in just a few short years, whenever Paul writes this book to the Ephesians, he says in Ephesians chapter one verse 18, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? He's writing this to the saints that knew that building well, and what the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the worker of his great mind, that he worked in Christ.

Verse 20, that he worked in Christ when he raised him up from the dead, and seated him at the right hand of the heavenly places, far above a rule, and authority, and power and dominion above every name that is named not only in this age, but also in the age to come. You know what Paul is saying right now?

He's saying Jesus is greater than Artemis. I know the temple. I know what you see. But Jesus is greater still. So he's above every other name, even every other false god.

And if you look in history now and you look forward.

Almost the entire city of Ephesus is preserved. But if you go out to that temple of where Artemis, the great Artemis temple, once stood, here's what it looks like today.

That's all that's left. That's all.

In a thousand years from now, from when Paul said this story. Did you know that Turkey is going to be the center of Christianity, that almost 100% of the residents of Turkey end up being Christian and stay that way until genocide literally kills all the rest of them?

They go from the most powerful temple, the most powerful goddess. The people were so arrogant to say nothing could ever dethrone our goddess to a thousand years later, that's all that's left at that temple. And here's my question if if Jesus, if God can do all of that with the great temple of Artemis, what can he do with your idols in your life?

Like some of us have been carrying around addictions for years and we're like, I guess I'm just going to have to fight this for the rest of my life. Some of us, like our marriage, is on the brink of divorce, and it's been that way 14 times. And we say, God, I don't know, can you do this? Can you actually move in this way?

Can you actually do something here? If God can do all of that in the city of Ephesus, imagine, just imagine with me what he can do in your family's life, in your life. But the very first step for all of us is this is that whatever is in our life that's now standing in the way of Jesus is now time to say, I'm going to let this go.

I'm going to bring this to the light. I'm going to throw that in the fire, because the simple fact of the matter is, Jesus won't coexist with the idols in your life. So what idols do you have that you feel like are two grates with burdens that you have been carrying, that are too strong, that you feel like I can never defeat this.

You can't, but Jesus can. But he can. He won't though, until you're ready to expose that God is able to move mightily in your family, in your life, in this church, in this community. I believe that with all my heart. But it first starts with us saying, God, I give it all to you. Can we take a minute and pray that?

Head bowed, every eye closed.

I want you, even right now, to start to search your heart, to say, Lord, what is it in my life that I need to give over to you? What is it that I need to confess over to you? Lord? There's something in my heart in my life that I've been holding on to. Maybe it's a big sin. Maybe it's one that the world might not think is big.

But yet you know, it's what you're holding on to. That security, that desire for love, that.

Listen, I'm not going to embarrass anyone.

I'm going to ask everybody to have their head bowed and their eyes closed, even in the sound booth or stage or anything. But one of the things.

One of the very first steps in seeing God move is just saying, you know what? I'm going to confess and open up that says that there's something in my life.

And ultimately that means that you probably need to go talk to a brother or sister in Christ. And I know that that can be a scary thing. But even right now, let me let me just encourage you. If there's something in here, where you say, you know what? There's something in my life. There's an idol in my life that I want to.

I want to confess. Maybe this could just simply be that first step that gives you confidence for the next step. But I'm going to say a prayer here in just a minute. If you want me to pray for you as well. I would love to do that. And so if you're here today and you say, yeah, there's some idols in my life that I need to confess and I need to bring forth to the Lord.

Joel, I'm not going to ask you what it is. I'm not going to. I won't I won't track you down after the service or anything like that. I'm here to talk if you want to, but but in reality, like, I just want you to have that first step to say I want to see God move. And can we be honest enough to say, yeah, there's some things in my life that I need to confess and bring forth to life.

If that's you and you want me just to pray for you right now, you want to just slip up your hands. Amen, amen, amen, amen, Amen, Amen. Amen. Amen. Yeah, yeah, that's all over in the front end, in the back and all over. You can put your hands down.

Listen, God wants to work mightily in your life and in your family, but. And that can happen when you lay these things down and follow him. Lord, I lift up all of us in here that are prone to wonder. As the hymn this said that a prone to follow after all the things of this world. Lord, I pray that you would help us lay down any of the other false idols or false gods that we have been pursuing.

Lord, any of the lies that we are so prone to believe and that we would learn how to follow you.

Lord, we want to see a move of God here, but Lord, we want to see a move in our hearts and in our lives. Lord. So I pray that it just starts with your children earnestly seeking after you, Lord, for for all those that raise their hand, I pray that you would empower them to also just go find a brother and sister, whether that's me or somebody else in this congregation or a good Christian friend.

Lord, I pray that you would encourage them to go and talk to them. Find the encouragement, Lord, that they would be able to find the freedom of laying all that down and following after you. I pray that that would be true of every single one of us. Lord, we love you in Jesus name. Let's just take another moment before we close out service today.