Acts19: 21-27
I spent forty years of my life working for a company whose
success came from technology, the development of new products. Often, we found that we were competing with
our own products. So that made me wonder
what it would be like to make your living in an area where something better was
replacing it, can you imagine being in the stagecoach business when it seemed
that everything was your competitor?
First, was the steamboat and it took some of your business, and then
came the train and it became your largest competitor, and the death nail was
the automobile. So what happens if you
are being replaced because someone is saying your product is of no value and it
never has been, and down deep in the recesses of your heart and mind you know
that to be true, but you and the members of your trade have and are making a
very good living off the product?
That is the story doctor Luke is sharing with us about a
silversmith named Demetrius, and his product was the silver idols of Artemis. Do you recall Paul addressing the men in the
Areopagus: “So
Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive
that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed
the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To
the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to
you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and
earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands,
as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and
breath and everything.”(Acts 17:22-25)
So if you are in the trade of making images that are designed
for temples and homes, you build stories around these images such as the story
of Artemis; she was called the daughter of Leto and Zeus, and the twin of
Apollo. She was called the goddess of
the wilderness, the fertility goddess. Listen
to Demetrius as he calls together his trade buddies: “About that time there arose no little
disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who
made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen.
These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men,
you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that
not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and
turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.
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 deposed from her magnificence, she whom all
Asia and the world worship.”
(Acts 19:23-27 ESV)
Demetrius and his fellow tradesmen are in crisis, they are
about to lose some serious money, so like the politician of our day when it
looks like truth may expose them they turn on the spin, and that is what Demetrius
is doing. And guess what, it worked for
them much like it does today, with the lazy and uneducated who can let someone work
them into an emotional frenzy. Read Acts
19: 28-41, to see what can happen when men will go to any means to save their
wealth or their power.
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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