reading today is from Acts and chapter 19 the book of Acts and chapter 19 beginning at verse 21. Acts 19 verse 21 says the following now after these events Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem saying after I have been there I must also see Rome and having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while. 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." When they heard this, they were enraged and were crying out, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. So the city was filled with the confusion and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's companions in travel. But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples would not let him. And even some of the Asiarchs, who were friends of his, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theatre. Now some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together. Some of the crowd prompted Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward. Alexander, motioning with his hand, wanted to make a defence to the crowd. But when they recognised that he was a Jew, For about two hours they all cried out with one voice, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. 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 and of 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. For you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess. If therefore Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in the regular assembly. For we really are in danger being charged with rioting today, since there's no cause that we can give to justify this commotion. And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly. What is idolatry? Idolatry. Well, it could be said to be replacing God in your affections. People seem to love idolatry. they love their idols. I mean, the majority of the world's population does not have God as the center of their love and affection, but rather other things. And so they are idolaters. John Calvin said, the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols. So imagine the, There's a picture there of this blacksmith within our souls hammering out these new idols day by day, a perpetual forge of idols. It says here at the beginning of our reading that Paul was in the spirit. I thought that was interesting because recently when we looked at Jude, we noted that Those who belong to God have the Spirit in them. They possess the Spirit in a very special saving way. And so Paul here is in the Spirit. I'd like us to look at a few aspects of this idolatry. I'd like to look firstly at the most obvious type of idolatry, which is the use of objects. And then I'd like to move on to the more subtle type of idolatry, one of which is covetousness. And then we'll finish by considering the confusion that is brought about through idolatry. And so, object worship as idolatry. So this, of course, is an ancient snare. People who don't have faith in God just gravitate towards the use of images. And for them, without faith, they perhaps need inwardly to worship something. You might argue that that is evidence that there is programmed within us this desire to worship God. And if people don't have faith in the one true God, they will use something else, they will use some object as a focal point and so this is what people do by nature and so this explains why in the mosaic law there was this There was this commandment given in what's known as the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and verse 3 onwards it says, You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God. And so the ban on creating images of anything encompassed the whole of creation. So the picture of heaven and earth and the water under the earth was the ancient way of describing the whole creation. And so this was a widespread ban. Now, God himself commanded his people to make images of certain things in the created realm. And so it might help us to understand that the ban was not because it was inherently wrong for me to carve an image out of wood of a horse and use it as an ornament. Of course not. It was these people's tendency, the strong tendency towards making these idols they picked up the habits perhaps from their neighbors but certainly this for them there was this absolute plan so you're not to worry if you have images as I do of things of creatures that exist in our creation and we're not to worry too much about that but certainly It was a snare for those people and we see that because we see an example of that because at the very time when the commandments were being delivered to Moses, what were the people doing? The people were down below creating a carved image, a likeness of something on the earth. they were making that so that they could worship it and give it the credit for all good things and thereby rob God. It's incredible. So you can see how inclined they were towards worshipping these likenesses and so hence the ban. What do we have in our reading? We have this false god a goddess who does not exist of course but the ancients believed that did exist and they built these images of them and these images it would be wrong to say that their gods they thought their gods were contained in the images it would also be wrong to say that the image was a mere representation so somewhere in between that is the truth of what they believed that that their God was pleased to inhabit the statue, but was not dependent on the statue. So here we have this Artemis, and if you have an older Bible, it might say Diana, and it's simply how the Romans would say it. They would refer to her as Diana, but for these, Artemis. Then we have this character Demetrius. So Demetrius was a craftsman. He was a silversmith. So he refined and used silver in the creation of shrines. Perhaps miniature statues of Artemis, but certainly more than that. So perhaps whole shrines that people could could set up in in their garden or whatever and so you know this this city was quite heavily populated and so there was a roaring trade in selling these things and so Demetrius was there as the chief sort of craftsman. He noted that harm had already been done to the pagan trade and that was down to the events which had happened previously so if you remember back a few weeks ago we looked at what happened with the sons of skeever and just to remind you we had this traveling band of elite elite exorcists jewish ones and i said at the time that it's difficult to know whether God enabled them to actually cast out demons for real or that instead any previous successes they might have had could be described as just psychological trickery. So for example if someone has a mental illness and tells you that they are possessed and you pretend to have the power to to exorcise that so-called demon then that might work and that might trigger something in the mind of that person to fully believe that that demon has gone and they are healed and so maybe that was their these jewish exorcist successes this was maybe what their cv was made up of but of course when they come across a genuine demon the demon wonders who they are seems to the demon seems to recognize that they have no authority and the demon says i know jesus i know paul but who are you and the demon has no hesitation in attacking them fear it's almost like doesn't feel that authority of God bearing down on him and so he attacks the sons of Sceva, batters them, pulls all their clothes off just to add to the humiliation and they run out screaming and naked and the whole spectacle has a huge impact as it would on the city and so we find then that lots of people with expensive books on the magical arts and the dark arts they decided that the best thing is to make a clean break to repent of their sins and to sort of symbolize their repentance through the burning of all these books and I said that I'm not a book burning type of person but for them at that time they felt that was the best thing to do and it was just to make a clean break and get rid of all this pagan nonsense but This had been noted by Demetrius and he reminds people of the trouble that's been caused. And one of the things you remember Demetrius said was that he was complaining, he was saying, these people, these people said that man-made objects can't be God. And back a few chapters ago in Acts, when the people were so impressed, you know, with Paul that they thought he was a god. They wanted to sort of worship him and And so he's with Barnabas and they are trying to call them Zeus and Hermes. And so of course, Paul wasn't too pleased and he says, men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of like nature with you. And we bring you good news that you should turn from these vain things, their statues and their false gods to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. So Paul tries to reveal to them a living, very much a living God and not dead materials. I noticed with Well, not just modern Bibles, but certainly a lot of modern Bibles have these headings over various paragraphs. And they're useful. They're useful to locate narratives. And the heading in my Bible for what we've just read is a riot at Ephesus, a riot. And when I saw that, I thought, well, that's a bit over the top. a riot, really. I mean, it may have been potentially dangerous, but when I think of riots, I think of, like, the streets of LA or something, you know, with all those sinful people just smashing things up, setting things on fire, attacking the police, attacking innocent members of the public. killing people just uncontrolled animal-like rampage well okay there was lots of people involved here they all ran into the theater and started shouting great is Artemis of the Ephesians it may have been may have been a lot of people it may have been loud maybe maybe it could have got worse and they could have lynched this pair, Gaius and Aristarchus. They could have hanged them or something, we don't know. Certainly, potentially dangerous. but it's a bit over the top to say it was a riot. I've seen more liveliness in a charismatic church than what I see in Ephesus there. But nevertheless, there was some danger that was perceived because Paul thought he would rush in, I'll go in, I'll speak to them, I don't know what he was thinking or whether he was right in thinking it, but it seems that, you know, he goes to rush in, believing that he'll speak to the crowd. Maybe they'll quieten down. Maybe they'll all accept the gospel. Maybe Paul was being over-optimistic. Maybe you could call it faith. But certainly he was counseled to not go in. he agreed yeah okay it is a bit dangerous now Paul's not you know Paul listened to these people and agreed that maybe he'd been a bit rash you know elsewhere we know Paul's not shy if he thought they were wrong to hold him back he'd just tell them so and he'd just march right in there it seems that Paul had realized that he was a bit you know, not exercising the most wisdom at that point, and he listened to his friends. And I think it's quite wonderful that, because it's nice to be reminded that Paul, you know, was like us, sinned each day. It's nice to be reminded of that, but also about his humility. You know, Paul could have invoked his great name, his great reputation. one of the leaders of the worldwide church of Jesus Christ, but he instead showed humility and it's a great example for us to follow. Idolatry, well, still goes on today. In terms of outward idolatry of things, it still goes on. We see it in things like Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, still using statues and images and objects. And so friends, even your neighbours are at it. So following in the footsteps of the ancient Hebrews and all the pagans, your neighbours in your street are doing these things, worshipping objects in acts of idolatry. I said we would talk a bit about this more subtle type of idolatry. So here's one that's more inward and so doesn't involve objects and is therefore more difficult to spot. It is covetousness as idolatry. Now, in our passage, we see in verse 27 straight away, verse 27, where is it? Yeah, it is, yeah. It's in verse 27. And you can see that there's greed behind the objections of Demetrius and so on. And so there's, you know, there's this religious concern. What about Artemis? She will be dethroned. Some god she is, if she can be dethroned by some blokes, you know, from, from Palestine or Israel. Some guys preaching a message can dethrone one of the greatest gods in existence. Some God shears. But we notice what he mentions here first. You might have spotted that it's not only that we lose lots of money, but there's also Artemis as well. reputation so I think that's a clue as to what his greatest concern was. I imagine if if I don't know but I imagine if Artemis was disappeared and the temple was ruined and they raised up another temple and invented a god and people started to come to Demetrius with orders for silver shrines for the you know the the I don't know some some some alien or something and uh you can imagine I I suspect Demetrius would be hmm and he would be quite happy the you know if he if he's the type of person I suspect he'd be quite happy uh if if he was building shrines to something else you know well There's a clue about where his heart lies in this. They had this secure income. And who doesn't want to lose their income? If we think that our livelihoods are at risk, then we might protest, we might complain, we might fight to keep that. That's okay, generally speaking, but it's not the most important thing. It's not more important than everything, our livelihoods. So sometimes we have to sacrifice these things for something which is more important. Here in the UK recently, one example of many, but this guy, this teacher's lost his job because there was some safeguarding issue and he went to the safeguarding lead in his school. And because the nature of his complaint, the nature of his concern for a pupil contravened what the school's policy was on children who are transitioning from male to female or vice versa, because he went against that ideology in his concern for a child, he was sacked and lost his income. But he's standing firm, he's fighting this. Not first and foremost to get his income back. He was prepared to lose the income for his beliefs. So this greed then we see in Demetrius and many, many others. We see like in Colossians 3 and 5, listen to what it says there. It says, Colossians 3 and verse 5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Covetousness, it says, explicitly is a form of idolatry. We're not able to go into the details of this issue of money and you know is it legitimate to accrue wealth and so on. Well I have to try and be brief. Is it legitimate to try to accrue more wealth i would say yes it is but it needs to be done with moderation it needs to be any increase in wealth needs to be accompanied by generosity there also needs to be a type of contentment So those things seem to be in opposition to each other. How can you be content but want more? And so you have to find that balance, friend. You have to find how to walk that line. You don't chase money and place that as a priority in life. But so, for example, let's say you were in a job. Let's say you became good at that job and you became a natural candidate for a position of promotion and you were offered that. Would it be good to welcome the increase in income. Yes, I don't think there's any harm in that. We get more income. We can maybe, we can maybe, for example, buy a car that works and doesn't break down all the time. and maybe for some people they live in an area where it's just there's a lot of crime and there's danger and you have a family and they would like to just move somewhere else. I know some Christians would think that was wrong but let them think what they will. So there could be But there could be a number of reasons why you would welcome an increase in wealth. And some Christians invest money. They invest money with the hope of getting some more. But we cannot say that trying to accrue wealth in that way is inherently wrong. But we need to remember this core principle of being content. And so if we are going to, do something which will result in a greater increase in our income we need to be careful and we need to be prepared to be very generous with what we get. So there is this extreme form of that which is called covetousness it is a form of idolatry and so if your desire for more money it takes over that you find yourself thinking about this all day and every day, you are most likely a covetous person and therefore an idolater. You have taken God off the throne of your heart and put the love of money there instead and so It's inward and we've said we've talked about idolatry with objects, but this is more subtle. This is another type of idolatry altogether something that is inward. Now it says. It says, specifically, it says covetousness. But the covetousness is an example of idolatry. And this was what the author wanted to warn people about. But is it wrong to extend this to other types of sins? Can other types of sins also be idolatry? Give you a few quotes from Martin Luther on this topic and see if you agree with what he says. He says, that to which your heart clings is your God. Okay, whatever man loves, that is his God. For he carries it in his heart. He goes about with it night and day. He sleeps and wakes with it. Be it what it may, wealth or self, pleasure or renown. Again, you need to humble and despair of yourself lest you make many gods and that you may have one God instead, he means. For nature cannot but commit idolatry, idolatry. In other words, the natural man can do nothing but commit idolatry. It is natural to him. Whatever man loves, that is his God. And it could be a number of things. So it might not be covetousness. It could be something else. It could be love for a person. Now, love for a person does not constitute a desire to gain things. But still, it is a form of idolatry. It could be that you think highly of yourself, and you are thinking about how to promote yourself all the time. And the tendency for an idolater is what Luther says. He goes about with it night and day. He sleeps and wakes with it. And so, friend, if you find something You wake up each day and you're thinking about that thing and you go to bed and you're still thinking about that thing. It's dominated your thoughts. You are probably in a state of idolatry. Anything which your heart is set on more than God replaces God. And the dangerous thing about this inward idolatry is that believers are not immune. Now, believers might not be immune to the other type of idolatry as well, but for the most part, when someone becomes a believer, their sin goes to ground. As my brother pastor once said to me, sin runs to ground. And so we become more adept at hiding sin. Now, for sure, someone who has the spirit will sin less, actually. will sin less than had they not had the Spirit. That's an inevitable sign of having the Spirit. We sin less than we would have had we not been saved. That is true. But the Christian also has this desire to preserve their reputation, and they might want to preserve the reputation of the church as well, and not bring the gospel into disrepute. And so they become good at hiding things. Any internal type of sin is something that Christian needs to watch out more for. And so we might not have statues of the Virgin Mary in our homes, but we might have idols in our heart. We can avoid committing adultery, but then adultery can exist within our hearts and no one knows about it. Except God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, millions of angels, millions of demons. They might know about it, but certainly you, the people around you won't. So these type of inward sins are more, they're more subtle and therefore more dangerous. And so we should be more careful about those. The remedy is quite simple. The remedy is prayer and this gift of the Bible, this gift of the Bible, because we are a privileged generation. Most believers throughout the whole of history have not had this book, have not had what we have. And so we are privileged. And so we need to be frequent in prayer. a sort of a prayer that you are emotionally invested in. And you should also read the scriptures and read them frequently. So what do we do? We're setting our hearts on things above, on the things of God, rather than the things beneath in the world around us. In the short time we have left, I want to just if I can quickly talk now about this confusion which is brought on through idolatry and there's an example here of course we see this quite comical really type of confusion because there's this there's this protest if you like going on and everyone's joining in and they're all marching into the the large amphitheater and can imagine people are going what what's going on why are we here do you know why we're here no no i just saw the crowd and joined in ah do you know do you know what's happened anyone know what we're doing here yes someone's trying to someone's saying something against artemis coming here and foreigners and trying to disrupt So they go, okay, and then they start to join in the protest, you see. So there was this confusion that the scriptures says it more humorously. Luke says there, most of them didn't have a clue why they were there. They didn't know why they were there. It's incredible. But this, in a sense, is a confusion that is brought through idolatry. I mean, the world as a whole, is a world of idolaters and there is confusion and they are confused about why they are here i mean if you look at verse um where was it now you know verse 32 some some were shouting one thing some something else and you know most of them most of them didn't know why they were there and it reminds us of the people of this world, you know, they come into existence, they rush in to the arena of this world, the amphitheater of this world, they rush in and they get here and they don't know why they're here. If you think that's a bit exaggerated, why not ask them? Why not ask the people, your non-Christian friends and family, why are we here? You know, that's the most important question anyone surely can ask in this lifetime. Just what on earth are we doing here? Why are we here on planet Earth? What's the point of it all? They don't know, friends. They are in a state of confusion. They are running around the world's amphitheater one saying one thing and one saying another and they don't know why they are here. I can imagine them in the the amphitheater of this world like these people shouting out does anyone know what's going on does anyone know why we are here and then someone shouts you need to get a career And so they go, right, okay, I'm here in Korea. Let's do that. Let's get a career. And so they embark on, they get a job and try to, you know, work their way up or certainly become good at that job, a career. And then they're thinking, what now? And someone else in this world, in this theater shouts, why don't you have some kids? That seems to be a common thing. Have some kids. and then that will fill up your time you will live. You have a few children, then your next 20 to 25 years will vanish and you'll be in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, and you'll be thinking, where did all that time go? Filling the time in without ever knowing what's going on, without ever knowing the meaning of life. We, the Christians, we are called the people of the way. God has showed us another way, another path. It's a path, a way which leads to eternal life. We are the people of the way and we are different. We know, we've had it revealed to us what is the meaning of life. We are on the way. We know where we are walking. We know why we are on the way. And we know where we are headed. To us, nothing can be compared to Jesus Christ. There's no one that we want to know more than him, above all else. We love him more than our own flesh and blood, more than our friends. Psalm 135 says this, verse 15 onwards. Psalm 135, verse 15 says, the idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak. They have eyes, but do not see. They have ears but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them. Let me say that again. Those who make them, idols, become like them. When you revere something you become more like them. You might think of someone who highly reveres some Hollywood actor and perhaps subconsciously starts to act like them or speak like them. That's not a great example, but certainly there is this truth in the scriptures that when you revere something, you become more like them. Our only idol, if I can use that word, is Jesus Christ. He is the only one. And so he must be placed at the center of our souls, our hearts. Now, if that scripture is true, and of course we believe it is, then if that is how humans work, becoming more, in a way, becoming more like the things we desire, then surely it follows that when we revere Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, then By the grace and power of the Spirit, we should become more like Him. We admire Him and also want to be more like Him, and we shall, by the grace of God. Demetrius, that rogue, he predicted that if this way of Christ prevails, he says the great temple of Artemis will become nothing. Well, what a great prophecy, Demetrius, because if only he could see the great temple of Artemis today, a waste ground. And of all those scores of 60 foot high pillars, what's left of that one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, what remains? this waste ground is just one pillar just one pillar remains of the whole thing the whole magnificent structure is gone but guess what the people of the way remain and through God's revelation of through the garden and tabernacle and temple and the prophecy of Ezekiel's temple and revelation and city of God. Through all this we discover that the people of God themselves form a temple and a temple that is far far more magnificent than anything that has gone before and anything that could be constructed. We form a magnificent temple it is an eternal temple the second or the third temple of god itself was brought to nothing to rubble and instead we form this eternal temple of god and the center of our temple is not a huge statue of artemis or anybody else right at the core of this temple is the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.