Jesus is Worth the Cost - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Acts 19:22-41, the Ephesians are concerned by the threat that Paul’s message is to their local god Artemis. We must make the same choice today between the gods of this world and the one true God.
Transcript:
Today's reading is from Acts 19, 23 through 27. About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said, you know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.
Let us pray. Dear Father, as we come before your word this morning, we pray that you would turn our hearts. Turn our hearts father, so that we would be completely devoted to you and to no one else. That we would worship you, oh God, and no other false gods we pray. In the Christ's name we pray, amen. You may be seated.
I've gotten to the stage in my life where it's not unusual for me now to say, when I was a kid. I was walking out of Dino's the other day and I pointed out to James that there used to be a video store in the same plaza. I remember going there as a child or, or to Blockbuster or to Diamond Video in my hometown of Pasco and renting a videotape to watch with my family. But as you know, over time things changed. Netflix first emerged as a service to mail you DVDs that you could watch, so you didn't need to go to the video store anymore. And then of course they began offering movies that could be streamed online, giving you instant access to any movie that you might wanna watch. And in the midst of all of that, there was also those RedBox vending machines that popped up offering the same video store selection in a much, much smaller space. And so one by one, the video stores closed; even RedBox is no longer. The convenience of streaming movies has become so popular that it progressively threatens even the big screen experience of going to the cinema. Most of you probably know that CinemaWorld in Lincoln recently closed, and other movie theaters are hanging on just by a thread. This is the nature of the market. New services arrive, and they bankrupt the old ones because of their superior quality.
In other industries, there's a lot of concern about that kind of thing right now when it comes to artificial intelligence. And I'm not gonna get sidetracked on that, but you can see we all kind of live under those sorts of tensions. And, and my purpose here is that I want you, I wanna put you in the shoes of a pagan idol maker, which might be a little bit difficult for you to do. 'cause you're like, what's that like? Well, as we see here in this passage, it's, it's like being someone who's experiencing a sudden competitor coming into your market. I want to put you in the shoes of a man who knew his business well, who knew his clientele, and who knew a competitor when he saw one. I want to help you enter that world so that you can begin to more fully reckon and imagine the real implications of the Christian faith. We often think of Christianity as something rather benign, pretty socially tame. I want to challenge you this morning to consider if that might only be because we have tamed it. That perhaps we might only be comfortable in our society because we've ripped out its teeth and removed its bite in our own lives.
First, we look at verses 23 through 27 here in Acts 19. The Apostle Paul has been spending the past two years in Ephesus, teaching the people there about the gospel. You'll recall he had a, a place in the hall of Tyrannus so that he was almost kind of functioning like a philosopher, as a teacher. And we learned that he has a great impact and influence not only in Ephesus, but throughout all that province of Asia, because it's a hub for that whole province. And so people are coming in, hearing his teaching, and they're going out from there. If you're not familiar where Ephesus is, it's in modern day Turkey. You can see that little red dot there kind of on the west coast. And so because it was a port city, it was very, very influential and as I shared last time, I had the opportunity to visit there, and the ruins are incredible. You can tell that it was a once great city, but one that is no longer.
Now, part of what made the city of Ephesus so striking in the world of the Roman Empire at that time was the temple that was constructed to the Goddess Artemis. Now. I, I have to assure you, I did not plan this talking about Artemis after we just had this big space mission. But you should know there, there's reasons why they named this space mission Artemis. You'll recall the earlier missions were named Apollo. Well, Artemis was the twin of Apollo. They're brother and sister. And Artemis was known, among other things, as being the goddess of the moon. So it kind of makes sense, you're doing a moon mission. And so, she wasn't only known as a goddess of the moon though. She was also known as goddess of the hunt, also childbearing. They kind of put a lot of things under her, which is why we actually see her appearing in quite a different form in Ephesus than we do in other places.
So on the left, you'll see that's kind of more of a Roman depiction of her, otherwise known as Diana. This is what the Ephesians would've been familiar with. You know, it's very, very different depiction there, and it's because what you have is this intersection between the east and the west. And so she's actually kind of a conglomeration of a lot of goddesses under this head of Artemis. Now, the temple that was constructed in her honor was actually one of the Seven Wonders of the World, it's known as the Artemesium. There's a couple of great videos you can find on YouTube about this. This one comes on this channel Told in Stone. You can see how, how huge it is. Her temple had 127 columns that were 60 feet in height, and this temple had been around for a hundred years, had been reconstructed a couple of times, but at this point, this is what it would've roughly looked like. And you can see the statue in there is just, is huge. And just to kind of put it in perspective, how big this place was, we were talking about Athens recently, and this is a video by Manuel Bravo, and you'll recall we talked about the Parthenon in Athens. Well, you see the Parthenon there, that's the temple of Artemis. Big difference in terms of size. And so it was a huge attraction. Not only you can imagine just the architecture itself, but particularly the Goddess Artemis and the promise that was offered to those who would worship her, who would bring sacrifice to her.
Now, just to kind of help you kind of appreciate the role that this temple had in relation to the city of Ephesus, you have to recognize that the relationship between the religious cult and the city is much different than the relationship between, like in America you have church and state and those are kept separate. Well, the Temple of Artemis was a state project. It was built by the city of Ephesus, and it was a main thing, main part of their whole civic life together. So that every couple, every few weeks in the city, they would actually have a, basically a two mile parade around the city. So you can see, actually I put the star there. That's where the Temple of Artemis is. That's kind of where the main hub of Ephesus is, and you see this path. So they do a whole parade around this whole area just to celebrate her honor. So kind of putting all those pieces together, you can see why, just on that, on those facts alone, why the temple would be influential and then, oh, there's also this, the temple was a bank. That seems weird, right? They would store all their money in these temples. Why would they do that? Well, because it was a sacred place, and so surely no one would try to rob money from a temple, lest you receive the wrath of the goddess. And so it was also the financial hub, not only of Ephesus, but I mean it was a major, major financial hub in Asia and for the Mediterranean.
So we're beginning to see why this place was such a big deal, why Artemis was, was such a big deal. And you can imagine how commerce really began to kind of revolve around the worship of Artemis, and that's what we find here in the case of a man named Demetrius. He, along with other artisans, are engaged in a trade of making cultic items for the worship of Artemis. And he, it says that he made silver shrines for Artemis. So what does that mean? It means that he was kind of making, more likely than not, little model temples that people would set up in their homes. And these weren't merely souvenirs. They were religious objects so that people could have something of the presence of Artemis in their own home. And you see that kind of thing actually going on today. For instance, if you go to Japan, those who practice Shintoism, they'll have little shrines in their, in their home, kind of along similar lines. So Demetrius and his tradesmen were profiting from the worship of Artemis, and now you have this guy Paul coming in, preaching this gospel message that Jesus Christ is, in fact, Lord and Savior, that he is the way, the truth, and the life, that there is no other, and that there is only one God.
Well, whether or not Paul directly spoke against Artemis, Demetrius isn't a dumb guy. He understands completely what's gonna happen here. If people keep going to Paul, they're gonna stop buying his shrines. He's gonna lose his business. And it's really difficult to extricate his religious devotion from his financial benefit here because they're completely intertwined. And so because he sees this threat, he gathers together all the other tradesmen and he delivers this speech to them. See in verse, the second half of verse 25, he says, you know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. And you see here how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There's danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.
So again, you have his economic concerns. And then there's also these concerns that he could kind of whip up, where if you anger the goddess, this, this goddess who calls Ephesus home, what is that going to mean for Ephesus? Not in terms of what are the humans gonna do, but what is that goddess going to do to the city of Ephesus? Again, you have to put yourself in their world. This is, this is a threat, potentially to the security of the city, if they, if they offend the goddess. And so as a result, he whips them up. He whips them up and they are going to begin rioting.
But before we get to that point, we have to appreciate that he's not misrepresenting Paul here. Everything that he's saying that Paul has said, he has, in so many words, said. We hear, we hear him say that, say it elsewhere, and it's in keeping with the teaching of the Old Testament. We see in Exodus 20, this is the 10 Commandments. So in verse three, it says, you, you shall have no other gods before me. And then verses four and five, you shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You should not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. So that's not just a Christian thing, that's a Jewish thing. And there was Jews in Ephesus. And so this was a known thing and it was already a tension within the city, but the Jews were an ancient people. And so they kind of didn't let, they didn't bother with them as long as they didn't bother the pagan religious practices.
But now Paul's starting, starting to upset the apple cart here, and we've seen him upset the apple cart before in other places also. You'll recall how when he was in Philippi and he cast a demon out of a girl that was enslaved to tell the fortunes of others. When he cast out the demon, all of a sudden she couldn't tell fortunes anymore, and her owners were very upset by that and cause all kinds of trouble. So this isn't the first time that Paul's gospel message and his ministry has, has caused problems for the economy. And we see actually later on that Christians continued to have economic impacts on the communities that they were in. This is, all this, we have a record of a letter from Pliny the younger, who is the governor of Bithynia and Pontus, which is just a different area of Asia Minor, a different area of Turkey, writing to the Emperor Trajan.
And he says this, he says, for the contagion of this superstition, talking about Christianity, has spread not only to the cities but also through the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it. It is certainly quite clear that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented, that the established religious rites, long neglected, are being resumed, and that from everywhere sacrificial animals are coming, for which until now very few purchasers could be found. Hence, it is easy to imagine what a multitude of people can be reformed if an opportunity for repentance is afforded.
So what Pliny's actually describing there is a bit of a pagan comeback, but we learned something from his account of that pagan comeback, which is that the temples were being abandoned, that they weren't able to find purchasers for all these sacrificial animals. So you see that there was a real economic impact from the emergence of Christianity. Now, you know, to put ourselves in the immediate situation here, is, is Demetrius's concern a little overheated? Probably, he's probably gonna die before it makes any really big impact on, on his income. The temple is going to be destroyed, it, it might possibly continue, we don't know for certain based on the archeological record, but the goths are going to come in in 2 68 ad and destroy the temple. But kind of between this point, which is around late fifties and early sixties, until that point, the temple's gonna be still in operation. So there's still gonna be money to be made. But again, Demetrius can see where these, where this is going. He's anticipating it.
So, as I already mentioned, his appeal to his fellow craftsmen is successful, and we learned in verse 28 how they chose to respond. It says, when they heard this, they were furious and began shouting, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theater together. Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him. Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater. The assembly was in confusion: some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there. The Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander to the front, and they shouted instructions to him. He motioned for silence in order to make a defense before the people. But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
Now this phrase, great is Artemis of the Ephesians, was a classic phrase in the city of Ephesus. And this is just one detail among others that indicates to us that Luke knows what he's talking about, he actually knows what goes on in the city of Ephesus. So he's not just passing a legend along to us here. He is not making up a story. This all fits the details of what we know about the city of Ephesus. Now, the silversmiths in Ephesus are thought to have possibly operated along this harbor road here. You can see that the theater's there, so it's not a very long walk for them to go from we're really mad and upset to let's go and start a rally. Let's go start a riot in the theater. And you can actually have, we actually have a picture looking from that road up to the theater. You can see it there. As they're on their way going from there to the theater, they nab a couple of Paul's companions. Now we don't know, maybe they were leaving the Hall of Tyrannus or something. We don't know how, how Paul didn't manage to get nabbed, but they see these two guys, they say those are his friends, we're taking them and they drag them into the theater. And we, we find mention of Aristarchus elsewhere in Paul's letters so we know that he's actually kind of a, a long time companion for him as, as his ministry continues.
Now, this theater that they get dragged into, known as the Great Theater of Ephesus, could seat around 24,500 people. It was a, a place of assembly, not only for entertainment, but also for legal proceedings. But this seems to be an unscheduled proceeding and, and so you can just imagine this place just being full, you know, talking close to 25,000 people. Imagine you're Aristarchus and Gaius and all these people are just rioting. And Paul seeing his friends in there, seeing what's going on. He wants to go in there, he wants to talk to the people. Now we can imagine Paul always wants to have an opportunity to share the gospel message. But his friends know that this isn't going the right way, that this could end up very badly. So the disciples hold him back. And, in fact, the Asiarchs, which are kind of these people that have served in politics, political leadership in the province present and past, who apparently had kind of befriended Paul, also tell him, please don't go in there.
Now, part of this was probably with interest for Paul's safety, but part of it was probably also for their own self-respect. Because Paul had been there so long, he had made friends with people. Now he's really started some trouble. So if it becomes clear that Paul's the one that has started this trouble, and oh, these important people are friends with him, that would reflect badly on them. And as we know from Luke's account here, a bunch of the people don't even know why they're there, which is kind of funny. It is, it is so typical of us as human beings. So many people get caught up in protests and things like that and they don't even know why they're there, but it's the thing to do. And sometimes you see street interviews with people and you, they get interviewed and the people just have the most ridiculous responses to these questions 'cause it's clear they're just kind of there to be there. Well, that's what's going on here also. So they hold Paul back. Don't go in there, but there is a guy that does try to speak up. His name is Alexander. And it doesn't seem that he's a Christian. Actually, it seems that he's a leader from the Jewish community, and he might be wanting to speak up here because he's afraid that this is gonna, this is gonna affect the Jewish community there in Ephesus because they're monotheists, they don't worship the goddess Artemis.
Now, when he goes to try to speak before the, these Ephesians, and they realize like, oh, he's a Jew, they just get even more whipped up. They get even more upset and they drown him out. They don't let him speak. As, as I've mentioned before, in previous sermons, the Mediterranean was, could be a very anti-Semitic place because of this religious difference. I told before about how the Jews have been kicked out of Rome. So this wasn't unusual, and it's just Paul's ministry here has kind of aggravated some of those, those tensions. Now we're just reminded here of the intense devotion of these people to the Goddess Artemis, which, which again, is not commendable, 'cause she's a false goddess, just, this is intense people. They, it says, Luke tells us that they yelled, great is Artemis of the Ephesians! For two hours. For two hours. Just saying that again and again and again.
It's one of those things like, I can't imagine doing that. That's, that's so intense. And who knows how much longer they would've continued yelling. But it comes to an end when Luke tells us that they were eventually quieted by the city clerk who addresses them in verse 35. Says, the city clerk quieted the crowd and said, fellow Ephesians, doesn't all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash. You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. If, then, Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsols. They can press charges. If there's anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case, we would not be able to account for this commotion, since there is no reason for it. After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.
So the clerk was more or less the chief political figure of Ephesus. There was a, there was a city council, but the clerk was kind of very similar to a mayor, and so you have the chief political officer of the city stand up, and finally the crowd's like, okay, we'll, we'll listen to him. We'll see what he's got to say.
It's possible that he's got some connections with Paul, Paul's friends, hence why he doesn't just throw Paul to the crowd here. And he diffuses the situation by affirming Artemis. So based on everything he says here, we're not gonna assume that he's a, a Christian, but he is an ally, apparently, for God's purposes anyways, in using him to ensure that nothing bad happens to Paul or to Aristarchus or to Gaius. He, he refutes the idea that she's merely main manmade saying that she's actually, her image fell from heaven. Now, archeologists have had a difficult time gathering, what does that mean? Is he just saying that the worship of her has kind of come from heaven? Is he meaning literally that there's a legend that her statue fell from heaven? They've actually found one object that may have been kept within her kind of castle like tiara, a shaped stone, which may have been said to have fallen from heaven, but they've actually tested the stone, and it's not a meteorite or anything like that. In any case, there's some, some legend that he's referring to here that says, surely, you know, she is no false god, she's a true god. She's a true goddess. And so on the basis of this, kind of saying she's at, she's not threatened at all here, he's saying they shouldn't be responding in this uncontrolled, chaotic way, especially, and then he kind of turns, so he says that, and then he says on the other hand too, there's, there's no evidence here that Paul's companions have done anything wrong. Now truthfully, Demetrius is on the right path here. He, he knows how Paul's going to be affecting things here with his message, but it may have been that Paul was maintaining sort of a low profile by not, he wasn't protesting outside of the temple of Artemis. He wasn't doing anything directly in that sort of way to aggravate them. But he was sticking with his message. And that's why we had this, this riot here.
The clerk then raises some further concerns here, because this isn't a legal assembly, and having a assemblies which are not legal assemblies in the Roman Empire are a big deal because it's a sign of political unrest. This could be considered a riot. Ephesus, at this time, is a free city within the Roman Empire, which means they get to elect their own officials, they get to issue their own coinage, they enjoy special favor with Rome. If they become known as misfits, then they're gonna lose that favor. Rome could say, okay, you're no longer a free city. We're gonna come and control you directly. So the clerk's saying, Hey, cool it. We don't wanna risk anything here. Apparently the combination of that whole argument was enough to diffuse the situation. Again, we see God's providence here, kind of orchestrating things by using this clerk, especially 'cause Paul, again, this is one of these instances where Paul doesn't even have an opportunity to say anything for himself. Paul's absolutely quiet. It's a, so reading between the lines here, we see God at work. And as we hear Paul say elsewhere in his letters, in First Corinthians and second Corinthians, we know that his time in Ephesus was filled with hardship, probably hardships that we don't even know about 'cause he doesn't tell us about it in detail or Luke doesn't tell us about it. In all likelihood, this whole situation that transpires gets in the way of him being able to really come back to Ephesus on good terms. He indicates that later on. So that he's not really a welcome big guest anymore. He's kind of used up his time there, and so he is going to be moving on, and that's what we're gonna be covering in, in, in the chapters that follow.
Now, I told you at the beginning that I wanted to put you in the shoes of Demetrius, this maker of silver shrines to Artemis. To imagine yourself alongside him with the other Ephesians decrying this encroachment upon your religion. But now I wanna change a critical detail here. Imagine that you are stirred, not because you see the glory of Artemis being diminished, but rather the glory of Jesus Christ. Would you rally for two hours declaring again and again, great is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I'm not painting this picture to make you at all sympathetic towards the Ephesian pagans, but rather, I'm saying this in order to hopefully awaken you to the gradual erosion of devotion to Christ we see around us today. The religious landscape in America has been predominantly Christian, even as we've seen it in decline over the past few decades. What has caused this decline? The explanation is certainly multifaceted, and I'm not going to propose any simplistic answers here this morning. But let's just roll back the tape and consider what led the Ephesians to choose Christ over Artemis and the way of life that followed from that.
The Ephesian people were abandoning a dead idol for the living God. Artemis couldn't deliver them from death. They devoted themselves to her, and what happened to them, they all just died with without any real hope. Jesus had conquered death and promised resurrection and eternal life to those who entrusted their lives to him. Legend spoke of the power of Artemis, but while she was apparently powerful, supposedly powerful, the myths about her don't reveal that she was especially good. She's very mercurial. She could just, you'd want her on your side, but you get on your bad side, watch out. Jesus stands in stark contrast, offering love, mercy, forgiveness, and true and genuine moral transformation. You had people around in those times espousing all different kinds of philosophies about how people should be living life, and here you have these Christians who actually are living the lives that the philosophers are saying all people should aspire to live. Unlike the pagan gods, Jesus had real power to heal and to save. And as we recall from all the signs that were being demonstrated in Ephesus, including the casting out of demons.
Now we have to imagine when an Ephesian turned to Christ, it did bring conflict, but the reason they converted was not in order to enter into conflict. Rather, the Ephesians were willing to come into conflict with the surrounding culture because they recognized that Jesus was truly the way, the truth, and the life. They believed that so firmly that they're willing to swim upstream against the culture, living as aliens among their neighbors, becoming strange and unfamiliar in a place where they were once familiar, comfortable, perhaps respected. Conflict was the effect of their conversion.
Christianity presents a challenge to every culture because it is exclusivist in nature. It rigorously stands by the first commandment, in which God tells his people, you shall have no other gods before me. This is why Christianity is such a challenge to Hinduism. Hindus have no problem with Jesus. Jesus could be another great guru or God amongst their gods. They, where the problem arises is when we suggest that you should only worship Jesus. And we see the same sort of conflict here in the United States. The gospel conflicts with religious pluralism, the idea that all religious paths are equally legitimate because it proclaims Jesus as the only way of salvation. And then on top of this, the gospel also conflicts with the culture that we have here in America because it maintains that following Christ should be our highest priority in life, standing above and directing all other pursuits.
Now as Americans, as we say in our Declaration of Independence, we believe above all in the pursuit of happiness. But more and more people, I'd say including Christians, are being, becoming convinced that they will not find happiness in Christ. And by that I mean finding happiness in Christ himself, not in Christ as a means to getting other things that will make you happy. And in fact, I think people are understanding that better today. They understand that Jesus is not a vending machine that will get them all the things they believe will make them happy. And so if it's a choice between Jesus and those other things, they will choose the other things more often than not.
Now it can be difficult to, for us to measure people's devotion, but there is one basic way that's available to us. Church attendance. Church attendance is the canary in the coal mine. How frequently people attend church, how regularly they attend church, or whether they attend church at all anymore. In a report released by Gallup in January of this year, they report that 20 years ago, 42% of Americans were attending religious services weekly. Today, that figure has dropped to around 30%. Now this includes all religions, but if we wanna just look specifically at Protestant Christians, so that's us, we've seen a drop from 49% a little over 10 years ago to 44% today. And to be honest, we don't need the, the statistics. Looking at our own lives or noticing the habits of our neighbors, we know people aren't going to church as regularly as they once did. Devotion is slipping. Pleasure, entertainment, athletic endeavors, career advancement are progressively becoming more important to people who would say that they are followers of Christ.
You see, now the shoe is on the other foot. We are in the position of noticing a slippage in our devotion to Christ, just like Demetrius noticed the threat that Christianity presented to Artemis. But unlike him, too many of us just shrug our shoulders. Too many of us look at the behavior of protesting in a theater for two hours as tiresome, as an extreme response to religious decline. We convince ourselves it is not really that important for us to gather to worship God, that even just positive feelings about Jesus can count as worship; we reduce worship to a state of mind. The Ephesians would laugh and say that we are kidding ourselves. The New Testament and the early history of the church certainly doesn't endorse our individualistic, disembodied, ethereal notions of worship. Worship is always anchored in the gathering of the church, everything else springing from that.
Now, certainly the pagan Ephesians were wrongheaded in their devotion to Artemis, and I'm certainly not calling us to, to riot into, into protest. But we should not think that apathy is the correct response to this decline. We should be passionately concerned about the worship of the true God. We truly believe he is the one true God. We should combat anything that takes people away from Christ. So what should we do?
Well, first, we must guard our personal devotion to Christ. If you believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, then your life should reflect that. And if your life, it suggests that you don't actually believe that, then the first place to begin is to reckon with why. Why, why in your heart of hearts do you believe that the life you truly desire is to be found somewhere else other than in Christ? You can only abandon all other things and look to Christ above all if you actually believe that he is the one that offers you true life. That's what happened in the case of the Ephesian converts. They were willing to walk the difficult path of following Christ in opposition to their culture, because they believed that true, real, lasting happiness is found only in communion with Jesus. If you yourself don't believe that, then you're going to have a very difficult time convincing anyone else that they should follow Jesus.
If you do believe that, then you must be prepared to take difficult stances, stances that will ultimately stand as a testimony to others and challenge them to think more deeply about the things to which they're devoting their lives. Now, some of us are essential workers that must work shifts, that will occasionally conflict with our corporate worship. That's necessary. But let me say, even in those cases, we should ensure that work does not always conflict with our participation in corporate worship, so that we are not ever able to gather with a body of Christ. It is not personally acceptable for ourselves, and we shouldn't want a society in which people aren't ever allowed to go and worship Christ. If you don't work in that kind of field, then I think there's even greater opportunity to take that kind of stand. I can remember when I got my first part-time job in high school, I stipulated at the outset, you know, 17-year-old making stipulations. I stipulated at the outset that I would work any other time except Friday evenings, 'cause that's when youth group was, and Sunday mornings, because that's when I was gonna go to church. Now, obviously I didn't have much leverage in that situation, but that was my stance no matter what. And by God's grace, it worked out fine. We should be willing to take those kinds of stances, trusting that God will meet our needs, even if it means that we get turned away from some employers.
My son plays spring soccer and unfortunately some of the games conflict with our morning worship; he's not gonna be playing those games. And it's not the coach's fault, they do the best that they can. Playing sports at that time has just become our societal norm, and I would love, I would really love to see a cultural shift take place so that we don't have that conflict. But the culture will only shift if I and anyone else who is a Christian determines that our worship of God is more important than sports. Why in the world should we expect non-Christians to be devoted to Christ above all, so that they set aside Sunday? It doesn't make any sense if we as Christians aren't willing to bear the costs of following Jesus. Why in the world would we expect non-Christians to be willing to bear that cost?
Why would we bear the costs? Because Jesus is worth it. He is worthy of our worship, and he himself is our great reward. So we live that out, not just in our commitment to regular worship, but in every aspect of our lives. Now as we do and as others turn to Christ and begin to pursue him above all other things, we will see the shoe shift from the foot that it's on now to the other. Maybe employers will ostracize us. Perhaps entertainment industries will be frustrated by Christians and sports leagues might be annoyed by us. Perhaps there won't be a riot, but there could be, there could be some noise. And positively, in some cases, we might see the culture shift to accommodate us, which will also serve as a signpost to Christ. But none of this will happen unless we are exclusively devoted to Christ above all. We cannot continue to go along to get along. If we continue to do so, we will only continue to signal to the outside world and to our own children, that there are other things more important than worshiping Christ, that there are other gods who hold better promise, and we will see the decline continue.
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of wearing the shoes of Demetrius, the shoes of decline. I want to climb with Paul, bearing the costs, because Jesus is worth it. If we start living that way, maybe we will cause a riot in our day. Let's pray we will be so devoted.
Father, it is so difficult to live in this world. I, there are so many things calling for our attention, calling for our devotion. There are so many voices speaking to, speaking to us messages saying, you can find life here. You can find joy and happiness here.
Father, we pray that you would block those voices out of our minds to hear the voice of Christ. He invites us to find, to go to him and find the rest that we need for our souls.
Father, we pray that by your grace, by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, that our hearts will be turned completely towards you and to Christ, that we would love you with our whole heart, so that even as we make sacrifices, father, it would feel like no sacrifice because we know that we have the better thing in Jesus.
Even so, father, we pray that as we devote ourselves to you, that you would use our witness to bring others to you, to deliver them from the dead and useless gods of our time that enslave us.
And that, father, where you can, providentially move things to make things easier for people to make that change. We pray, father, that you would do that, but in so far, father, as there continues to be a cost, we just pray by the Holy Spirit that you would help us and all others to count these things as no cost for the reward of knowing Jesus Christ and the life that you give us in Him. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God and hear the preaching of his word. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)