Deliverance

In last week’s study we saw the remarkable success Paul’s preaching had at Ephesus. He stayed there for two years, and he taught every day. As a result of this effort, the Word of God spread from Ephesus throughout the entire Roman province of Asia. But it was not without opposition. In the second half of Acts 19, we see how opposition developed in Ephesus because of all that was being accomplished through Paul’s preaching.

The riot in Ephesus, described in Acts 19:23-41, was a proof of Paul’s success. If Paul had come to the city and had simply made a tiny, little beginning, with only a few people meeting perhaps somewhere in a home, none of this would have happened. A movement like that would have had no impact on Ephesian society. But the fact that there was a riot and so many people got stirred up in defense of Artemis is proof of how successful the preaching of the Gospel had been.

There are two spirited defenses of Artemis in this chapter. Demetrius gave his first. We have his speech in the first paragraph, that is, in verses 23 to 27. Then, beginning in verse 35, the town clerk does much the same thing. By this time, he was already quieting the uproar, but he gives many of the same arguments Demetrius used, though in different language.

As we have seen, the appeal to numbers was the argument used at Ephesus. Demetrius said, “Everybody worships Artemis.” Not everybody did, of course. Paul and the other Christians did not. But even if everybody else did, that alone did not make Artemis a true goddess nor her worshipers right. Just because you are told, “Nobody believes that anymore” (or the reverse, “Everybody does it”) doesn’t mean you should be part of the majority.

What was the outcome at Ephesus? For one thing, the Christians were vindicated. Paul was not attacked, and he was eventually able to leave Ephesus, seemingly without any trouble. To us that may seem somewhat incidental, but it was not incidental to Luke since he records in detail (as he did at Corinth, where Gallio would not listen to the accusations brought against Paul) how Paul and the Christians were vindicated. Those who were in charge said, “These people have done nothing wrong.”