Fighting for Idols

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Amen.
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I invite you to take out your Bibles and remain standing as we read a verse of Scripture to begin our time of study.
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Now, our study today is going to encompass verses 21 all the way to the end of the chapter.
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But to begin the study, I just want to read one verse.
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It is the verse that I think sort of points to the thesis of this entire narrative.
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And it is verse 26.
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This is Demetrius, the silversmith, who is speaking and he says, speaking of the Apostle Paul, 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 the gods made with hands are not gods.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that as we seek to have an understanding of it this morning, that you would keep me from error.
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As I know that I am a fallible man, I am capable of preaching and teaching error and I don't want to do that.
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I don't want to do that for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of the hearts of your people.
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Lord, I pray that you would keep me from that.
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I pray also, Lord, that you would open up the hearts of the people that hear me to the truth.
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If they be believers, Lord, that this message would draw them to a closer walk in conformity to Jesus Christ.
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And if they have come today, Lord, and have not received Christ, that they would understand that in him only is found salvation and there is no other.
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And I pray that that exclusive message, though it be unpopular, would be loudly proclaimed, for it is the truth.
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And we pray this in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Over the past few weeks, we have been exposed as a nation to several events which have captured not only our attention but the world's attention.
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We have seen a newly elected president sworn into office.
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We have seen the result of that being a widely and wildly divided nation to the points that we have seen rioting and picketing and marches.
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And we have seen orders from the executive office coming down which have caused, again, no end of division as to whether they are righteous or not.
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In the midst of all of this, on the day following the presidential inauguration, there was a march that was held there in Washington which was supposed to be on behalf of women's rights.
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And, you know, just as a caveat to say before I say what I'm about to say, I want you to understand that I am not opposed to women having the right to vote or the right to work or any of those things.
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I want to make sure that everything I'm about to say about the women's march be held with the caveat that I'm not anti-woman.
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I would hope that that would be clear from everything else I've said up until this point.
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I love women.
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My wife is the best person in the world.
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Just ask me.
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She's much better than me.
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Amen.
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And please.
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And I do.
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I adore my wife.
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I adore my daughters.
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But unfortunately, the march that was held in Washington was not focused on women's rights.
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The heart of the march and much of what happened in the language of the march was about the subject of abortion.
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And that is not my opinion.
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That is something that is easily seen.
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Or if you listen to the speeches and you look at the signs and the things that were held, it was clear to anyone that those who opposed abortion were not welcome.
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In fact, pro-life groups that wanted to attend the march were dropped by the leadership.
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And one of the organizers put out this statement.
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And I quote from the organizer.
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He said, The protest is pro-choice.
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And that has been our stance from day one.
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We want to assure all our partners as well as our participants that we are pro-choice.
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As clearly stated in our unity principles, we look forward to marching on behalf of individuals who share the view that women deserve the right to make their own reproductive choices.
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End quote.
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So it is clear that the march's at least foundational intent was to support not only women, but a woman's right to murder her unborn child.
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It wasn't about empowering women.
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It was about empowering women to have abortions.
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And while some may argue that the event was more than that, I will certainly argue that it was certainly not less than that.
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The president of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest provider of abortions, was there.
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And she made the quote statement, quoting actually Hillary Clinton, that reproductive rights are human rights.
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And she continued to promise that they were fighting for the right of women to murder their unborn children in the womb.
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Of course, that's not the language that she would use.
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But when you take that which is alive and you make it dead on purpose without any fault, and that which you are making dead, that is the very definition of murder.
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And beloved, I say all this to simply say this is what idolatry looks like.
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And if you look at that, and you look at that massive amount of people that fell on our nation's capital, they were fighting for an idol.
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And the idol isn't so much abortion.
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Abortion is the outgrowth of the idol.
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The idol is self.
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We have become a nation that is in love with ourselves.
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I think it's byproduct of what we've been taught.
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The last generation was force-fed the idea of just you need to love yourself at all costs.
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You need to raise yourself up at all costs.
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This idea of personal just building up.
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And so everyone gets a trophy.
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We're familiar with that.
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No one is ever a loser.
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No one ever loses anything.
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Everyone's a winner.
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Everyone is great.
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And there's never, ever a time when you should think otherwise.
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And so what we've done is we've built an idol of self.
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No longer do we build shrines of cows and bow down and worship the calf or the cow.
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We now simply enshrine ourselves as the ultimate being.
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And when men and women are confronted about their idolatry, they will become vicious.
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When men and women are confronted with their idolatry, they will become angry.
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And that's what we're going to see in the text today.
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We're going to be looking at Paul's time in Ephesus.
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And this is a time in which Paul is ready to leave.
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Paul is getting ready to leave Ephesus.
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And what's interesting about this story is a riot breaks out.
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If they would have just waited just a little bit, he'd have been gone.
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But it's funny how God's timetable works.
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There's one more thing that needs to happen before Paul can leave.
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And it's this abrupt riot that's about to break out.
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Remember, we are in Acts.
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This is Paul's third missionary journey.
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He's traveled from his home church in Antioch for a third time through Galatia.
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And you remember when it talks about Asia, it's not talking about what we think of Asia now.
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But this is Asia Minor.
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This is the area that's between Israel and Greece.
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It's a large landmass there.
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And you're able to cross through Galatia.
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You're able to cross through this area and come to Ephesus, which is a port city in Asia Minor.
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And it's one of the largest cities in the Roman world.
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And Paul has been there.
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He's been teaching there for two years at least.
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He's been teaching in the hall of Tyrannus, who was a teacher there.
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And Paul had been using his study, his hall to teach the gospel.
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And it had gone all out into the Asia Minor.
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It had gone all out into the known world.
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All throughout that which was in the control of Rome, because all of the borders were able to be crossed.
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There were roads that could be taken.
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There was trade ports that could be used.
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This was, again, the fullness of time.
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This was a special time in history.
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The Pax Romana had brought peace to the land, a relative peace that would allow for the type of dissemination of information to happen.
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And that was what Paul was taking advantage of.
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This large dissemination of the gospel.
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And it's going out everywhere.
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But not everyone's happy about that.
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Because when the gospel comes into an area, and people begin to be affected by the gospel, those people who love their idols, or who are financially benefited from their idolatry, begin to become upset.
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There was a time, I guess it was a little over a hundred years ago, where there was a revival in a certain area in England.
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And after the revival, the saloons began to shut down.
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Because less and less people were getting drunk.
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What do you think happened with the saloon owners? Well, they became upset.
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Of course.
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This is our livelihood.
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This is how we make our money.
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This is how we make our living.
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And the gospel has come in, and it has attacked us at the very foundation of who we are.
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Our money.
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And we'll see that this, essentially, the same thing has happened here.
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Beginning in verse 21, it says, Now, after these events, Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia.
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Remember, he'd already been into Macedonia.
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He wants to go through again.
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And Achaia, and go to Jerusalem, saying, After I've been there, I must see Rome.
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He wanted to go through Macedonia, through Achaia, basically checking on where he'd been before, go back to Jerusalem, probably to worship there with the church.
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And then he wants to make a beeline for Rome.
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And really, the rest of the book, the rest of Acts, is going to be Paul moving around a lot as he makes his way toward Rome.
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This is his desire.
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This is his mission.
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This is what God has laid on his heart.
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It says, And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.
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So this takes us...
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Paul's ready to go, but he doesn't leave just yet.
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He sends his partners, his ministry partners, on ahead of him.
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And now we get to verse 23, and this begins the scenario that I've been talking about with the riot.
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It says, About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the way.
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Remember, the way is how Christianity was described at this point in history.
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It wasn't so much called Christianity.
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People who were Christians were called followers of the way.
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Well, who is the way? Jesus.
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He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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It was very simple why they were called followers of the way, because he was the way.
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And it's interesting how Luke...
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Remember, Luke is the writer of Acts.
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How Luke chooses to describe this.
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He says, It's no little disturbance.
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I think Luke is the prince of understatement, because what he's saying is there was no little disturbance.
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There was a big old disturbance.
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There was a big old problem that was happening, because it was about that same time.
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There was a big old disturbance concerning the followers of Jesus.
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Verse 24.
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For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen.
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Again, that phrase, no little.
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There was no little disturbance and no little business.
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This is, again, I believe if Luke would have been from the south, it would have been a big old disturbance and some big money.
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And he says that Demetrius' purpose or his job, he was a silversmith and he made shrines to Artemis.
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Now, Artemis in Roman mythology was the goddess Diana.
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And the goddess Diana was responsible for fertility.
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She was the goddess of sexuality.
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If you've ever seen the shrine, it's the multi-breasted shrine, because representing the idea of fertility and childbearing and things like that.
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So you see this goddess is worshipped.
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In fact, Ephesus was a very feminized culture.
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It was believed that Ephesus was founded by the Amazons, which were supposed to be large, brutish, battling women.
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And so the Ephesian culture was a feminized culture with a feminized deity.
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And they believed that worshipping her was a virtuous thing, to worship Diana or the goddess Artemis.
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They had a temple that is one of the wonders of the ancient world.
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It was several thousand square feet and it was all marble.
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Beautiful, all marble columns and built up.
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And it was designed for the worship of Diana.
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And so there were men who were craftsmen by trade, whose job it was was to make little Dianas, little Artemises.
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And sort of like, I don't know if you've ever been to New York.
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I never have, but every time I see somebody go to New York, they come back with like an I Love New York mug, or an I Love New York hat or t-shirt.
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I assume when people visited Ephesus, they would come home with like a little I Love Artemis silver shrine.
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I imagine maybe Demetrius had like a run of gift shops, maybe that he had right along the Ephesian border.
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And as people were leaving, they saw this great big shrine to Artemis on the way out.
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They want to take a little bit home with them.
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And so you've got Demetrius.
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And it says he's a silversmith.
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And later it's going to talk about the workmen.
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I assume maybe he was a leader in this group.
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Maybe he's the head of the guild, or maybe he's part of the idol makers, 714 or whatever.
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He's the local shop.
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I'm not, I've never been in a union.
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We have something saying.
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He's a guy who's going to get everybody organized.
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And that's what he does.
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It says, these he gathered together.
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The craftsmen then, it says verse 25, these he gathered together with the workmen in similar trades and said, men, you know that from this business, we have our wealth.
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There's the idolatry right there.
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The idolatry for these guys is not so much Diana, but they will use Diana as their push for the crowd.
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They'll get the crowd going with this.
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But for them, it's the money.
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You know that by this job that we have, this building of these shrines, this molding of these shrines, we make our wealth.
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We make our money from this.
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Verse 26, and you see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, that is Asia minor, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people saying that God's made with hands are not God's.
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All right.
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So here's the deal, folks.
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We build God's as what we do.
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Demetrius speaking, we built God's and we sell God's and we get rich off the selling of God's.
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And here comes Paul who says the God's we make ain't God's.
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So we got a problem.
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Because if people listen to him, they're not going to buy our God's.
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And if they don't buy our God's, we're not going to have any more wealth.
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So there's a problem.
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So it goes on.
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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 deposed from her magnificence.
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She whom all Asia and the world worship.
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See, this is how they get the crowd involved.
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Because not everybody's concerned about losing money.
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They're concerned about losing money, but they don't need just them involved.
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They need the city involved.
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So how do they get the city involved? Do you understand that this is the goddess Artemis? Do you want to see Artemis put to shame? Could you imagine Demetrius standing in a group of people who worshipped Diana, who worshipped the goddess Artemis and saying to these people, do you want to see your God put to shame? And what do the people do? Verse 28, when they heard this, they were enraged and were crying out, great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
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They start worshipping Artemis, shouting out how great she is.
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So the city was filled with confusion and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus.
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Gaius and Aristarchus were Macedonians who were Paul's companions in travel.
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So this is kind of how I see this happening.
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You got this shop steward who's working up the union.
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He's getting everybody upset.
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So the union gets upset, but they know that they ain't enough to get everybody else going.
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So they go out into the community and they say, look, this guy's offending us.
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He's offending our religion.
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The shop steward's concerned about his money.
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The craftsman's concerned about their money.
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But the people are concerned about Diana.
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It's all about idolatry, though.
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From the top to the bottom, everybody's got an idol.
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It's just all different.
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So they gather together and they're going to go and they're going to riot to try to force Paul and his people out of there and show that Artemis still stands as the god of the Ephesians.
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So they grab and take and go.
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On the way, they come across Gaius and Aristarchus.
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Gaius and Aristarchus just happen to be men who are known to be followers of Paul.
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They're known to be associated with Paul.
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So they grab them and they take them on as well.
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Verse 30 tells something about the character of the apostle Paul.
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It says, but when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples would not let him.
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And even some of the Asiarchs, who were his friends, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater.
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Now, very quickly, one thing we know about Paul.
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Paul was no coward.
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But he's also not a fool.
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There were times when he did have to leave certain areas because he was in danger.
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But for whatever reason, in this moment, Paul is willing and desirous to put himself into danger.
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Might have been that Gaius and Aristarchus are being assaulted.
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Paul doesn't want someone to be assaulted in his own name.
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So he'd rather go and stand in their place.
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That's loving.
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That's gracious.
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But the disciples say, no.
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What's happening is already happening.
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You going isn't going to make it better.
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It's just going to make it worse.
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The Asiarchs, who are mentioned here, are actually the elders of the city.
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This particular term is a rather unique term.
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In fact, up until about 80 years ago, liberals said it wasn't even an accurate word.
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They said it wasn't even used at this time in history.
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And that this is a place where Luke made a mistake.
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Well, about 80 years ago, some archaeologists found that it was actually used.
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And the liberals were not correct about that particular thing, which often is the case.
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But this term Asiarch was a term for essentially the town leadership, the town elders.
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But these guys had fallen in with Paul as well.
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These guys had heard the gospel, been saved.
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But yet they still maintain their city privileges, their city position.
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And they go to Paul and say, don't go down there.
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Don't go down to the fight.
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You're not going to do any good.
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I imagine Paul felt like he could go and bring some civility.
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But they didn't think that.
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And so really what's interesting about this story and what makes it help me understand, you know, again, the truthfulness of scripture is oftentimes if you read ancient works and you read about heroes and things like that, often the heroes of the story are the people that you're building up.
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Paul isn't the hero of the story.
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Paul doesn't really do anything.
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Paul is ready to go and do what he needs to do, or at least what he thinks he can do.
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And everybody says, no.
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And they sort of hold him back and he doesn't go.
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So now Gaius and Aristarchus are out there sort of on their own.
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Paul doesn't go.
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And verse 7, verse 32.
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Now some cried out one thing, some another for the assembly was in confusion.
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And most of them did not know why they had come together.
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This mob was rioting and some of them didn't even know what was happening.
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They were just out of their minds.
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You ever seen people do that? You ever seen people riot for, they just gather with the crowd.
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One person's acting a fool and it just, it grabs, you know, more and more.
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There was a time a while back here in Jacksonville where there was just riots would break out or in grocery stores.
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It happened at the Walmart over on Limb Turner.
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They just started throwing food.
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And people were trapped in the midst of people who were just throwing things and bashing into one another and just, and you know how quickly that can escalate because if somebody throws a head of lettuce at you, hopefully you wouldn't throw one back, but somebody wouldn't throw one back and now they're in it.
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Half these people don't even know what's going on, but they're all a part of it.
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And they're all in there.
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Now, verse 33 sort of puts in an aside that needs a little bit of explanation.
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Some of the crowd prompted Alexander whom the Jews had put forward and Alexander motioning with his hand wanted to make a defense to the crowd.
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But when they recognized that he was a Jew for about two hours, they cried out with one voice great as Artemis of the Ephesians.
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Alexander is a Jew.
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It doesn't say that he's a Christian.
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Most likely he is not.
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What is happening here though is early Christians were considered a sect of Judaism.
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We understand that.
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Early Christians were often lumped in with the Jews, especially when something bad was happening.
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If the Christians were involved, the Jews were often lumped in as part of the sort of a homogenous group.
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But that wasn't the case.
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And I believe that Alexander here in this situation is being put forward by the Jews to say, hey, this guy ain't with us.
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He's going to make a defense, not for Paul, but for the Jewish people so that there's not a divide and not more anger and hatred going on towards the Jews.
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And he stands up to make a defense.
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And what happens as a result? Two hours of Diana worship.
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And we can't have a two hour church service without people having it.
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Never mind.
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I don't go there.
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But they yell and chant and worship Diana, the Artemis, the goddess of fertility for two hours in the street.
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Well, in the theater.
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Isn't it amazing how much an idol? Can affect the heart.
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Verse thirty five.
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And we'll move to the to the end of the text.
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And then I want to start making some application.
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It says, and when the town clerk.
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This is the hero of the story, by the way, not Paul, not even a believer.
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But much like happened back in Corinth, we see the same thing happening here.
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Someone from the city comes and makes the defense.
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And the town clerk had quieted the crowd.
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He said, men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of Ephesus of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky.
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By the way, there was there was an idol that was there in the city.
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And they believed that that idol had fallen from heaven.
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They believed that that idol was was actually a heavenly gift from the goddess Artemis.
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And that was what made Ephesus so special.
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It could have been a meteorite, could have been something that literally did come down from the sky.
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It could have been an idol that was carved and somebody said, hey, this fell out of the sky and it would look like this.
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We don't know a whole lot about it, but we do know that the people believed that this was from heaven and this thing that they gathered around was from heaven.
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Verse 36, seeing that these things cannot be denied and you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash for you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemy blasphemers of our goddess.
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If there for Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open and there are procouncils.
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Let them bring charges against one another.
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But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in the regular assembly for we really are in danger of keeping charge with writing today or being charged with writing today since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.
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And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly.
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Ultimately, the law was brought to bear, not the law of God, but the law of Rome.
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There are courts for this.
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Take them to small claims.
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I mean, you know, in a modern context, if you've lost money, sue them.
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If Demetrius has a problem, take him to court.
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But this is nonsense.
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So God uses this man, not a believer, he believes in Artemis.
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He believes this thing fell from the sky.
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He believes in the idol.
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But God uses this idolater, this town keeper, to at least bring sense to the madness.
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I'm thankful that God can use, at times, unsaved men and women to bring sense in political madness.
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I'm thankful for that.
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But what do we learn from this? This is a long section of text, and it seems really interesting that this sort of falls in right here because there's not a lot here that really advances the narrative of Paul's life.
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Remember that from this point on, we're really learning about Paul's journey to Rome and the things that happened in Paul's journey to Rome.
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But this very long, several verses is put in the text, and it kind of brings to the question, why? Why this? Why this? I'm sure other things happened, but this particular narrative comes into place.
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And what do we learn from this narrative? There, as I was studying this week and sort of just trying to put together what I wanted to say from this text, something kept coming to my mind.
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And as evangelists, and that's what we're all called to be, evangelists, there is a specific gifting of evangelists in Scripture where a person is a leader, an evangelistic leader, a teacher, a preacher of evangelism.
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But we're all called to be ambassadors for Christ.
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You agree with that, right? Everyone in here is called to be an ambassador for Christ.
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If you're a believer, you've been given a job.
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Make disciples.
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As you go, make disciples.
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Go and make disciples.
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We know this.
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And yet, we also know that that's the most difficult job that we have.
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Going and telling people about the gospel can be one of the most intimidating things that we do.
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In fact, so much so that it often closes people's mouth, unwilling to do it.
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I'm not a huge fan of this person, but there was an evangelist in the Southern Baptist Convention.
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They were having a conference this past week, and he made a point that some 8,500 Southern Baptist churches had no baptisms last year.
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Not even one.
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And his was sort of an affront to, you guys aren't doing what you're supposed to do, blah, blah, blah.
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As I said, I don't always agree with this person.
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I don't necessarily care for the person who made that point.
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But it was kind of interesting to me to look out and say, are we sharing the gospel? Are we going out into the world? And oftentimes, I don't think that we are.
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I don't think that we are.
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And why? But there are three things that we learn about evangelism from this text, because that's what Paul is doing.
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He's a missionary.
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He's in Ephesus.
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He's sharing the gospel.
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He's teaching in the Hall of Tyrannus.
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People are being saved.
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Disciples are being made.
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They're making other disciples.
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So what do we learn? Three things.
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I didn't put them in your worship folder, so if you want to write them down, you can.
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But here are the three things.
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Number one, when we present the gospel, we are threatening idols.
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When we present the gospel, we are threatening idols.
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You say, what do you mean? There is an exclusivity in the gospel that the world finds absolutely offensive.
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The Bible is clear that there is only one God and that there is only one way to God.
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And when you tell a person that, that is offensive.
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But is it clear that the Bible says that? I mean, if you want to write down a few verses, 1 Timothy 2, 5, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, that's clear.
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Acts 4, 12, salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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That's exclusive.
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And of course, Jesus Christ himself said in John 14, 6, I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except by me.
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And I know there's a lot of people out there who call themselves Christians who deny this.
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Brian McLaren, who is a liberal scholar, he wrote the book, A Generous Orthodoxy.
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And he says, I don't believe making disciples equals making adherence to Christian religion.
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Well, what does it mean? What does making disciples mean if it doesn't mean making people believers and followers of Christ? Dr.
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Al Mohler says this.
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He says that the exclusivity of Christ is the universal apologetic problem.
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Now, Al Mohler is a good guy, but what he's saying is this.
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He's saying that the most difficult thing that we have in this world is to tell people that Jesus is the only way.
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It's the universal apologetic problem, meaning it's the one that's going to be the most difficult to get across to people.
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It's going to be the one.
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Because honestly, if you tell someone that Jesus is one of many gods and one of many ways, they'll agree, OK.
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I mean, I remember the story.
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I forget who it was who told it, but there was a man who shared a gospel with a Muslim and the Muslim received Jesus Christ.
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At least they thought he did.
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And he was excited because he said to the person sharing, well, now I'm excited because I have two gods, Allah and Yahweh.
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Or Allah and Jesus.
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When we present the gospel, we are presenting an exclusive truth.
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And that threatens idols.
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We must realize that one of the reasons why people will hate what we say is not just because we're saying Jesus is a way to heaven.
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It's because we're saying that Jesus is the way.
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But I want to say this.
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If we deny the exclusivity of the gospel, we have denied the gospel.
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So we're threatening idols.
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The second thing we learn is when idols are threatened, people become vicious.
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When idols are threatened, people become vicious.
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Look at this Ephesian riot.
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Some were concerned about money.
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Some were concerned about Diana, Artemis.
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Some didn't even know what was going on.
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But when it happened, it happened and everyone became involved.
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These same behaviors are seen today.
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Again, I point back to the march that happened last week.
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They see the potential of their idol being destroyed.
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And what do they do? They lash out in hatred.
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They lash out in anger.
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My idol is under attack.
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What do I do? I fight.
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And such just depravity on display in the fight.
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Decency demands that I can't even quote much of what was said.
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I know this.
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When we go to evangelize, we put ourselves under the threat of viciousness.
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That's why at some points and sometimes we don't take everybody.
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So, I mean, like when we do things, when we do the fishing hole at the Callahan Fair, that's pretty neutral area.
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And so we invite anybody who wants to go, who's a believer, who wants to share their faith.
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But Mike and I have been to some places and Mike's been to some places by himself.
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That, you know, it's not always.
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Mike's been to Israel and walked in Jerusalem and preached there and taught there and shared the gospel there.
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And honestly, there are vicious things that happen.
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They spit on, cussed at, hated.
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And we're not holding signs that say God hates fags or something dumb like that.
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By the way, that's dumb.
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That is ungodly, vicious, terrible.
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That's us being like them.
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We're not supposed to do that.
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But we're just calling people.
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Remember when we went to see the Jehovah Witness? There was Jehovah Witness saying, what was the first words I said when I preached? I'm not here because we hate you.
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And I'm not here to condemn you.
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I am here to tell you that there is a gospel that will save you.
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And when you go into that building, you're not going to hear it.
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You are not going to hear the gospel.
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You are going to hear people tell you how to work your way into heaven.
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And that is not the truth.
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And we are desperate to share the truth with you.
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And a lady asked us when Mike was preaching, she says, why are you here? I said, the same reason you come to our house on Saturday morning.
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But I don't know where you live.
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I said, it's the only place we knew you'd be.
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So we came to tell you the truth.
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But that lady was vicious.
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She accosted us.
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She cried out to us in hatred.
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Now, I'll say this.
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Thankfully, we don't have to worry about most physical things here in America.
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But our brothers and sisters across the world do.
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If we did what we do in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, we wouldn't last a day.
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If Mike, I mean, again, Mike's been to a lot of places.
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And thankfully, by God's grace, has made it back home.
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But there are dangerous places in this world.
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There are people who hate the gospel.
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There are people who hate the gospel here and would kill if they could.
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There's people around the world who kill because they can't.
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And this is the third point.
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I've said two things.
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One, we preach the gospel, we're threatening idols.
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That's why they don't want to hear what we're saying.
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The second thing, when idols are threatened, people become vicious.
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That's why they respond.
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The way they do is because we're threatening their idol.
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Whatever it is, it's either the idol's self, it's a false god, it's something.
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And when we preach the gospel.
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And here's the thing about it.
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All Paul did was preach the gospel.
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Paul didn't go around with an anti-Artemis campaign.
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All he did was preach the gospel.
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And what do people hear? If that's the only God, then our God isn't true.
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And so he didn't have to go around with an anti-Artemis campaign.
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He just preached the truth.
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But the third thing, and this is the thing I hope you take away from today.
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And I hope this is encouraging to you as I've been thinking about it this week myself.
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Because I get afraid too.
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Well, anytime I go to share the gospel, I get a pit in my stomach that just sinks.
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Because I'm nervous.
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And maybe you're better than me and you don't get that.
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And that's okay.
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But you know, I'm never afraid to talk to people about karate.
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I'm never afraid to talk to people about screen printing.
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Or I'm sure you talk about painting all the time.
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Or anything else, HG or whatever.
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But when it comes to Christ, it's like the devil is right there.
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Right? He's just ready to shut you up.
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And so I feel that.
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I know what that feels like.
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But this third thing has been on my heart all week.
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Vicious people may harm us, but they will never be a threat to the truth.
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Vicious people may harm us, but they will never be a threat to the truth.
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Vicious people can be intimidating.
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Bullies are intimidating.
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And that's the desire oftentimes of people who are accosting.
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They get bullish.
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They get loud.
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They don't have any reason for their argument.
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But they become brutish and they overpower with yelling.
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What happened in this story? In this scenario? Great is Artemis of the Ephesians for two hours.
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Just over and over and over they chant.
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And people can make us afraid to tell the truth.
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But can I give you a verse of scripture that might help you? And again, for me, it's helpful.
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Jesus says in Matthew 10 and verse 28, do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.
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But rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.
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When we go and share the gospel, people can be intimidating.
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They can be a vicious and they can threaten us.
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But ultimately, all they could ever really do at the worst case scenario is kill us.
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I had a guy threaten to kill me one time when I was at Jacksonville Beach sharing the gospel.
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He pulled out a screwdriver and he put it in my face and told me he was going to kill me if I didn't leave the beach.
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Well, yeah, I left.
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I wasn't going to fight this guy over a screwdriver.
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But I just remember thinking, this is the way to go.
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Glory to God.
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But it was a moment in my life I won't ever forget.
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But all that man could do is take my life.
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He can never take my soul and he certainly can't take my Christ.
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And that's what Paul knew.
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Paul knew that.
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He said, I'll go.
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I'll go right down there.
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I'll go to Gaius and Aristarchus and I will be beaten with them and I will stand with them.
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So all they can do is take my life.
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And what is my life? But a vapor.
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When confronted and attacked, men will defend their idols, but we cannot let their defense of their idols keep us from proclaiming the truth.
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There is only one way to God.
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There is only one door, one path, and one shepherd.
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And no matter how much the world hates that message, we must and will continue to preach it in the face of hostility, in the face of hatred, in the face of even death.
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We must preach it because it is the truth.
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And even if the truth were to lead us to our deaths, the truth will not be injured.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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And I thank you for the truth.
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And I do thank you that though we as clay vessels can be broken, the truth will stand forever.
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The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of God will stand forever.
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And may we be willing and able to stand on that word as we go out into your world and preach your truth.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Let's stand and sing.