Acts 19: The Temple of Diana
In Acts 19, we find Paul in Ephesus. His preaching and teaching the good news of Jesus Christ has turned the city upside down. We read:
Many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices.And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
That was no small feat. Ephesus was a major port city with an estimated 225,000 citizens. It was not a but the major worship, commercial, and financial center for the Ancient Near East. The Temple provided religious exercise and comfort, which drew people from far and wide. Bigger than a football field, it was regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And it shouldn’t be overlooked that the Temple served as a central bank, a powerful, financial institution to rival the Medici’s in Florence many centuries later.
The impact of the Gospel put a hard dent in the psyche of Ephesus. God directly confronted the Ephesian worldview over the course of three years. I guess that’s one way to look at it—a glass-half-empty. The glass-half-full view is God was actively calling out to the people of Ephesus in this way”
Out in the open wisdom calls aloud, she raises her voice in the public square; on top of the wall she cries out, at the city gate she makes her speech:
“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? Repent at my rebuke! Then I will pour out my thoughts to you, I will make known to you my teachings.
So, they were hearing the wisdom of God from Paul in Ephesus:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. (See 1 Corinthians 1 et seq.)
But the Lord was aiming at this—in light of the pivotal role Diana played in the socio-economic lives of the Ephesians:
Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words, who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God. Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life. (Proverbs 2:16-19)
He is not aiming at human adultery, but spiritual adultery—what we worship defines us. Knowing that, God is overwhelming them with the Gospel for three years (I don’t believe Paul spent more time in any other place). A real call away from spiritual adultery.
Here is where Acts 19 hits us hard and forces us to ask hard questions (and thanks to my friend, Rob Simcox, for raising these issues in our Wednesday Bible study).
Where are our temples to Diana? Our silver shrines? (v. 24) Our business? (v. 25) Our related trade? (v. 25). The Ephesians were rooted in a comfortable, aggregation of worldly power with spiritual overtones. They had it both ways in the Greco-Roman view of the world, but really their venturing into the spiritual realm had only here-and-now ends. The spells, incantations, and magic books were rooted in Balaam’s error (See Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4), not toward a relationship with a Holy God. What seemed spiritual to them and others was really on a naturalistic, materialist view of life.
By outward appearances, Diana was the center of Ephesian life. The inward reality was very different: each man occupied the center, which Diana—being a fiction—could never and would never challenge.
Is that how we believe in Him? Like an Ephesian?
Perhaps we should follow the example of many of those Ephesians who were now believers? To confess and to divulge our practices, whatever they may be, to put it all on the altar and to burn it all.
