Sunday 24th November
Read Psalm 84
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
This is a wonderful Psalm. Do stop and read it today. It is a song of pilgrimage on the way to the temple and the Psalmist tells of his desire to get there, to God’s dwelling place. He envies the sparrows who nest in it and where they have their young.
He speaks of travelling through the valley of Baca which indicates a place of sorrow and trouble but the pilgrims on their way to the Temple turn it into a place of springs (v6), a place of refreshing, until they arrive at God’s dwelling place. The hardships in life are nothing when we know where we are going and to whom we will live with.
He says, “better is a day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” and that he would, “rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked” (v10).
READINGS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
As you read the Bible Stop; Read; Ponder; and Pray.
Monday Acts 19:1-7
After Apollos left Ephesus and went to Achaia ending in Corinth Paul went through the interior arriving at Ephesus. He met some disciples there who gave indications of not being quite complete, they were believers but were missing something. Perhaps we can recognise something like this in churches today, when people who are undoubtedly faithful and true believers yet seem to be rather ‘flat’. Paul asked them about the Holy Spirit to which they said they were not acquaint with a Holy Spirit. On asking about their faith, he found out that it consisted of a kind of repentance but ended there. It was as though they had ‘lost’ something but hadn’t gained the positive of the spiritual believer and, in teaching them more, he laid hands on them and they experienced something of the Pentecostal experience of the first disciples. Interestingly there were 12 men in all. They seemed to be separate from the Christian believers in Priscilla and Aquila’s group – perhaps they had heard Apollos in his time before Priscilla and Aquila had taught him further.
Sometimes people who have been faithful church members for years need to come to real spiritual commitment to Christ which comes through prayer.
Luke tells us that for the next three months Paul argued in the synagogue at Ephesus about the Kingdom of God. The reason why this was always a tricky proclamation was that in the Roman Empire Caesar was the Top, the King or Lord over the Empire, what Paul was proclaiming was that God’s kingdom was the whole world and that over it the risen Jesus Christ was King. The Jews believed in a Messiah, but their idea was of a Jewish equivalent of Caesar. His laws would be the Jewish laws and no Gentile could be part of this without becoming a Jew. Paul’s gospel seemed to be that faith in Jesus meant that Gentiles could be part of this kingdom without becoming Jews.
Some Jews became obstinate and maligned “the Way”, which was another description of the Christian life, the Way was the way into the kingdom. Paul then went to the lecture hall of Tyrannus and held daily discussions there which lasted for two years. This is how the gospel message was spread. Just think of what those discussions would have involved. What would our discussions arise from today and how would the message of the Kingdom of God be explained?
By verse 11 we come to the subject of out of the ordinary doings. Luke says that God did extraordinary miracles through Paul including the fact that even cloths or aprons (sweat cloths or work clothes??) taken from Paul (whether by agreement or otherwise) were taken to ill persons who were cured. Luke tells things as they happened but doesn’t endorse the practice, what he does is emphasize that it is God who performs the miracles by moving the focus away from Paul. Some Jews went around trying to copy Paul with the mantra, “in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches”, then trying to cast out evil spirits; they got a shock when they are met with “Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are you?” by the entities they were trying to control.
When news of this came to be known many who had believed now turned vigorously to setting themselves apart from their magical arts and practices by burning the scrolls of their magical arts. It’s a good thing for Christians to get rid of all superstitious things they have had in the past and to hold firmly onto faith in Jesus.
After his time in Ephesus, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem and to do it by travelling through the areas – Macedonia & Achaia (Greece) – that he had been before. He also had longer term plans visiting Rome being one but he would be doing a lot of travelling before events took him there, eventually as a prisoner. He sent Timothy and Erastus ahead of him to Macedonia and they would undoubtedly visit Philippi, Thessalonica and Berea, among possibly others growing up around Macedonia.
While Paul stayed a bit longer in Ephesus a serious issue blew up started by a man called Demetrius who was a silversmith who made shrines of Artemis. He called other craftsmen in Ephesus together in protest against the message of Paul. The issue was that as people turned to Christ they turned away from the goods and services of the trades people in the city who made much profit from their Artemis-related goods. They saw their businesses declining. This effect has not been unknown throughout the history of Christian revival; in the 1904/5 Welsh revival, it was known that pubs and race meetings lost business as newly converted men turned away from the drunkenness and gambling of their past to more time with their families and religious gatherings. The silversmithing and related crafts found things difficult but they stirred up the populace not by complaining about their business struggles but by saying that their great god Artemis (Diana), whose temple was in Ephesus, would be robbed of her divine majesty. This became a cause celebre in the whole area and was how events turned out next.
The worship of Artemis (Diana) was great at Ephesus. Her temple was reputed to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and according to Antipater of Sidon, ranked above all the others in brilliance. At the stimulus of the artisans the whole city rose up in an uproar and shouted “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians” whilst seizing Gaius and Aristarchus, two of Paul’s companions from Macedonia, and dragging them into the theatre. Paul wanted to go but was restrained by some of the officials. In the end it was the city clerk who with difficulty got the crowd to calm down telling them that they would be in danger of being charged with rioting and, anyway, if Paul and the others had broken any law they should take it up at court.
The civil courts of any country have a duty to preserve peace and order and Christian people when under attack should appeal to them for their authority comes from God as Paul writes later in Romans 13.
The words of the city clerk obviously settled things down because Paul was able to meet with the believers in Ephesus before leaving to give them encouragement. He travelled North and crossed over to Macedonia giving encouragement to the churches there before finally arriving at Greece in the South. Planning to sail to Syria he stayed for a further three months because of plots from the Jews and in any event decided not to sail but headed back North through Macedonia again.
He had quite a number of companions who are mentioned in v4 who obviously wanted to protect him from determined opposition. They crossed over at Troas but Paul sailed from Phillippi after the feast of unleavened bread and then met with them in due course staying seven days there. The feast was an important one following the Passover and we should remember in all their travels that the Jewish calendar would still be important to them.
