Adventures in Book Burning (Sermon)

Here’s video (below) and a rough manuscript (below below) of a sermon I preached for my church, Grace Evangelical Free Church of La Mirada, on Jan 26, 2025. We’re preaching through the book of Acts, and have reached chapter 19, the period of Paul’s resident teaching ministry in Ephesus.

The story we’re going to learn from today gives us guidance in how to keep our focus on the main thing. When life gets noisy, when there’s a lot going on, when we’re surrounded by distractions, and when people start shouting, that’s when we need to be called back to the main thing, the big picture, the real truth. Somebody has said that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. That’s good advice, even if we’re just talking about business management or productivity. Focus, concentrate, bring things to a point.

But if you’re a disciple of Jesus Christ, the main thing is to follow him. The main thing is to discern accurately where the risen Lord Jesus is at work, and get involved there and stay involved. And Acts 19 gives us some strategic insight into how to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, singlemindedly, together, even in the middle of a major city (ancient Ephesus, modern Los Angeles, whatever) with a lot of strange ideas floating around and big money and the occasional riot, and entrenched political interests running the show. Acts 19 shows that even in a complex context, we can be wholehearted, singleminded disciples focused on the main thing that God is doing.

Go ahead and open up to Acts 19. We’re going to read the whole story, don’t worry –there’s gonna be book burnings, exorcists, riots, the world turned upside down–  but first I want to show you how the book of Acts alerts us to the big picture. Look at this one little phrase in Acts 19:10, Paul reasoned daily in the hall of Tyrannus, and “this continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” That’s a broad generalization about just how effective Paul’s teaching ministry was. It’s a summary statement of the eventual effect of his strategic two-year investment in teaching in Ephesus. That whole sector of the map, which in the Roman empire they called Asia, but we would call Asia Minor, or Anatolia, or Turkey, had the word of the Lord proclaimed in it. This really is a bird’s eye view of the entire region affected by this ministry. Luke is flying over and looking out the airplane window at Asia (Minor) to survey it. That means that as we hunker down in some fascinating details of Operation Urban Ephesus, Luke wants us to know in advance that, big picture, this is the story of a successful regional campaign.

And then Luke reminds us of the big picture again, a second time: Look down at Acts 19 verse 20, where he tells us, “So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.” Acts 19 verse 20. Another great birds-eye view. And that verse might sound familiar to you, because it’s the third time in the whole book of Acts that Luke has said almost this same formula.

The first time was back in Acts 6 verse 7, where it says “and the word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.” You might remember that Acts 6 was right after the church appointed deacons, and kind of got their Act together in Jerusalem. And then in Acts 12, verse 24, just as the church was branching out from Jerusalem to Antioch, it says “the word of God increased and multiplied.” So it’s a Luke thing to do, to draw back and remind us now and then, so we don’t lose the plot or get lost in the details: The word of God is increasing and multiplying. Acts 6, Word of God increasing, Acts 12, word of God increasing, Acts 19, word of God increasing and prevailing mightily. That’s the main thing, the big picture, the real truth.

Why tell us that? Because it’s encouraging: If you know the project is making progress, you can put up with a lot. If you have a fruitless day and can’t swear you got anything significant accomplished or helped anybody very much, but you know the plan is going forward somehow somewhere… you can take a deep breath and remain calm. The word of God is advancing.

Okay, Acts 19, verse 8, picking up from where Jason finished up last Sunday.

8 And [Paul] entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. 9 But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus.

This is so interesting: Ephesus has had some great Christian teaching happening: Priscilla and Aquila moving in there and getting it done; Apollos being “mighty in the scriptures” and getting sharper by the minute. But then Paul himself arrives, and Paul isn’t just anybody. So you might expect that when Paul enters the Early Christian Transfer Portal and signs with Team Ephesus, the church in that city is going to do nothing but win from now on. But that’s not how it goes. He goes to the synagogue for a dozen sabbaths and has mixed results. Some believe, but “some become stubborn and continue in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation.” Settled opposition.

So Paul doesn’t just keep banging his head against the synagogue, but he also doesn’t just give up. He relocates. He moves to what is probably more neutral space, a kind of educational establishment called the hall or Tyrannus. And guess why he had the freedom to be flexible? Because he kept steadily in mind the main thing, the big picture, the real truth. He is wonderfully confident that the word of God will grow, but… maybe not right here. Maybe over where there’s room to do some good teaching, where I can stay at it for a couple of years without belligerent interruption.

And then the bit we’ve already read, verse 10:

10 This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

And now here are the details:

¹¹And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, ¹² so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.

Amazing stuff here. “Extraordinary” means two things: one, it means WOW. Even stuff he touched! But the second thing “extraordinary” means is extra-ordinary, as in not usual. And I think that means, neither Paul nor we should expect supernatural healings every Tuesday. Even when miraculous healings happen, and they do, we don’t set up our church schedule around them and build a ministry around them and get a conveyor belt set up to produce as many healing handkerchiefs as possible per capita. No; whenever a church majors on the minors, they start getting off track; it is sadly predictable. they get weird, they start overpromising, then they start blaming sick people for staying sick. God does do surprising miracles of healing and deliverance, but these are signs. And a sign points away from itself to… you know what I’m going to say. The main thing, the big picture, the real truth.

If you don’t recognize these “extraordinary miracles” as signs, you start treating them like magic, and magic means any kind of sorcery or witchcraft by which you try to use supernatural things to manipulate divine power. You start to think you can count on it, and conjure with it. And that’s exactly what happens next, as word starts to get around about the power of Paul’s ministry:

 ¹³ Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” ¹⁴ Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this.

Who are these guys? Seven sons of Sceva, they’ve got some kind of travelling exorcist practice, where they go around casting out demons. I have a lot of questions about all of that, and we don’t know anything about their history. But we can see their method of operation right here.

They hear a new name, they recognize it has power, and they just scoop it up and incorporate it into their incantations. “I, the seventh son of Sceva, do here by adjure thee using this powerful name I just found, JE-Zus, spoken of by PA-Ool, I do adjure thee. Thou art adjured!” Hocus pocus, lose your focus!

We don’t know these guys in particular, but we do know that this kind mix-and-match magic they tried was exactly the kind of stuff going on in Ephesus back then. We’ve got coins and amulets and magical papers and all kinds of stuff from this region, guaranteed to put a hex on your enemy, or take your enemy’s hex off of you, or make your crush fall in love with you, or bring good luck, or ward off demons, or whatever. And one of the striking things about all this magical paraphernalia is its syncretism: Syncretism means combining all sorts of elements from different religions and philosophies. So you’ll find artifacts that have Jewish religious names and Pagan names side by side. It’s kind of a pot luck approach to magic: throw every powerful name in the cauldron and see what bubbles up!

Well, guess what? The name of the Lord Jesus is powerful, but it can’t be manipulated like a magical incantation. So here’s the result:

[They] undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.”  ¹⁵ But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” ¹⁶ And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

Here’s a picture of it (rijksmuseum).

My dad had a funny saying he’d use when people pestered him. He’d say this comical threat, “If you don’t stop, there’s gonna be hair teeth and eyeballs all over the floor, and they won’t be mine.” Another one he’d say is “Keep it up and you’ll be running down the road yelling, ‘Ma, he done it!” I don’t know where those sayings came from; maybe here: because this is a hair-teeth-and-eyeballs- running-down-the-road situation. Evil spirits, not impressed. Itinerant exorcists, unemployed.

Now this is a great story, and I do think it’s a genuinely funny story. But it’s also heavy. And arresting. And sobering. And as people told the story, look what happened, verse 17.

¹⁷ And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. ¹⁸ Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. ¹⁹ 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. ²⁰ So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

There it is. The name of the Lord Jesus was extolled or magnified (verse 17); the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily (20). This is the main thing; this is the big picture; this is the real truth.

The key to this whole section, and the key to the gospel ministry in Ephesus is right here, in the response these believers had to the power of Christ as taught by Paul. (Here’s a picture of it by a 19^th century printmaker, Gustave Dore.)

First of all, it says “many of those who were now believers” came and confessed. Now the way Luke says it, it might mean that these people had just now become believers after hearing the story of the sons of Sceva, and these brand new converts immediately confessed and brought out their magic books. Maybe so. But from the way Luke puts it, I think it’s a bit more likely that something else is going on here. I think “many of those who were now believers” means they’re relatively recent Christians from the whole period of ministry in Ephesus that we’ve been reading about. I think they’ve been believers now for months, maybe a year or more. I picture them as having begun the life of discipleship, beginning to live as Christians, making progress in their faith… and then something shocking happens in town, and they see that the name of Jesus is much higher and even more exalted than they had understood so far. The name is magnified, extolled; the word of the Lord prevails mightily. And here’s what they perceive:

Just like the wandering exorcists didn’t know what they were getting into, I have been dabbling and trifling with Jesus. Just as the sons of Sceva tried to treat the name of Jesus as something to add to their list of things to conjure with, I have tried to bring Jesus into my life and assign him a place alongside the other forces and powers in my life. Just as they tried to combine him with business as usual, and sloppy superstition, and a cheap formula for success and impressiveness, so I have been thinking of simply adding Jesus to my rich and complex lifestyle, which is pretty much like everybody else’s in Ephesus, but with some minor modifications. There was a significant sanctification lag between their coming to Christ and their coming to terms with what it means to belong to him.

But then, something about this weird story of failed exorcisms gets ahold of these believers, and they see it all in a flash: The Lordship of Jesus Christ is deeply incompatible with some of the junk I take for granted as a citizen of Ephesus. They cannot be combined; they do not go together. In choosing to follow Jesus, I chose to reject those things that clash with him, and it took me some time to notice, but now that I see it…. Bring me the magic books. They “brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all.”

In a puff of smoke, up went all the complicated, superstitious, compromised, syncretistic, magic-mongering nonsense of life in Ephesus. You might say the spell was broken, but it goes even deeper than that: Even the idea that they needed spells to be broken was broken. They didn’t trade up from one little lord to another relatively higher lord; they forsook all less lords and bowed the knee to the name above all names. “Fear fell upon them all, and the name of Jesus was extolled.” From now on they were in Ephesus, but not of it. And all it took was an old-fashioned book burning.

Now book burning has a bad name these days, and I’ll tell you why. In western culture, and especially in America, we’ve come to associate book-burning with suppressing information, with censorship, and with intolerance of ideas. But that’s not the kind of thing we’re seeing here in Acts 19. So if I were to draw up some rules and give some pastoral guidance about How Not to Burn a Book and Why Not to Have a Bookburning, I would include some conscientious tips that I bet we all agree with as common sense among civilized citizens. First of all, burn your own books, not somebody else’s. And second, please practice extreme fire safety; During fire season, consider shredding instead of burning. Third, don’t compost the ashes, because they’ll throw off the Ph balance of your soil.

In short, proper book burning doesn’t suppress ideas, but confesses the truth. The bookburning in Ephesians 19 is a dramatic confession of the truth that Jesus is Lord, and some things acceptable to the broader culture are radically incompatible with that. Hauling out and burning up their expensive books was a declaration of independence from the magical culture of Ephesus. It dethroned magic; debunked it; delegitimized it; demystified it.

Now I hope you are already making connections in your mind about how to apply this lesson to your own life. I pray that if there is something you’re clinging to that is incompatible with discipleship, it has flashed across your mind’s eye while I’ve been talking about Ephesus. I hope it is creeping in at the corner of your consciousness and starting to whisper, “Is it me, preciousss?” I hope you’re almost distracted from what I’m saying by the intrusion of the thing you suspect you might need to confess and divulge.

Let me say this: It’s probably not literally magic books for most of us. But I don’t know that. My own mom went through a phase of life where she cultivated an interested in occult paraphernalia. Ouija boards, tarot cards, sun signs and astrology; it was all mixed in with herbs and spices and incense, some of which was harmless but all of which was drawing her steadily into a corrupt fascination with sinister stuff. She knew better. And one night she had a dream that she was at a weird banquet in a torchlit cavern. As she looked around her, the other people in the party had pointy ears and bat wings and bad manners. Then a deep voice thundered “GET OUT OF THERE.” The ground shook as she ran out of the cave, and when she reached the outside world, the cave collapsed behind her. She woke up, and the next day she destroyed all the witchy junk she’d been accumulating. Now please don’t write in your sermon notes, “Obey Fred’s Mom’s Dream.” But if you’re even a few steps into that cave, get out of there. You don’t need a dream to show you that your magic books are incompatible with following Christ; it’s literally here in the text. If you’re asking yourself, “what my magic book,” and the answer is “a magic book,” you know what to do.

The rest of us need to think more symbolically about our personal magic books; stuff in our lives as believers that our surrounding culture says is fine but that does not in fact align with following Christ and magnifying his name. I can’t catalog or forecast them all from the front of the room; I put it on your individual conscience for self-examination in the presence of God. In this corner is the lordship and holiness of Christ, and standing over against him is pornography, racism, alcohol abuse, gossiping, the workaholic grindset, the idea that we deserve nonstop entertainment, divisiveness, obsession with current events, and so on and on. It may be a cheesy way to put the application point, but what is your magic book?

Here is the wisdom of the believers’ response in Acts 19: they confessed and divulged these things. To confess is to speak out your agreement with God. If he says something is sinful and you disagree, you have a disagreement and you’re not saying the same thing about sin. To confess is to say the same thing about sin as God says. To divulge is to make it known publicly. Where are you in danger of disagreeing with God about sin, or even about what is forming an obstacle between you?

[[[Another thing I would say about Acts 19 is that not everybody participated. So while all of us need to reflect on whether our lives are consistent with saying we follow Jesus, and eliminate anything that competes with Christ for our allegiance, the story of Acts 19 is a communal event in that the whole church was more pure and more powerful when that distinct subset of people who needed to make a dramatic change did so. We’re all in this together, but we’re not each in it the same way. What I’m saying is, if a brother in Christ is struggling mightily to give up a crippling addiction, your role might be to help him in any way possible rather than to sympathize with him by introspecting about your own less urgent addictions. We’re all sinners but give a brother a hand.]]]

Another thing about the response of these believers in Acts 19 is that they did something public, but it wasn’t a matter of empty performative show; it wasn’t virtue signaling to show off how good they were at repenting; it wasn’t a carefully curated slide show of their spirituality. I don’t know if it’s easier or harder for us in 2025 to follow their example. I do know that spiritual pride and egotism can sneak in and ruin anything. But I also know that every time Christians see a brother or sister in Christ step away from some idolatry and enter into a fuller, freer discipleship, it is a radical encouragement for us all. How can we encourage each other to draw closer to Jesus and honor his name more fully? How can we safely see and hear each other making significant changes toward the main thing?

I want to think even more broadly about this bookburning at the heart of this chapter, and I want to do so by cheating in a little bit of the book of Ephesians. This story of these believers in the city of Ephesus publicly burning their magic books is a dramatic enactment of what Paul would write later in the letter to the Ephesians. He didn’t write in Ephesians to burn their magic books, but he did tell them in 4:17,

17…you must no longer walk as the [other] Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!—

Do you hear the contrast? Writing to Gentiles, he says stop acting like Gentiles, that is, following the cultural norms of a perverse culture. That pathway is futility, darkened understanding, alienation from God’s life, resulting in hardheartedness and spiritual ignorance. The believers of Ephesus are enrolled in a different program, a kind of life-school of Christ.

And then, for the next major section of Ephesians, Paul starts playing a game of contrasts: Don’t do that; instead do this. Don’t do X; do Y.

4:25: put away falsehood, speak the truth.

28: Let the thief no longer steal, but rather [what’s the opposite?] let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. [It doesn’t even say ‘give stuff back,’ instead it sketches out a theology of work in which you earn money so you can give to the poor. Now that’s the opposite of stealing! It’s bigger; the good is bigger than the bad.]

29: Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but [what’s the opposite?] only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Can you hear the contrast? Paul draws it out over and over, because it’s startk:  5:7-8, Do not become partakers with them, for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light…

5:15 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but [what’t the opposite of drunk? Sober? Not quite… Listen:] be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…

WOW: that is an entire lifestyle of spiritual experience, community-strengthening, gratefulness, and blessing God always for everything. That’s the opposite of drunk.

Now his is the dos and donts part of the letter, but not because following Christ is just a matter of following dos and donts. No, the “stop X, start Y” commands make sense because they’re in the shadow of the main thing, the big picture, the real truth, and that is the glorification of Christ. Jesus is Lord, and he is transforming a community into his likeness. God is putting together a family and calling men and women, boys and girls of every kind to be part of it, and to take on the family likeness.

When the Ephesians burned their magic books, they eliminated something from their life. They extirpated it; they rooted it out. And what positive thing did they get in return for their lost books of Ephesian spells? They got the book of Ephesians. It’s quite a trade! Especially when you consider that their spell books held out a fake and weak promise of protection from evil spirits, but the book of Ephesians brought them the actual message of the Lord who is exalted above every rule, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named in this age or in the age to come, who actually strengthens us in the power of his might to take our stand in the evil day and remain standing. And Ephesians protects us not by magic, but by being the word of the actual Lord, which grows and prevails mightily.

There’s still a big chunk of Acts 19 left, and it too is the word of God. Every word of it. And we’re about to read it. But I want to alert you in advance that it tells a story of a riot in Ephesus, and reports a bunch of details, including two medium-sized speeches and a couple of attempted speeches, and a huge shouting mob with their own favorite protest slogan… and none of it amounts to much.

²¹ Now after these events Paul resolved in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.” ²² And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.

²³ About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. ²⁴ For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, [NOTICE THAT, Silver] who made silver shrines of Artemis [SILVER], brought no little business to the craftsmen. ²⁵ These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said,

 “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. ²⁶ 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 gods made with hands are not gods. 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, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”

²⁸ When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” ²⁹ So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul’s companions in travel. ³⁰ But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples would not let him. ³¹ And even some of the Asiarchs, who were friends of his, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater. ³² Now some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together. [No comment: Luke said it all right there. ]

³³ 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. ³⁴ But when they recognized that he was a Jew, for about two hours they all cried out with one voice, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

³⁵ And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, “Men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky? ³⁶ Seeing then that these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash. ³⁷ For you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess. ³⁸ If therefore Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. ³⁹ But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in the regular assembly. ⁴⁰ For we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.” 

⁴¹ And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly.

The end. All that hubbub and nothing accomplished; in the first verse of chapter 20 our man Paul is calmly planning his next step as if nothing had happened. The man is unflappable. I don’t want to underestimate the seriousness of this scary episode of civic unrest; all riots are always dangerous, and very bad things could have happened at any moment with an angry and confused mob. But unflappable Paul and the apparently unperturbable church that he had invested two years in teaching just sailed right through. Why?

I think the secret is in the silver.

When the believers in Ephesus burned those magic books, it cost them some resources. Luke tells us in 19:19 that “they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.” It’s very hard to work out what amount of money that would be in modern terms, but we don’t have to know that number to know that it’s a lot of silver, it’s fifty thousand silverlings. Now stay with me: Luke could have told us how much it was in gold, or maybe even copper. But he said silver.

Along comes Demetrius the silversmith, who worships another god and does so precisely in silver: silver statues that make a lot of silver money and glorify the goddess of the silvery moon. It’s a silver riot at its heart.

But here’s the thing: the church of Ephesus had already made up its mind about silver. They had literally counted the cost back in verse 19, to the tune of 50,000 silverlings. They were over it. Silver, shmilver. I mean they still used coins and money and had jobs and had economic needs and participated in the business life of Ephesus and all that. But the symbolic power of silver is important. When the Bible calls someone a lover of money, the Greek word is literally “silverlover,” one word. In 2 Tim 3:2 Paul calls some people selflovers and silverlovers; we translate that lovers of self and lovers of money, because silver symbolizes money. The silversmith riot of Ephesus was something the believers could observe with appropriate concern but without coming completely unglued, because they had settled their accounts with silver; they had made their decision about the true God; they had learned in the new community of the church to follow Jesus wholeheartedly and singlemindedly together; they had done the hard work of rooting out the entangling love of money that might have tripped some of them up; they had opened their eyes to the Lordship of Christ and the greatness of his name and the progress of the word of God in their community. They had already done all of this so beautifully and radically and consistently that they were prepared for the evil day. Silver me no Artemises; I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.

When the headlines came out and reporters spread the news about current events in Ephesus in that wild week in the year 54, guess what they probably reported? They must have reported on the riot of course; the headline said “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.”  They covered the rumbling ethnic conflict between Jew and Gentile; the involvement of Asiarchs and how the controversy might affect the next election; they had some sound bites from that nice reasonable town clerk; they had a big ugly picture of Demetrius looking ragey. The journalists conscientiously interviewed rioters from both sides of the mob: “Some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together.” That’s the big newsworthy story of the day. And it would be replaced by the next big story of the next day, and so on.

But you know that they missed the real story. The most important thing that happened in Ephesus that whole year is that God was putting together a family and calling men and women, boys and girls of every kind to be a part of it. The big story is that the word of God grew and prevailed; it grew by drawing together more disciples who understood God’s word better and responded to it more consistently; it prevailed by outshining silvery Artemis of the Ephesians, and overpowering a thousand demons and semi-gods whose names went up in smoke forever because a community of believers took the word to heart and began believing better. That’s what happened in Ephesus: the main thing, the big picture, the real truth.

Brothers and sisters, burn your bad books and take up the good one. Confess and divulge your sins. Make no provision for the flesh. That’s not the way you learned Christ. Keep yourselves from idols.  Be free in the forgiveness of the cross and the power of the resurrection. Enter into the joy of the Lord, and focus on the main thing.