Source: http://reformedperspectives.org/magazine/article.asp/link/http:%5E%5Ereformedperspectives.org%5Earticles%5Erob_rayburn%5Erob_rayburn.Acts19.8_41.html/at/Studies%20in%20Acts
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 11:02:53+00:00

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v. 9 By now we are used to this as the usual pattern of events upon Paul's entrance into a new city. Paul's boldness and persuasiveness produced converts and that produced a strong reaction from the Jews.
The lecture hall or school building of Tyrannus. The Western text of the book of Acts, an early text that is fully one sixth longer than the text that is translated in our Bibles adds the detail, that many believe is an authentic piece of information, that Paul lectured from the 5th to the 10th hour, that is, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. That would make sense because those were the hours of the siesta, when the lecture hall would not be otherwise occupied. There would be more people asleep in Ephesus at 1:00 p.m. than at 1:00 a.m. Paul must have been a captivating teacher if he could hold an audience at that time of day!
v. 10 Apparently this was the time when the churches in Colossae and Laodicea were founded, perhaps all the seven churches of Revelation 2-3. Paul never visited Colossae, but his assistants may have been sent out to evangelize the cities of the province.
v. 11 Always keep in mind the truly extraordinary, the undeniably supernatural character of NT miracles.
v. 16 There were lots of magicians in those days, invoking all manner of gods, often many in one incantation to make sure the right one got mentioned. Pagans invoked the name of the Jews' God and here the Jews are using the name of Jesus. But they borrowed an unfamiliar weapon and shot themselves in the foot! The Lord shows himself more powerful than the "gods" as on Carmel, when Yahweh bested Baal at his own game: lightning.
v. 21 Paul's tactics were directed by his larger strategy. He was on his way to Jerusalem to bring "the collection" that Luke has not mentioned, but knows about (24:17), and then wanted to head west, actually to Spain, but with hopes of stopping in Rome along the way. He says that this was his plan at this time in Romans 15:24-25.
v. 22 This was not so matter-of-fact a decision. He was, as it happens, sending Timothy to Corinth to find out how the church there had received his hard letter (1 Cor. 4:17). News had reached him during his time in Ephesus of the problems in Corinth and he had addressed them in that letter and now wanted to know how his rebuke had been received. Paul would meet Timothy in Macedonia coming back with a good report from Corinth and write 2 Corinthians from there.
v. 23 Now the opposition arises from pagan not Jewish sources.
v. 26 The Christian preachers no doubt made that argument with all the force and with the same reasons as Isaiah had used.
v. 27 They were most concerned about the loss of revenue to themselves! But, everyone wouldn't be equally concerned about the jobs in the idol manufacturing business so it was politic to introduce the threat the new faith posed to some of the patriotic symbols of Ephesus and to her special place in the worship of Artemis. Christianity not a polite thing -- it disrupts, it divides, it destroys even as it heals and saves.
v. 29 The theater in Ephesus has been excavated and is estimated to have held 25,000 people.
v. 32 The kind of generalized resentment one often finds in mob actions; this would have been as much anti-Jewish as anti-Christian, for both were against idolatry and both condemned the worshipping of images.
v. 33 The Jews wanted to make clear that they had nothing to do with the Christians.
v. 41 The city clerk or mayor was not so much interested in protecting Christianity as he was in promoting law and order. The Romans were generally interested in getting rid of the democratic assemblies that remained in some of the old Greek towns and getting a reputation for disorder would hand them the excuse they needed.
But there are many other evidences and these are more useful to us for the purposes of self-examination (is the Spirit at work in me; among us, or have I quenched the Spirit, grieved the Spirit?) and for the purpose of evaluating other groups and movements which claim to be of God.
We have seen this, of course, all through Acts. 2:37: "They were cut to the heart and said to Peter...what must we do to be saved." 16: the Philippian jailer.
Jonathan Edwards described the later months of 1734 and all of 1735, when the rains of the Spirit fell on his church and town (Northampton) this way: "never so full of love, never so full of joy, and yet so full of distress as it was then." He says, "It was then a dreadful thing amongst us to lie out of Christ, in danger every day of dropping into hell; and what person's minds were intent upon, was to escape for their lives and to fly from wrath to come."
So, it is a serious problem, raising serious questions, when it becomes widespread in the church to have conversion without serious conviction of sin and without the sort of repudiation of sin that occurred here. Richard Baxter put it this way: "He that truly discerns that he hath killed Christ, and killed himself, will surely, in some measure, be pricked to the heart. If he cannot weep he can heartily groan; and his heart feels what his understanding sees." On the contrary, "Never was a thief more careful lest he should awaken the people, when he is robbing the house, than Satan is not to awaken a sinner."
But, if that is true, then something is lost, something very important, when gospel preaching does not aim for real conviction of sin and when conversions do not seem to produce it. Here is Charles Spurgeon bemoaning this development in his own day.
The Puritans were masters at questions like these. Here is William Gurnall dealing with the person who fears he may not be a Christian because his conviction of sin was not as horrifying as that of some other believer he knows.
"It is strange, to hear a patient complain of the physician (when he finds his prescriptions work effectually), merely because the operation did not affect him so violently as in some others. Soul, thou has the more reason to bless God, if the convictions of his spirit have wrought so kindly on thee, without those extremities of terror, which have cost others so dear." [Cited in BOT 232 (Jan. 1983) 32] But he is not denying that conviction will be present to some real and noticeable degree -- if not in so terrible a fear of wrath as in a loathing of one's sins and a great burden to be rid of them.
This is what the Savior said the Comforter would do, remember, throw a bright light on Jesus Christ, his power to save, his grace, his perfections, his love.
Edwards tells us in his narrative of the revival that during the time of Spirit's greater presence the people would "spend the time in talking of the excellency and dying love of Jesus Christ, the glory of the way of salvation...the sweetness of Christ's perfections, etc." That is what the Spirit produces, always produces, must produce. You remember that fateful conversation that John Bunyan overheard when "upon a day, the good providence of God did cast [him] to Bedford" and he found himself listening to some women sitting at a door in the sun, their morning's work done, speaking about spiritual things, and seeming, Bunyan said, to speak as if joy did make them speak. Well among those things they spoke of, that he realized he knew nothing about, what just this: "how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord Jesus." [Grace Abounding, paragr. 37] That is the subject the truly godly always return to, because when the Spirit is at work in hearts, that is what he produces -- a fascination with the love of God in Christ and a preoccupation with the Savior himself.
Read Bernard or Rutherford, men in whom the Spirit dwelt richly, and what do you hear: of the soul and Christ, of a relationship tender, intimate, powerful, all-consuming, infinitely interesting. Or listen to Bach's cantatas. The Soul and Christ in conversation: "When will you come to me? I am coming quickly!
When the Spirit is mightily at work, Christ becomes great and precious to our souls.
Men save themselves in order to rescue them from some danger. The Spirit saves men to do that, but also to conform them to Christ, to be in truth a people for his own possession, zealous for good works. All of that required immense and seemingly very expensive changes for these Ephesian converts -- but the Spirit of God compelled them to make the sacrifices immediately. (Missionaries to India used to make Hindu converts eat beef immediately, so that there would be no question about the commitment or the break that had been made with the past.) I wonder if we do not do nearly enough of this any more. It is a blot on our evangelical profession that it does not produce more immediate and dramatic change, but that is hardly a unique problem to our day and time.
William Burns [Revival Sermons, 161-162] gives an anecdote from Whitefield: "I remember to have read of the great Whitefield, that one day, as he was returning from preaching, he overtook a man, who was intoxicated, driving a cart. When the carter recognised Whitefield, he called out, 'O Mr Whitefield, is that you? I'm glad to see you. I'm one of your converts.' 'Yes,' said Whitefield, 'I see you are one of my converts, and not one of the Lord's."
Coming to faith in Christ is a matter of dying to sin and rising to new life, the life of the Spirit -- that reality should be noticeable at the beginning of this new life, but it should be observable all along the way as well! When the Spirit of holiness is at work, holiness is produced!
Fourth, the Spirit produces opposition. vv. 23ff.
Christ and his Spirit have an adversary and another in the sinful hearts of human beings, even in our sinful hearts. Whenever the Spirit is at work producing the evidences we have mentioned so far, this last will not be missing.
You have heard me speak of our Dr. Buswell, for many years the professor of theology at Covenant Theological Seminary, years before the president of Wheaton College, indeed, the president that put Wheaton on the map as a school with an academic reputation. Dr. Buswell's father was a minister also and at one point in his life became concerned about an area of northern Wisconsin that was largely unevangelized and unchurched. Quite on his own initiative and without denomination financial support he moved there in 1899. As people were converted and gathered to the new church men were diverted from the saloons. Men began giving their money to the church instead of to the saloon keepers. Mellon, where they lived, had 600 inhabitants and about 60 saloons to service the nearby villages, lumber mills, and farms.
I say, whenever the Spirit is at work, his adversaries will surface and do their best to obstruct. I would say that, looking back over this century, one of the most damning indictments of the evangelical church is precisely that it did not suffer nearly enough opposition, it was not living so as to goad the Enemy into open action against it. Faithfulness always produces opposition. Acts, indeed, is a story of opposition to the gospel as much as a story of its progress, and that progress was always a matter of fighting through opposition. And so in church history since. It is no coincidence, for example, that the martyrs were, as a rule, a much higher class of Christian -- that is why they provoked others to kill them, the Spirit was in them and working through them and so they became the target of the Devil's and the world's opposition to Christ.
We can hardly be either surprised or much worried when opposition surfaces when we are serving Christ -- it is the inevitable consequence of the Spirit's being at work. If they hated Christ, they will hate us. So our Savior himself said.
And such opposition, such persecution has its own rewards, both immediately and ultimately.
William Burns put it this way: "...believe the testimony of all the saints, that any suffering, when borne along with Christ, is sweeter than any joy enjoyed without him." And Rutherford said the same: "He was always sweet to my soul; but since I suffered for him, his breath hath a sweeter smell than before."
These, then, are the things that come to pass when the Spirit is at work -- in your heart, in the church, and in the world --: the fear of God and the conviction of sin; the lifting up of Jesus Christ himself; repentance and new obedience eagerly put on; and opposition rising. This is a way for us to judge how much of the Spirit we have at any moment, how much more we need, and a way to set ourselves to praying for the Spirit, taking care not to grieve him, and seeking to be filled with Him as the Scripture teaches us to do!

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