Paul in Ephesus
Acts 19While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus where he found some disciples. He said to them, “Did y’all receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
They said to him, “No, we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
He said, “Then what were y’all baptized into?”
“Into John’s baptism,” they replied.
Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people that the one who would come after him is who they should believe in—that is, in Jesus.”
When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. They were about twelve men in all.
Paul entered the synagogue and spoke out boldly there for three months, discussing and persuading them about the Empire of God.
But when some of them became hardened and refused to believe, slandering the Way in front of the crowd, he left them. He took the disciples and had daily discussions with them in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord.
God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched his body were brought to the sick, and their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out. But some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists attempted to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I command y’all by the Jesus that Paul preaches.” Seven sons of one Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this.
The evil spirit answered, “I know Jesus, and I recognize Paul, but who are y’all?” The man with the evil spirit jumped on them, overpowered them all, and beat them into submission, so that they ran out of that house naked and wounded. When this became known to all the Jews and Greeks who lived at Ephesus, fear fell over them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. And many who had believed came forward, publicly acknowledging and declaring their practices. Many of those who practiced sorcery collected their scrolls and burned them in the front of everyone. They computed the value of the scrolls and found the total to be fifty thousand pieces of silver. In this way the word of the Lord was spreading and growing strong.
The Riot in Ephesus
After this had taken place, Paul determined in the Spirit to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. He said, “After I have been there, I must see Rome as well.”
He sent two of his assistants, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, and he stayed in Asia for a while. About that time there was a great disturbance concerning the Way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought a great deal of business to the artisans, He assembled them together with the workers of similar trades, and said, “Men, y’all know that our wealth comes from this business. And y’all see and hear that this Paul has convinced and turned many people, not just here in Ephesus, but almost all throughout Asia. He says that gods that made with human hands are not gods. There is danger not only that our enterprise will come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be considered worthless, and the goddess herself who is worshipped throughout Asia and the whole world will be taken down from her glorious splendor.”
When they heard this they were filled with rage and began shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Then the whole city was filled with the uproar, and they rushed into the theater with one mind, dragging along Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia. But when Paul wanted to go to the crowd, the disciples wouldn’t let him. Even some of the officials of Asia who were his friends sent a message to him begging him not to venture into the theater.
The assembly was in chaos with some shouting one thing and some another. A lot of them didn’t even know why they had gathered. Some of the crowd thought this was about Alexander when the Jews pushed him forward. Motioning with his hand, Alexander wanted to make a defense before the public gathering. But when they recognized that he was a Jew, they all began shouting with voice for about two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
The town clerk quieted the crowd and then said, “Men of Ephesus, what human is there who doesn’t know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Artemis, and of the image which fell from heaven? Therefore, since these are undeniable facts, y’all should calm down and not do anything rash. For y’all have brought these men here, who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of our goddess. So then, if Demetrius and his fellow artisans have a complaint against someone, the courts are open and proconsuls are there. Let them press charges against one another. But if y’all are wanting anything else, it must be settled in a legal assembly. In fact, we are in danger of being accused concerning today’s riot, there being no cause. Concerning it, we wouldn’t be able to give an account of this commotion.” After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.