Dennis Tuuri

This is the way what we just sang about and pray for coming of peace all over the earth. This is the way it comes. This is the way it came to Ephesus and this is the pattern by which it comes to all places. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coast came to Ephesus and finding certain disciples, he said unto them, “Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?”

And they said unto him, “We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” And he said unto them, “Unto what then were ye baptized?” And they said, “Unto John’s baptism.” Then said Paul, “John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is on Christ Jesus.” And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they spake with tongues and prophesied. And all the men were about twelve. And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when divers were hardened and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of Tyrannus.

And this continued by the space of two years, so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. And God brought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them. Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, “We adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preacheth.” And there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so.

The evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?” And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them and overcame them and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus. And fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds.

Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men. And they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed. After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.” So he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Timothy and Erastus, but he himself stayed in Asia for a season.

In the same time there arose no small stir about the way. For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen, whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, “Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover, ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods which are made with hands.

“So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.” And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath and cried out saying, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” And the whole city was filled with confusion. And having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul’s companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theater.

And when Paul would have entered in unto the people, the disciples suffered him not. And certain of the chief of Asia, which were his friends, said unto him, desiring him, that he should not adventure himself into the theater. Some therefore cried one thing, and some another, for the assembly was confused, and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together. And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward.

And Alexander beckoned with his hand, and would have made his defence unto the people. But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” And when the town clerk had appeased the people, he said, “Men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?

“Seeing then that these things cannot be spoken against, ye ought to be quiet, and to do nothing rashly. For ye have brought hither these men which are neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess. Wherefore, if Demetrius and the craftsmen which are with him have a matter against any man, the law is open, and there are deputies. Let them implead one another. But if ye inquire anything concerning other matters, it shall be determined in a lawful assembly.

“For we are in danger to be called into question for this day’s uproar, there being no cause whereby we may give an account of this concourse.” And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly. And after the uproar was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and departed for to go into Macedonia.

We thank God for his word, and pray that he would illumine our understanding. Let us pray.

By night, our spirit watcheth early unto thee, O God, for thy precepts are light. Teach us, O God, thy righteousness, thy commandments, and thine ordinances. Enlighten the eyes of our understandings, lest at any time we sleep unto death in sins. Dispel all gloom from our hearts. Bestow on us the Son of Righteousness. Not as all do thou keep our life and the seal of thy holy spirit. Direct our steps into the way of peace.

Grant us to behold the dawn and the day in exultation that to thee we may send up our morning prayers. For thine is the might and thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Please be seated and rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ our Savior.

Is Christmas a time of joy and good will to all people? A virgin was with child. God ordained her to conceive and be fruitful. Ah, behold a miracle. She gave birth to a son in a cave. The name of the cave was the cave of Bethlehem. His foster father gave him the name Jesus the Christ, Alpha and Omega. Festive season of prayer. That is the translation of a rock carving found in West Virginia. These are Celtic runes that were translated by Barry Fell, one of the leading, probably the leading authority in translation of ancient languages.

These were carved on that rock wall in West Virginia, apparently from the dating of the runes, the Celtic symbols around 600 AD. So forget what your history lessons have taught you about the Vikings discovering America. There were Irish missionaries here in the seventh century, apparently. Indeed, Barry Fell has also translated summary forms of the Ten Commandments found in the southwestern area of the United States. Some believe that they were probably left there by Solomon’s men as they searched for gold the world over.

The evolutionary model we’ve been taught in our schools is sin and heresy. Now, this is a season of great joy and festivity. And I’ve contemplated how to approach today’s sermon these past few weeks knowing it was coming up of course and how should I move away from the book of Acts for this Lord’s day? Stay in it? Where would the book of Acts take us in the providence of God? It is a season of great joy and God in a way began preparing my heart I think for this message a couple of weeks ago as we celebrated on December 6th as our families want to do St. Nicholas Day remembering the historical origins again of the mythology of Santa Claus.

I heard on the radio this week by the way that it’s thumbs down in terms of this ongoing battle over the last few years of cities that put up creches or nativity scenes etc. And is that legal or constitutional? Some town had a creche, a nativity scene up one year but then the next year in order to do that they had the following year they had to put up a banner that said “Jesus Christ is a myth.”

So that’s the kind of world we live in today where nativity scenes are certainly acceptable as long as the pluralism of the culture and the overarching theme that all men are saved essentially and that all these things are nice myths to believe in but not really historically accurate. That’s the context in which we find ourselves in America in 1994. Well, in any event, the myth of Santa Claus has its historical origins in St. Nicholas. We know he was a historic personage because he was on the attendance roles of the council of Nicaea held in 325, a very important council in consideration of Christmas Day, a day which we historically in the church for many years have celebrated the birth of Jesus and I see as important as we’ll talk about a little bit later because it tells us that this is not simply a man. The Lord Jesus Christ rather he is both God and man, he is of the same essence of the Father and the holy Spirit as well, eternally begotten the Son.

The song we sang toward the opening of the service, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” is a beautiful song that many of us have only come across the last few years, written in the very early centuries of church and it was, as one writer said, a fighting hymn against Arianism.

Arius was the one whose heretical teachings were condemned at the council held at Nicaea in 325 at which St. Nicholas was an attendee and in fact we’ll talk a little bit later about his apparently pivotal role in the assembly. In any event, as we celebrated St. Nicholas Day, we checked out a book from the library and read about for the first time to my knowledge of St. Nicholas’s involvement at Nicaea and I also read there in the chapter called “The Fighting Saint” on St. Nicholas that he also was a fighting saint not simply against the heresies of Arianism but also against the Diana worship that was then prevalent at Myra. He lived in Myra which is not really all that far in the same basic geographic region as Ephesus.

He was born toward the end of the third century. Nicaea was held at 325 AD and in the context of all that he was active in combating not the heresies but the pure paganism of Diana worship, Artemis worship—the same word; one is Greek, one is Latin, Diana worship—that’s what we read about today at Ephesus. And so as I began to prepare for this sermon going through chapter 19, I thought of these two events in Nicholas’s life: one where he battles Arianism and the second where he battles Artemis worship or Diana worship. And both those things really are relevant to today’s text.

We read in today’s text the seven sons of Sceva, vagabond Jewish exorcists, attempting to manipulate and use the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for their own purposes, to appropriate as it were Christian names, the name of Jesus Christ and exercise power by the simple incantation of Jesus’s name. And of course the end result of that is God’s judgment upon them. God beats them up. He uses demons to do it. God doesn’t like that.

God is not limited. The demons that are in, that rather inhabited by the demon, overpowers these seven sons of Sceva and they run away from the scene naked and wounded the scriptures tell us. And so St. Nicholas as well at Nicaea, after Arius has presented his interpretation of the Christian faith, his reinterpretation of the apostles creed, his attempt to appropriate for his own particular purposes Christian terminology, the name of Jesus but completely moving the meanings—after he does this, he gets up and asserts his use of Jesus for his purposes, not Godly purposes.

St. Nicholas, so the legend goes, rose up. He was one of the bishops seated around the Emperor Constantine and walked over and slapped Arius in the face. St. Nicholas delivered his first lump of coal, his first sign of judgment to those who would arise against Christ in his kingdom. We don’t know that’s true, but that’s really the legend.

He apparently did something at the council to strongly rebut or refute the teachings of Arius. He was, according to the legend, then locked up and delivered miraculously by Jesus and Mary. We don’t know how that all happened, but we do know that he was active in his opposition to Arius who attempted, as the seven sons of Sceva did, to appropriate Christian terminology for the purposes of humanism, for their own purposes, their own attempt to use Jesus Christ for their purposes.

Now, that’s very similar to our culture, isn’t it? That’s very similar to the town that sets up nativity scene one year, next year sets up a banner saying Jesus Christ is a myth. It’s very typical to any city now that is allowed to have a nativity scene, a creche, as long as it is—there’s a Supreme Court ruling—as long as it is displayed in the context of secular reminders of Christmas as well. As long as Jesus is seated as one of the deities of our culture, can be appropriated for use of cultural Americanism and patriotism and everybody can have a good time at Christmas time—as long as that’s the message then nativity scenes and Christmas is an okay thing according to Supreme Court of the United States.

Well, Nicholas and God’s use of the demons to bring punishment upon the seven sons of Sceva have a message to us today from this text in Acts chapter 19. And secondly, as I said, St. Nicholas also fought the heresies of Diana worship. In the same way that the preaching of the gospel was effectual to converting men away from paganism and occultic practices as the text records—for which they burned their books worth thousands of dollars in silver, much wealth.

And so also the gospel must be preached today against attempts to take the gospel into a pure form of paganism the way the Diana worshippers would seek to do. As Nicholas, two hundred years or more after this historical account, is still combating raw paganism in the form of Diana worship. So we see in the context of our culture today the reemergence of goddess worship. A special on PBS a year, a week ago, two or three long special, lots of donations came in, was all on goddess worship. The reemergence of goddess worship and the beauty of women who call themselves witches and pagans explicitly and how terrible the Christians were to persecute these women.

So we have today the emergence of goddess worship, Diana worship in our culture. And so the text reminds us of these things. It reminds us of other truths of Christmas as well. I was contemplating how to deal with this text. Should I break it up into little chunks? We may return to this text for the next week or two. There’s a lot of material here. But in a way too, it’s important to catch the flow of chapter 19 and to see it in the context of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ to Ephesus and to Asia.

And what will signify the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ in power in the preaching of the gospel in America today as well? And what will it look like? Well, these messages from Acts 19 give us a picture of the Christmas message and of the true meaning of Christmas that we must take into our lives and culture as well.

One way to think of Ephesus—this is the third missionary journey. Remember the first and second missionary journeys, they begin with salvation of individuals. They begin with spiritual warfare. Remember the conversion of Lydia, the casting out of the fortune-telling demon and the woman in the second journey, first missionary journey, Sergius Paulus is being converted and Elymas Bar-Jesus being spiritual warfare being done against him. And then the first and second missionary journeys go on to the preaching to the Jews. A lot convert from the Jewish population, but then they’re hardened against them and there’s persecution.

In the middle two cities of the sec—first and second missionary journey. And you remember then each missionary journey moved toward the end with pure paganism. Remember the men that wanted to worship Paul and Barnabas as gods come down from heaven. And you remember the Athenians who have pure idolatrous pagan worship not mixed with the Jewish faith at all. Well, Ephesus is a picture of all those things lumped together.

Ephesus begins with the story of Apollos that we began talking about last week and then talks about these twelve disciples and I think it’s a picture of conversion. They say we didn’t know about any Holy Spirit. Well, John the Baptist said that Jesus would indeed baptize people with the Holy Spirit. John told his disciples you’d see the spirit descending upon Jesus. So we don’t know how these men had heard some sort of truncated gospel of John, but they certainly were not believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so when Jesus is preached to them by Paul, that John the Baptist pictured a gospel of repentance and an acceptance and a belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. That message comes to them in power. They’re then baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus and God authenticates their conversion with the miraculous gift of tongues of some form. So these first few incidences—Apollos and then the twelve disciples, so to speak, as the text calls them, and then the Jews are hardened against Paul after having three months worth of preaching there.

The Jews are hardened against him and he leaves the synagogue and goes to the school of Tyrannus. Those first three incidences really combine this idea of the Jewish nation being proselyted by Paul. He comes with the message of Christmas, the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. John the Baptist predicted the coming of Christ and Jesus came to effect a particular work for his people, a work of repentance in their hearts and a work of saving knowledge to them.

And so these first three instances picture the conversion of those elements of the Jewish nation that are elect in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then after he has taken the best of the Alexandrian school and Apollos, the fullness of the elect community of Jesus Christ in Israel with the twelve disciples, these twelve men who didn’t know Jesus yet. Then the rest of the Jews are hardened and he turns from them and goes into the school of Tyrannus where he preaches in the heat of the day apparently.

So the story has it and where there are great numbers that come to hear him. The text tells us that all of Asia hears the preaching of the gospel through Paul. And so those first three instances remind us of all those things. Then we have a picture as the text goes on of miraculous works on the part of Paul. Handkerchiefs, sweatbands are used to heal people. This should remind us of Peter. Remember in the early chapters of the book of Acts, people brought sick people out, demon possessed, that the shadow of Peter might fall upon them and they might be healed or be released from their demon possession.

And so Paul is pictured again as another Peter. Peter and Paul, the primary elements of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ as the gospel goes out first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. But in contrasting with the miraculous works of Paul—actually the works of God, it says explicitly that God does these things through the hands of Paul and not just through Paul’s hands, through the hands of unnamed people who take those sweatbands out to other people.

And somehow God decides in his providence to heal people through the taking of the sweatbands and handkerchiefs of Paul. Unnamed people like Priscilla and Aquila, submissive to the Lord Jesus Christ, desiring to appropriate his name not for their own personal purposes but for the purpose of the expansion of the kingdom of Christ. God gives attesting miracles. And then there are those like Arius later on would do, who attempt to use Christ’s name—the seven sons of Sceva—to appropriate for their own particular use and God judges them.

So we have a contrast between the unnamed individuals who take the sweatbands out and the power of God to bring people to salvation, bring people to health, drive out demons from people through the application of God’s secondary means and then those who seek to appropriate the Christian faith for their own particular purposes. I mentioned Arius. It’s important to mention Arius at Christmas time sometimes because Arius taught that Jesus Christ was not eternally begotten.

Arius taught that Jesus was a created being. And Arius taught that even Jesus couldn’t fully know God the Father. God was unknowable. Arius said Arius taught that Jesus Christ was not of the same essence of the Father. People have talked about how Nicaea, the two words that were being combined for use in the Nicene Creed, one was “of like essence,” one was “of the same essence.” And what’s the big deal? The deal is very important.

And when we talk about the birth of Jesus, it’s very important that we teach our children that is not the beginning of Jesus. Jesus is not a created being. Jesus is eternally begotten of the Father. Begotten, not created. As several of our songs that we’ve sung today have asserted the begotteness of Christ, that he wasn’t a created being. Why is that important? Because Arius taught that Jesus was created. Arius taught that Jesus essentially was like any of the rest of us and all of us could have attained to be Jesus.

We could attain to be of the like essence of the Father, not the same essence. Arius taught a Christianized form of humanism. And because Arius taught humanism, it quickly became statism. And it’s no coincidence that it was the civil state rulers who supported Arius in his position and who would later—after the Nicene council had called him a heretic—who would then arrange for his return to authority to the Church of Alexandria because the civil state imagines itself, the ungodly civil state, as the true sovereign of all history, as the determiner of what happens.

And if Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man, he is the king of kings. But if we can make Jesus take that same terminology of who Jesus is, the Son, and imbue it with humanistic meaning that he is not God of the same essence of God, he is a created being just like you or me. Then we cloud all that issue up there about who God is and who Jesus is and we all can attain to be new Jesuses and how do people attain to be sovereigns? They combine together into the civil state.

And so Arianism posited a brand of Christian humanism that was combined then and became part of a form of Christian statism. And of course it’s not really Christian at all because they denied the eternal begotteness of the Lord Jesus Christ. They denied the fact that he was of the same essence as the Father. We assert that Christmas is not the remembrance of the beginning of Jesus. Rather, it’s his incarnation. God taking on flesh to go to the cross and die for the sins of the elect community of Jesus Christ to live a life in perfect obedience to the law and impute that righteousness—not make us better people because of it. That happens as a result, but that’s not the purpose. The purpose is to buy us covenantal peace with the God, with God the Father, through paying the price for our sins and for his goodness being imputed to our account.

See, all of that Arius denied. Arius wanted to see us become better and better and better and more perfect. And we do that through combining together with other men and women and forming civil states that then can raise themselves up against God. Arius attempted to use the Christian faith for his own particular purposes, which were soon become the purposes of the political state. Just as the seven sons of Sceva attempted to use the name of Jesus for their purposes.

And just as our culture today sings Christmas songs across America. Today, radio stations are filled with Christian songs, but they’re not filled with Christian hearts. They’re not. The listeners, for the most part, are not those who assert the eternal divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the need to submit to him in all things. Rather, they are the listeners of those stations. Now, all too many Christmas songs today are people who want to use Christmas to buy themselves a sense of peace and goodwill and joy when there is no peace, goodwill and joy upon them when they rest in the condemnation of God, not the peace of God.

Those who deny the Lord Jesus Christ, his eternal divinity, who deny the fact that they are sinners and can never be delivered except they come to repentance for their sins and accept the righteousness of Christ alone—except as Paul told those twelve disciples unto John’s baptism, that they must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in him explicitly and completely for their salvation, their acceptance with God the Father.

If people reject that, then their assertion of Christmas good will rings hollow. And in fact, the judgment of God rests upon them as it did upon Arius and it did upon the seven sons of Sceva.

Arius’s end is important to remember. He was restored to a position of preeminence at the church of Alexandria and he was on the road to Alexandria when the primate Alexander, who was then the bishop of the church there, prayed God, “Please stop this heretic from coming to this church,” prayed that God might judge Arius and indeed on the way there Arius had gastric pain, stopped along the side of the road and fell over dead headlong into a latrine, a tent, a trench filled with excrement. And so the church recognized what had happened. God had given the end of Arius just as he had shown the end of the seven sons of Sceva going naked and wounded into the night.

So Arius goes dead into the trench and into eternal damnation. That’s the end for the culture that rejects the Lord Jesus Christ and particularly the culture that hypocritically tries to bring to itself peace and goodwill through the Christmas message while denying the essence of it.

The text goes on to tell us then of the warfare that ensues at Ephesus. Having given these first two models of the fullness of the Jewish nation coming into conversion, the judgment of God upon those who attempt to appropriate the Christian faith to themselves for their own purposes, for their kingdom, not for God’s kingdom. Then it goes on to talk about the warfare at Ephesus that ensues. And it’s maybe hard to catch what’s going on in that part of the text, but you know, it says how many people came to the faith. Fear as a result of the judgment of God upon the seven sons of Sceva and the miraculous works of God to those who submit to the Lord Jesus Christ, fear comes upon all the people.

And then it says that people were brought to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and they did a complete break with their occultic practices. And then we read after that Paul determines to go first to Jerusalem and then on to Rome. And then the text says that there was this big uproar with the silversmith and the Diana worshippers against the church. And then it says Paul then left. Why does it give us that order?

Four things. First, the conversion of people who burn their books. Second, Paul determines to go to Rome. Third, the riot at Ephesus. And then fourth, Paul leaves. Paul determines to go to Rome. That’s given to us to understand that when he leaves Ephesus he doesn’t do it because of the controversy that’s ensued. He had determined already to go on to press on to Jerusalem and to Rome. The faith is forward moving. It is active and not passive. It moves on.

Paul had strategically gone to these cities he had gone to. We’ll look at that next week. The progression of the gospel in these missionary journeys was like footsteps going to Rome to the heart of state worship, to the heart of the empire, which through the preaching of Paul can be converted to Christianity over a series of centuries beginning with Paul’s adventure. So Paul took the message of Christ forward but that message as it goes forward causes division and turmoil. Jesus said, “I come not to bring peace but to bring a sword.” Now peace ultimately but a sword as part of the mechanism whereby it goes.

These men are converted. They burn their occultic books. And Demetrius gets the message. He says, “These guys are going to do away with Diana worship and they’re going to do away with our source of income.” And you know what? He’s right. He’s right on. What he’s saying may be somewhat twisted, but it’s an essentially accurate testimony that the preaching of the gospel does not seek to coexist with Diana worship. It seeks to wipe it out.

Not through the physical sword, but through the preaching of the word, which brings people to conversion, to repentance, to a total break with all reliance upon divine powers and occultic authorities and knowledge beyond or above somehow God’s word. A total break with the past is pictured for true disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ and a reliance upon him. And that is how goddess worship wiped out over centuries of the early church’s preaching of the word.

Jesus comes at Christmas time not to be part of our pantheon of gods, but to assert his lordship over every area of life and thought, to bring us to have a total break with our past reliance upon other means of salvation, the way that the men burned their past books they had relied upon for their sense of occultic knowledge and salvation. Jesus comes to be Lord and King. He comes as a child but he comes as we sing repeatedly in the songs today as King also. And he comes to challenge the existing cultures, the kingdoms of man that raised yourself up against the kingdoms of God.

And he comes eventually to go to Rome to the center of the culture. And he challenges on the way to Rome in the person of Paul all communities, all economic interests, all priestly interests. The seven sons of Sceva were sons of the great priest, the Jewish priest at the time there. So he comes against economic interests, the silversmiths, religious interests both in the institutional church and in the pagan church that refused to bow the knee. And he comes against any form of social cohesiveness or community that is in opposition to him.

The silversmiths were a guild. They were a community effort. They were the result of people seeking association, friendship, and community apart from submission to the God of the scriptures. And we live in the context of a culture that desires and attempts to build community through educational tools, through political tools, through pluralistic religions. And the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ strikes at the very heart of those communities and asserts that the only true community are the disciples of Christ who work together for the advance of the preaching of Jesus Christ.

The story of Ephesus, the story of the city of Ephesus is the story of every city in which the Lord Jesus Christ comes to the preaching of his word. It’s the story of the world as well. It is, as Richard talked about, not a phrase original to me, the great reversal of the Magnificat being played out in history. Mary announced that it had been accomplished because God had become incarnate in the Son. He had come, Emmanuel, God with us.

And as a result, she could speak with total confidence saying, “These things have happened.” The civil rulers of Ephesus who assert themselves against Christ have been taken down and new rulers. History will demonstrate the removal of those rulers who refuse to rule in submission to the King of Kings. Those who assert religious knowledge apart from Christ’s word, whether they’re pagan Diana worshippers, whether the exorcist Jews, the seven sons of the Jews who harden themselves against the preaching of Christ, those people in time are judged by God and removed so that those who submit knowledge and religious practice to the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, the priest of priests are established.

The Magnificat happens. It brings sword. It brings a sword. It brings judgment. But it also brings an order and a peace at the end of all that. We know God has given us the picture in the first and second missionary journeys ending in peaceable work, fruitful work of the gospel. We know the end eventually of Ephesus and of the world because we know the beginning. We know that all things are moving not in the minds of men to what they want to see accomplished but rather in the mind of God who brings all things to pass for the establishment of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

That’s what Christmas is. That is a joyous festive season for those who are called by God to have total faith and reliance upon the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. That’s a message of great joy to us who know that as surely as this church is here preaching the gospel of Christ and other such churches dot the landscape asserting that Jesus is not—as I said earlier—part of the pantheon of American gods but rather is the Lord of lords and King of Kings.

As surely as this word is preached forth both from the pulpit in your lives and in your tongues as you speak to your neighbors. As surely as that is the case so Portland and America also will find peace at the end of the long protracted struggle which struggle is carried on through the preaching of God’s word that word is a sharp two-edged sword. It pierces but it also heals. It pierces our hearts. It pierced Mary’s heart as well and it brings us together and constitutes us as a community of the Lord Jesus Christ based upon a full orb understanding of what Christ’s advent is to earth and is to our lives as well.

Let’s pray that we rejoice in this time of year today and on into the new year as well. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this festive season of prayer. We thank you, Lord God, that for millennia, men and women, boys and girls have rejoiced in the coming of Jesus, not because they want to use him for their purposes, but rather because he brings us to be used for his purposes. And those purposes are good and blessed and profitable. Father, help us to rejoice today, not in the gifts, not in these songs that are sung by so many today in words that belie what they think in their hearts, but rather help us, Lord God, to rejoice this day in the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Okay. Are there any questions or comments about the sermon? Questions or comments? Any questions? No? Okay. I still have it at home though. I’ll bring the title next week. I just went to the local library.

Yeah. The story goes on to say that the legend has it that after he slapped Arius, Arius’s supporters and Arius told Constantine that the law required that his hand be cut off for slapping someone in before the emperor without justification. So Constantine, so the story goes, said, “Well, we’ll deal with Arius first. We’ll lock Nicholas up so that he won’t bother the proceedings anymore. We’ll decide what to do with him after we deal with Arius.”

So the story goes, they locked him in a room that night, took away his bishop’s stole and his Bible, and put him in chains and that supposedly then Jesus and Mary visited him, released him from his chains, Jesus gave him a Bible, Mary brought back his bishop’s stole and the next morning when the guard came in, he was not in chains, sitting there reading his Bible with his bishop’s stole on.

And so then Constantine saw the hand of God in that and asked forgiveness from Nicholas for imprisoning him. Now, we don’t know if any of that’s true. We do know that, as I said, the only historical record of Nicholas is, although we’ve heard lots of legends about him being the bishop of Myra, etc., historical records that way. But the actual historical record, the only evidence of his existence is his being on the attendee list at Nicaea, the council of Nicaea held in 325 AD.

The legend about the Artemis battles that he engaged himself in—they say the legend is that he tore down a temple of Diana with his own hands, probably through his preaching and through warfare, and that the demons that were then cast out of that temple—supposedly after his death tried to somehow do battle with his bones or something to that effect. So, even after death, the story goes, the battle between him and the demons of Diana worship continued.

I—it’s interesting—this last week on the Discovery Channel, they had a special on St. Nicholas and a lot of it was just about the legends of Santa Claus and where it comes from and all that stuff. But they did show—they talked about how he was bishop of Myra, but then his bones ended up over in southern Italy. And the reason for that was the church got men to take, to steal his bones from where they were at Myra and take them to Italy because the fear was that the Turks would destroy his bones when they overran that city. So his bones, they think are his bones, are at the Basilica of St. Nicholas which still stands in southern Italy which basilica was built. The fishermen demanded—for the deal with the bones—they build a church, a basilica. And so there is a basilica there with his tomb and underneath the tomb in the basement are his bones. And supposedly they still ooze oil on a regular basis and they sell this oil around the world for healing purposes.

But in any event, that’s St. Nicholas. Any other questions or comments?

There seem to be a lot of demons around in those days. What are people doing about them these days?

I was going to give a smart aleck answer: invite them in. Yeah. Well, I don’t know. You know, I’m not sure I have a good answer for that. The stock answer is that demonic activity was particularly prominent during the advent of Christ for that reason because he was dealing with them, and then you have the manifestation, the attesting miracles of Paul and the other men.

You know, we live in a—I guess you can look at it one of two ways. One, Christianity has had a tremendous influence in the whole world. I mean, you forget this, but in the 1700s and 1800s, by then, most of the world was evangelized. And so demons seem to have particular rampant play in areas where the gospel is not shed light into it. And so you hear reports, for instance, of a lot of demonic activity on certain mission fields where the gospel hasn’t penetrated very far.

The second answer is that we live in a secular world. And so, you know, instead of demons now, you have, you know, psychological or psychiatric explanations for what occurs. Chris W. talked about the men wandering around in Kolkata and you can think of the homeless or people that inhabit some of our institutions as well. And our age gives secular explanations to those. But other than that, I don’t know how to answer your question.

You know, I thought about that though reading the stuff about St. Nicholas. This is like 300 AD and you hear this stuff and you think, well, that’s ridiculous that Jesus came or whatever. And yet, you know, I think it’s more of a picture of our secularized view of reality. We find it hard to believe that the scriptures give us accounts such as in Acts 19 where sweatbands from the Apostle Paul are taken and people are healed. And yet that’s clearly the account of scripture.

So again, I’m not sure how to bring all that into our day and age. Any other questions or comments?

Yeah, I’m just really—just a reading of that scripture today—just the world around us is just trembles at us. I mean, they tremble at the gospel. I mean, they realize people in Portland realize very well that we probably topple Portlandia. I mean, these people—I guess civic mysticism—who really have no, or would say they’re non-religious, but who rally around that whole basis of civic worship or state worship, whatever. And they just—they’re just afraid.

Well, I guess my thoughts were a little bit different, but also they’re not very afraid. Because, you know, for the most part the church has not differentiated itself from all this stuff. The—you know—church in America all too readily finds itself right up there, you know, as I said, putting Jesus on the pantheon of the gods of society. They’re more than happy just to get up there, you know, and to be part of that pluralistic mindset. And I suppose if you wanted to get real critical you could talk about the various TV evangelists using the name of Jesus for personal aggrandizement, etc.

I mean, while we have an external show of much Christianity in this culture, I think the substance of it is extremely small because most of the church, most of the visible churches are engaged in a pluralistic moralistic Christianity that does not challenge the culture and in fact has been taught that, you know, the way you advance the gospel is not to do those things, not to cause those divisions.

Now I don’t support all the church. A good portion of it does. And so Christianity is viewed in that way, you know. I guess what I’m thinking is that much of what they do is out of the base of fear and out of the base—I think—fear of the gospel, of course that’s ingrained—but you just see some mentioning of the word, some truth come across on the word of God impacting Portland at any particular time and they are, you know, much more reactionary than, let’s say, the religious right or so forth because I think that aspect of fear takes the city of today’s message. Just that coming in, all that knee-jerk reaction, just reactionaryism out of out of that fear, it’s just there waiting. I guess what I’m saying is it’s just always on a threshold for them. It’s a path when. But it’s very real.

At Ephesus the fear and hatred was because of the full orb of gospel being preached and men abandoning, you know, the culture and religion of the society they lived in for the sake of a complete change in their lives. The economic interests were, you know, with Demetrius and the silversmiths. You had community as I mentioned, you had the economic interest. Then the priestly interest as well. They don’t want Diana worship to be gotten rid of. They don’t want to lose their money.

You know, if you think about Christmas, you know, what is Christmas in our culture? It’s primarily become a great time of indebtedness. And that’s, you know, this is when people spend lots more money than they have. This is when people bring themselves into voluntary servitude. And so if Christianity was to really be preached forth, for instance…