Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church The Field of Battle (Part 1) Today we’ll visit ancient Ephesus, a bustling cultural melting
pot of the Roman Empire in the first century. While today Ephesus is but rubble and ruins,
the spiritual issues faced there by the apostle Paul have not changed, and we are wise to
take a good look at the following challenges we still face on “The Field of
Battle.” I want to begin with a word of explanation. A number of events took place over the last few weeks that have prompted me to think and I trust, led by the Spirit of God, to change course. I would like to spend the next number of Sundays talking about the whole armor of God. I was at a conference not too long ago. Three unrelated events, three pastors came to me. They were having problems in their lives and in their ministries that just made me sense these brothers are under attack. We went to Life Chain a couple Sundays ago and stood along the street as cars were going by. It seemed to me more than usual were giving an unfriendly wave. Some honked the horn to draw attention to their unfriendly waving. I looked at the faces and I looked at the eyes. They were hard and angry. Perhaps it’s because it is an election year, but it seems as if people’s venom is running a little closer to the surface. Folks are more tense and I believe that the enemy of our souls is real. I believe the Bible teaches his existence is all-pervasive, that he has untold numbers of minions helping him and I believe that the attack is on. I think when things are going well it is perhaps the time to stop and remind ourselves of the reality of the spiritual world. I believe this is one of those times. All politics aside, those who study the global missions movement, that is, on a world-wide scale, are convinced of a phenomenon which they call spiritual mapping. It basically is a theory, and I think it is true, that there are certain geographical areas of our globe which are dark and closed to the gospel and which are violently resistant to the inroads of Jesus. For whatever reason -- we cannot second guess God and we certainly should not try to second guess the devil -- there are very dark corners of the world out there. These students of missions tell us that the very darkest parts of our globe are in the Middle East where the gospel is absolutely forbidden, under penalty of death. Again, not being political at all, but can you imagine if democracy were introduced there and with it, freedom of religion. What would that mean for the cause of Christ and the growth of the kingdom in an area of the world where the gospel has never been welcome? The battle is on. I believe it is on at the local, national, international level. I believe that the Lord expects us as His people to take our rightful place. My thoughts in that regard went to Ephesians 6. What better place in all of Scripture for God’s people to be alerted to the reality of spiritual hazards and what to do about it. I am going to read from Ephesians 6. We won’t be preaching from
there today because we need to do background first. I invite each of us to make a regular
visit to these verses over the next weeks and months, to be reminded continually of what
is really going on in the spiritual world. 10 Finally, be strong in
the Lord and in the strength of His might. It has been theorized by military strategists that the turning point of the Civil War was the Battle of Gettysburg where southern forces penetrated clear into the northern state of Pennsylvania. The tide of that battle, which lasted several days, was turned largely because the Union soldiers knew the terrain and took advantage of it better than those of the South. The battle was turned and indeed, so was the course of the war. It is true also, as we are a week away from opening day of big game season, that the better the hunter knows the terrain, the better the likelihood that he or she will be successful in the quest. Ephesians 6 is about a spiritual reality, a conflict that is with us as long as we are in this world and in this life. Paul wrote to the Ephesians based on his time among them. He wrote from prison in Rome, but he spent several years there in the city of Ephesus and it is from that background that he gets the information he passes along in the sixth chapter. I want us to note one verse in I Corinthians. Paul wrote I Corinthians while he was in Ephesus on his third missionary journey in about A.D. 52. He is writing from Ephesus to Corinth. It is across the Aegean Sea. Ephesus is on the coast of what is today Turkey, then it was called Asia or Asia Minor, on the southwest corner. Across the Aegean Sea to the west was Corinth in what it is today Greece. So Paul is writing from one side of the Aegean to the other and he says something very, very interesting as he closes out his first letter to the Corinthians. Remembering now that he is at Ephesus, he writes this as he closes the book of I Corinthians in the 16th chapter. 8 But I will remain in Ephesus
until Pentecost; Do you notice that we have a dual message here? On the one
hand opportunities abound, things are good, it is promising. But on the other hand, he
says, there are many adversaries. Brothers and sisters, in that verse he tells the story
of the gospel ministry we live. The harvest is white and ready to be gathered in. The
laborers are few. Things are good, but there are obstacles. Jesus explained to His disciples and it took Him quite some
time to do, three and a half or so years, what their future spiritual life would look like
in this world. Up until the time of Christ, Jewish people who were sensitive to the Old
Testament and the Scriptures were looking forward to a deliverer, to a Messiah. To a man,
they believed that once Messiah showed up everything would go from bad to good. That in
the world as it now stands there is sickness, there is death, there is poverty,
oppression. All is bad. Once Messiah gets here the devil is going to be kicked out and we
are going to have peace and prosperity and all will be well. Jesus spent a lot of time teaching that that would not be the
case, teaching that once Messiah gets here, yes, things will be different, but no, all
will not be well. Not until the second time He shows up. There is a period of undetermined
length between what is now bad and not yet good. We call it a time of tension. Jesus went
to great length to explain that. He used parables to do it. Jesus begins Matthew 13 with a very well-known parable. It
has to do with a sower going forth to sow. He sows and some seed lands on this kind of
soil and some seed lands on that and other seed lands on the other. Finally, some seed
lands on fertile ground. He says it is like this in the kingdom of God. He goes on to
explain what is happening. The seed is standard; it’s the same seed. But some of it
lands on hard-packed ground, you might say calloused ground and it’s easy, He says,
for the devil to snatch it away. Other seed lands in shallow ground where the rocks are not
too far below the surface, keeping the dirt temperature warm enough to germinate the seed
quickly. It springs up and looks good for awhile. But then it has no depth of root so when
the sun hits it, it withers and dies. A third kind of seed lands among the weeds and they choke it
out. Finally, there is a fourth kind of soil upon which the seed lands and that soil bears
much fruit. It is like this in the kingdom of heaven. It is like this for us
now. We will sow the seed around the world. We do it here. The Jantzens are doing it in
Brazil. We do it in Awana and in VBS and at camp and all around. That seed is going to be
standard. It is going to be the same, but not everyone will respond to it identically. We were talking about this parable one time at as a class I
was teaching, a class of college-age young people. I had always been under the impression
that those four different kinds of soil represented four different hearts of people.
Perhaps that is so. One young lady raised her hand and said, “I think you have just
described me four times, four different times of my own life.” That’s the point.
For now, the heart remains deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and we do not
know what effect the seed will have in various kinds of hearts. Across the page there is another parable. It’s about
another farmer. He is planting, sowing good seed in his field (verse 24). While men were
sleeping the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. The wheat sprang up and the weeds
sprang up along with it. The hired hands were unhappy with that. What should we do? Should
we go out there and pluck it all? He said, no, it will all come out in the wash.
We’ll wait until harvest and then we will separate the good from the bad. Jesus said
it is like this in the kingdom. There will be those who will receive the Word and
there will be those who will not. The gospel will play to mixed reviews. Jesus corrected the view of the kingdom and convinced His
followers that for now, for this life, there will be tension between the way things are
and the way we want things to be until He comes again and fixes it all. Paul taught the
same thing. He mentions that in I Corinthians 16:9. He says many opportunities, but many
obstacles. That’s where we are today. There is no need when we talk about spiritual warfare and we
talk about the devil and demons and these of types things, it seems that Christians tend
to go to extremes. On the one hand, we can give the devil way too much credit. We say
everything was fine until the devil showed up. Or the devil did this. Or the devil made me
do that. Or the devil is behind every bush and under every rock and everywhere we look,
it’s the devil. I’m wondering, is that really accolades to the devil? Is he
really everywhere like that, or is it just that I am so important that I’m the only
one he has to worry about? The devil is one angel, extremely intelligent, mightily
powerful, yet acting under the ultimate governance of our Father in heaven. That’s
another sermon. But this business of the devil being everywhere is where a lot of us want
to place the blame. Others, perhaps, are just naïve. There are many Christians, I
suspect, who probably never give the devil a thought. Or maybe are persuaded along with
skeptics and liberals to assume that’s old superstitious stuff, there’s no real
devil. We do not need to be extremists, we just need to be aware
from the Scriptures. The Bible does not give us what perhaps we might want to have in
order to second guess the devil. Let’s not try that. The Bible does not say be
worried about where he is and what he is doing because we cannot see him. The Bible says
watch yourself. That is why in Ephesians 6, “Put on the armor.” Don’t worry
about where the enemy is. Put the armor on and be ready to face him when he occurs. Please open your Bibles to Acts 19. We are going to walk with
the apostle through this city, his adventures there long ago, because the city of Ephesus
is a prototype of wherever we live today. The opportunities and the obstacles that the
apostle faced then are not all that different from where we live now. Certainly the devil
has not gone away, the human heart has not changed, and the gospel is the same. We can
move forward with confidence. One thing that fascinates me about the early journeys of the
apostle, the missionary journeys that he took – he struck out from Jerusalem, then to
Antioch, then across Asia Minor. He made three missionary journeys and what never ceases
to amaze me is what he did not have. He did not have a mission board sending him out and
financing him and taking care of his retirement and his health insurance. He did not have
means of travel. He did not have a bicycle, a four-wheeler, a car, a Land Rover, or a 737.
He did not have a language school he had to attend. There were a lot of things he did not
have. He did not have Christian radio, Christian TV, the Far East Broadcasting Company,
the balloons they are flying into Korea. He did not have any of that stuff. All of it is
good, by the way. I’m for all of it. But the apostle did not have it. What fascinates me about these accounts, and we’ll get
into that in Ephesus, is that he went into these places armed with the Spirit of God and
the raw gospel. There is no confusion about who gets the credit for good things that
happen. Paul lived in what ought to be understood as a pre-Christian world. It was not
Christianized. There were pockets of Jewish people here and there. He sought them out. But
as far as being a westernized, Christianized culture, it was not. These were the days of the gladiators, of the animals, the
coliseums. These were the days of two-class society, the haves and the slaves. These were
barbaric, troublesome times and yet the apostle armed again with the Spirit of God and the
raw gospel went in and God did amazing things. Today we live in a post-Christian culture and while we may
have more sophisticated means of communication and travel, nothing else has changed. There
is no automatic acceptance of the deity of Christ or of the inspiration of the Scriptures
or of the validity of the gospel message. It does not exist. When we or anyone else goes
anywhere in a post-Christian culture like we have, again, this is the Spirit of God and
the raw gospel doing the work. Again, God gets the credit. Let’s talk about obstacles. I found five in this 19th
chapter of Acts. He says open doors are everywhere but there are many adversaries. My
suggestion is that the obstacles faced by the apostle are just like the ones we face
today. We need to be aware of them, and with this as background, we will then be able to
put the armor on with a little more knowledge. The first seven verses of Acts 19 – interesting passage. Apollos is mentioned, he went to Corinth. Paul, coming overland across through the upper country came to Ephesus and found some disciples. Ephesus was the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire. Because of the river drainage there and the sediment and silt that collected in the harbor there was a constant dredging operation in place at Ephesus. Today what remains of Ephesus is seven miles from the Aegean Sea because of all that buildup of soil, but in its day Ephesus was as cosmopolitan a city as there could have been, open to all manner of trade, religion, schools of thought, and enjoyed the favor of the Roman government. It had its own local government and the Roman government pretty much left them alone as long as they behaved themselves. The apostle Paul came to Ephesus and found some disciples. The disciples are of the same mind and linked somehow this fellow Apollos, who had been acquainted with the baptism of John but had not heard about Pentecost yet, when the Holy Spirit had fallen in such a dramatic way. So here are these disciples, they are believers, and Paul says to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They said, “We have never heard about this Holy Spirit. We are ignorant as to the events of Pentecost in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit fell upon all those men in the upper room.” There was a sound like a mighty rushing wind and the appearance of tongues of fire resting over the heads of these various individuals. They began to speak in languages they had not learned but were well known to others in the room. It was there that the apostles were filled with power and went forth preaching with boldness as changed men and the presence of Jesus was evident because of His Spirit who had been provided just as He had promised. These guys were ignorant of that. They were way across the world in Ephesus and had not heard about this. I knew a guy one time who a number of us were trying to witness to. When I think of ignorance, I think of this fellow. He made a profession of faith in order to satisfy the Christians who were kind of badgering him to get saved. He said ok, I’ll do that. Whatever they asked him to pray or whatever they asked him to do he went ahead and did, but later, he told me, “Those guys are trying to get me to become a Christian. I can’t become a Christian. I’m a Methodist!” A little bit of ignorance there. I’m here to tell you, yes, you can be a Methodist and be a Christian. Otherwise, that Wesley hymn we sang would have been totally inappropriate. We have an interesting situation here with ignorance. “Were you baptized?” They said, “Yes, the same baptism John the Baptist preached.” Understand this – the baptism of John the Baptist was a baptism in anticipation of the Messiah showing up. The King is coming, in other words. Don’t you want to be ready for Him spiritually, morally? These guys said yes, so John the Baptist at the river Jordan would baptize people in anticipation of the Messiah’s coming. By this time, A.D. 52, Messiah has come and gone. It has been a number of years, but they had not heard yet. They are like the guys on the island in the Pacific still fighting the war, not knowing it is over. It’s ignorance. So the apostle Paul enlightened them, explained to them no doubt from the Old Testament Scriptures as well as from the recent history of the church, what the Holy Spirit was all about. He laid hands on them, the Bible says, and the Holy Spirit of God came upon them, began speaking with tongues and prophesying and there were in all, about twelve men. What’s going on here? Where was the Holy Spirit all this time? Folks, they needed to see the evidence of the Spirit’s arrival as the Spirit had shown Himself previously to other groups of people. It’s like this. Before Jesus ascended into heaven after He died on the cross, after the resurrection, He gathered His disciples around Him and the Bible says He breathed on them. He gave them an object lesson. He connected Himself, His breath, to them, as the Holy Spirit. (The word for spirit, the word for wind, the word for air, the word for breath, are the same word.) So that when the Spirit arrived (Acts 2) they would realize whence He came, that we cannot separate the Holy Spirit from Jesus, the Messiah. Everyone who was looking for Messiah was also looking for the Holy Spirit in some undeniable, recognizable form. That’s what they were waiting for, so Jesus said when this happens, because of this episode with Me here, you will know that that Spirit and I are in league and you are good. It’s from Me. That’s important. That’s what Jesus did. In Acts 2, the Spirit of God did show up on the day of Pentecost in undeniable fashion. Many lives were changed and those events which accompanied the arrival of the Spirit were undeniable, written in the Bible for us to understand even today. Jesus links Himself to the events of Acts 2. Then in Acts 8, we see the Spirit of God showing up again, this time with Peter and John present, thus identifying Peter and John with Jesus. Then in Acts 10, with just Peter present with pure Gentiles so they can be traceable to Peter and John and back to Acts 2 and back to Jesus. Now, in Acts 19, clear across the way in Ephesus, the very same events take place so that everybody understands, particularly these disciples, that the apostle Paul’s ministry is as legitimate as that of Peter, as that of John, and is truly an extension of the ministry of Jesus. They are all on the same team. That is why the events of those different occasions are identical and that is why we are told about them in the book of Acts. These disciples, twelve of them, know now because of their experience, that Paul is legitimately an apostle of Jesus, just like Peter, just like John, and that the blessing of the One who breathed on the eleven disciples is the same blessing they enjoy in Acts 19. It’s putting it all together for them, but they needed to know that. They needed to understand that because they were just beginning to learn. Ignorance needed to be dispelled. The apostles thought of that certainly by the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Ignorance is always overcome by sufficient dosages of God’s Word. Simply applying the truth clears away the cobwebs and dispels the shadows. I Peter 2:2, “Long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.” It is the Word of God that answers the questions and that shines the light. There are, in my experience, Christians from all ends of the spectrum. I have met Christians whose tradition as a believer is going to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and every time the church is opened, and sitting there being told over and over again how to get saved and if you are saved, how to be committed to the church. I have met Christians, on the other end of things, think being a Christian is kind of like joining a club and as long as the whistles and bells are intact and “I feel good about my relationship with Jesus, I must be fine.” I have seen Christians from either end and from every point in between coming under a consistent and literal understanding of the Bible grow in their appreciation of the cross, in their walk with the Lord, in their fruitfulness in His service. It is an amazing thing and all it is, is the Word of God being applied, where hitherto, it was not. And God’s people just lap it up. It was a good thing then, and a good thing now. One of our obstacles is ignorance, and we all need to grow in the knowledge of the Word of God. The more I understand of the Bible, the more time I spend in it, the more appreciative I am of the God of heaven who sent His Son to die for me. I’ve been a Christian now for almost 32 years and the longer I go, the simpler the gospel gets. You would think, “That’s study, everything is kind of technical.” No, it isn’t. It gets more beautiful in its simplicity and that is where we need to go with it. Our second obstacle I call ill-will. Notice what happened. There were twelve men. Note that. There is no correlation, I don’t believe, between these twelve and the twelve apostles or anything like that. But notice where these twelve men eventually go. They are now thorough Christians, if you will. They have experienced the Christian experience with the Holy Spirit’s arrival and so forth just as the original twelve disciples had. Now we see in verse 8 that Paul enters the synagogue. A synagogue is often characterized as a Jewish house of worship. In these days, it was less a house of worship than it was a house of teaching because in the synagogue the Scriptures were central and that was the whole point – to read the Scriptures, expound the Scriptures and so forth. The Scriptures were totally indispensable to synagogue worship. Paul’s calling, though, was to Gentiles. He was the apostle to the Gentiles. What in the world is he doing going into the synagogue. He is going into the synagogue looking for Gentiles. What Gentiles? There were a class of folks who were not Jews but who were sympathetic with the Jewish position, belief in one God and so forth. They were called God-fearers. The God-fearers were Gentiles and all of their families and friends were Gentiles too. Paul understood, as a strategist, as a missionary, if he wants to reach the Gentiles, the place to do that is where they have the most in common. He goes to the synagogue to meet the God-fearers and through the God-fearers to gain access to their homes and families and the rest of the Gentile world. Paul was very sensitive not to build on another person’s foundation. He knew what his calling was and he pursued it specifically. It says that he reasoned and persuaded them for three months about the kingdom of God. Three months of Saturdays he is in the synagogue. It says, in verse 9, some were becoming hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude. In your Bible the word “Way” is likely capitalized. In the very early days of the church, the Christian movement was known as “The Way.” Some were becoming hardened and disobedient and were speaking evil of The Way. Isn’t it interesting how in some hearts the Bible turns on lights, but in other hearts it arouses anger and resentment -- kind of like different soils. That’s exactly the case here. Paul says in I Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. In II Corinthians 2 he says the gospel is
an aroma of life to some, but the same gospel is an aroma of death to others because some
will receive it and some will not. Some will be offended by the gospel. It’s
interesting that opposition to the gospel is often strongest from those who are proudly
“working” their way to heaven. The gospel comes along and says you don’t
deserve heaven. “Wait a minute. I’m a pretty good
person.” No, you really do not deserve heaven. You have sinned against an eternally
holy God. He has a moral obligation not to have anything to do with you now. You are in
big trouble. “But I’m sincere.” It doesn’t matter. “But I
haven’t killed anybody.” It doesn’t matter. Have you ever broken the law?
“Yes, but only . . . “ It doesn’t matter, because God’s standard is
perfection and we are supposed to look at His standard and not say, “I can do
this.” That’s dumb. We are supposed
to look at His standard and say, “I can’t do this. Dear Jesus, have mercy on my
soul.” For those who are determined, and I think
most people in the world are, to work their way to heaven, they have a real problem when
you come along and say they are a sinner. When someone stands up and says you cannot work
your way to heaven, you cannot be righteous enough, you cannot be sincere enough, you
cannot be ignorant enough to get your way to heaven. You can only humbly beg God for grace
and mercy and by His merit you go to heaven, not any of your own. That’s offensive to
people who are proud, people who are determined to have it their way. They will not have
it their way. That’s what happened in the synagogue.
The synagogue was full of people who built an elaborate scheme on how to get to heaven and
how to make sure everybody else is a bit behind them in the quest. For Paul to go in there
and say you are wrong and the gospel of Jesus in its pure simplicity is right is going to
make them mad – and it did. I once shared the gospel with a lady who
got mad at me. “I have sung in the choir. I saw to it that my son was an altar boy.
Saved from what?” She was offended at the suggestion that she was not righteous
enough to go to heaven. It’s not my idea. I
didn’t make that up. It’s in the Bible. But sometimes folks are offended and
that’s what Paul found so he moved on. Point three is a fascinating point. Look
what happens. It says that some were disobedient so Paul moves on. He says he withdrew
from the synagogue and took away those disciples. He has them with him now. They went to
this place called the school of Tyrannus where he taught them daily. Some scholar
smilingly wondered if Tyrannus was the name given by the parents or the students of this
individual. Teaching daily. These verses are truly
remarkable for a couple reasons that are obvious and one that is not. This took place for
two years daily in the hall of Tyrannus, a rented school, so that all who lived in Asia
Minor heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. That is fascinating. If you ever
open your Bible to the second and third chapters of Revelation there are seven churches
mentioned there, Ephesus being one of them. Each of those seven was begun from here as
well as a place called Hierapolis and another little town called Colossae where we get the
epistle to the Colossians. These twelve who began in ignorance are now
the emissaries of the good news and they are taking it to western Asia Minor. That means
that halfway through the first century A.D., in about A.D. 53 or 54 we have strong gospel
footholds on both sides of the Aegean Sea. On the west side in Corinth and Berea and
Thessalonica, on the east side in all of these cities of the books of Revelation as well
as Colossae and Hierapolis The gospel now is strong there because they left the synagogue. That, to me, is exciting. You may have in
the margin of your Bible a mention of a time frame connected with verse 9. There are
certain old manuscripts of the New Testament that indicate Paul rented the school of
Tyrannus from the hours of 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. That’s because in that culture 11 to 4
was down time. In the capital city of Rome, for instance, ancient poets noted that there
were more people awake at 1 a.m. than at 1 p.m. It is because in that culture, life shut
down at mid day for three or four hours. Everybody shuts down, which made the school of
Tyrannus available because no one else would go. They are all taking their siesta. Those who were interested would come and
Paul, who would be making tents from about 6 to 11 and then go to teach for a few hours.
Everybody denies themselves their rest. They are, in a word, inconvenienced. I think that
is amazing. Paul and others devoted themselves to the gospel through nap time in a rented
facility with amazing results. Isn’t it something how God chooses the
weak things of the world to confound the wise? That is exactly what occurred in Ephesus
long ago. It is so easy to want God’s work always to be convenient, not intrusive,
not bothersome. I think this inconvenience thing is our most common and our biggest
obstacle to God’s work. It’s just not convenient. The Rocky Mountain Bible Mission church in
Trout Creek, the Cabinet Mountain Bible Church, began in a tent. Then the tent burned down
and winter came. How many of our churches, for instance in the little community of Condon
began in the town hall where the deacons showed up early not just to set up the chairs but
also to muck out the beer cans. We had wonderful years at our Bible camps when all we had
were tents and outhouses and a creek. Inconvenient? Yes. One of the best things the Rocky Mountain
Bible Mission ever did was Bible Training Center for Pastors. A lot of guys have been
trained. A lot of lives have been touched because inconvenience was not allowed to stop
what God wanted done. God’s blessing does not depend on convenient ministry. We will return to Acts 19 in a week unless the Lord returns before then, and pick it up from there. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2006, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |