The speaker greets the audience and introduces the topic of discipleship in the Book of Acts. He shares his initial skepticism about the relevance of the passage but later realizes its connection to discipleship.

Introduction and Setting the Stage

The speaker discusses the potential impact of discipleship and the desire to leave a positive mark on the world. He shares a personal anecdote and quotes Horace Mann's words about making a difference for humanity.

The Influence of Discipleship

The speaker explores the concept of the kingdom of God and the role of Christians in influencing society. He raises questions about the power of the gospel and how individuals can contribute to societal change.

The Kingdom of God and Our Role

The speaker introduces Acts chapter 19 and the disturbance caused by a silversmith named Demetrius. He explains the threat to Artemis worship and the subsequent uproar in the city.

The Riot in Ephesus

The speaker examines Paul's actions and mission in Ephesus, highlighting his focus on making disciples and spreading the gospel. He emphasizes that Paul did not incite a revolution but brought about a revival.

Paul's Actions and Mission

The speaker discusses the Great Commission given by Jesus to his disciples. He explains the imperative verb of making disciples and explores the sequence of activities involved in being a disciple.

The Great Commission

Understanding the significance of discipleship and its connection to the passage in Acts 19.

The Importance of Discipleship

Reflecting on our current priorities and considering discipleship as our driving force.

The Driving Force of Our Lives

Exploring the resources Jesus has given us for discipleship, including the Holy Spirit and fellow believers.

Resources for Discipleship

Highlighting the importance of small groups in living out discipleship and encouraging participation.

Discipleship Groups

Emphasizing the everlasting forgiveness and love Jesus offers to those who follow him.

Jesus' Forgiveness and Love

Encouraging readers to be disciples for Jesus and believe in the power of the Holy Spirit for revival.

The Call to Be Disciples

- The speaker initially didn't think the passage in Acts 19 had anything to do with discipleship
- After studying the passage, he realized it is about discipleship and the impact Christians can have on society
- The passage describes a riot in Ephesus caused by a silversmith named Demetrius who is upset about Paul's teachings
- The city becomes chaotic and people are shouting in support of the goddess Artemis
- The city clerk eventually calms the crowd and dismisses the assembly

- The events in the passage took place on the stage of the great amphitheater of Ephesus
- Demetrius, a tradesman specializing in silver objects, is the instigator in the passage
- Business was bad for Demetrius and others who depended on Artemis worship due to people losing interest and turning to Jesus
- Demetrius gathers a crowd and incites them against Paul, but Paul does not appear and the riot subsides
- The big idea is that God's Holy Spirit can bring about change through everyday faithfulness in living out the gospel truth
- Paul's actions were not inciting an uprising, but rather baptizing, teaching, and performing miracles
- Society was changing as people turned from false gods to Jesus
- Paul's mission was to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles and he ministered accordingly
- We also have a mission and can influence others by understanding it

- The passage is from Matthew chapter 28, known as the Great Commission.
- Jesus appears to his disciples after his resurrection and tells them to go and make disciples of all nations.
- The main verb in the Great Commission is "making disciples," with other verbs supporting this action.
- To be a disciple of Jesus involves following, observing, learning, and practicing.
- The four activities associated with being a disciple are: following Jesus, listening to Jesus, believing in Jesus, and imitating Jesus.
- The sequence of these activities is important, as one cannot reasonably imitate Jesus without first following, listening, and believing in him.

- The passage discusses the importance of discipleship and following Jesus
- It connects discipleship to the societal impact of the gospel message spreading in Ephesus
- The Holy Spirit and other believers are resources given by Jesus for discipleship
- Small groups are emphasized as a place for discipleship and making disciples
- The passage encourages seeking forgiveness and love from Jesus
- It concludes with a call to be disciples for Jesus and help others become disciples

- The passage in Acts 19 is about discipleship and the impact Christians can have on society.
- It describes a riot in Ephesus caused by a silversmith named Demetrius who is upset about Paul's teachings.
- The city becomes chaotic and people support the goddess Artemis.
- The city clerk calms the crowd and dismisses the assembly.
- The events took place in the great amphitheater of Ephesus.
- Demetrius is the instigator in the passage due to the decline in business caused by people turning to Jesus.
- Paul's actions were not inciting an uprising, but rather baptizing, teaching, and performing miracles.
- Society was changing as people turned from false gods to Jesus.
- The passage connects discipleship to the societal impact of the gospel message spreading in Ephesus.
- The Great Commission in Matthew 28 emphasizes making disciples of all nations.
- To be a disciple of Jesus involves following, observing, learning, and practicing.
- Small groups are emphasized as a place for discipleship and making disciples.
- The passage encourages seeking forgiveness and love from Jesus.
- It concludes with a call to be disciples for Jesus and help others become disciples.

This Sermon Has Everything to do with Discipleship Acts 19:23-41

Yes, may all the young people go to your various classes.

We'll have a little bit more breathing room in here right now.

Thank you for everyone joining us online, too.

Over the past few months or so, I've had the pleasure of meeting up with many of the other men who have been preaching through our series on the Book of Acts these past months.

In particular, my brother Leslie Mearhead, he is sitting in the third row right here.

He organized a meeting midweek with some of the other speakers, including Nick Aswalo and Stephen McHarg and myself, so that we could meet together and discuss how the topic of discipleship is treated in Acts chapters 19 and 20.

So we could be on the same page, so we could teach something that would be complimentary over various weeks.

And I had this passage and I told them, fellas, my passage has nothing to do with discipleship.

I'll discuss with you and pray with you and everything.

When Dave Brereton said that this would be a riot, he wasn't kidding.

It's really just about some people who are upset and wanted to do a demonstration about how upset they were.

There are no Christians in this passage who speak.

We prayed together and I was encouraged, but I didn't leave that meeting convinced any differently.

Then came the time for me to actually start preparing, to study the passage, to read it over and over again and ask some deeper questions like, okay, I see what's going on, but why is what's happening happening?

And it didn't take much longer that in the middle of my studies, I took a break to text the other guys this message that you see on the screen and I said, I recant my former position.

And if you were here last week to witness the other 5 baptisms that took place right on this stage, you might recall that our brother Nick Oswallo, he shared an anecdote that said that we're likely in our lifetime to potentially encounter and influence up to 80,000 different people in your whole lifetime.

And if you're an introvert like me, you still have a chance to influence 10,000 people.

Have you ever wondered, when it's all said and done, what kind of mark you will leave on the world when you're gone?

What kind of mark or influence you might have on all these people?

It's certainly something that I've thought about a lot in my life.

I even thought about this kind of stuff when I was a teenager.

This is a picture of my high school yearbook photo.

Please do not pay attention to the acne and long hair.

But rather to this quote that I shared in my yearbook entry.

I don't know how I stumbled upon it, but I did.

It's attributed to someone named Horace Mann.

He fought tirelessly in his day and age for educational reforms, for the abolition of slavery in the United States.

He said these words at a commencement address at Antioch College in 1859.

And the words that impacted me were, "'Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Now I wasn't a Christian in this photo at this time.

Even before I gave my life to Christ, I could see that the world around me was a place of great hurt and great need and I wanted my life, however long it was going to last, to mean something to the people I lived with and I shared the planet with, to be a force for good.

And if anything, becoming a Christian only amplified this desire.

After all, the Jesus that I discovered in the scriptures, he made such a tangible difference to every single person that he encountered.

Jesus healed the sick and he fed the poor.

He also taught about the kingdom of God, a kingdom that he would reign in with love and justice and mercy and grace.

A kingdom that the Apostle Paul would describe would be a place where 1 day every knee would bow and every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And that kingdom Jesus talked about first appeared after his death and resurrection, but we won't see, we won't experience the fullness of that kingdom until Jesus comes again.

What are we Christians supposed to do between now and then?

What power does the gospel have to change our society today?

And what part might we have to play in that, if we have a part to play at all?

How can we little men and women at Rosemount Bible Church in Montreal possibly hope to influence a world that very rich and very powerful people want to stay exactly the same because it enriches them.

These are precisely the kinds of themes that we will encounter in Acts chapter 19.

The big idea I want to explore in this passage is that God's Holy Spirit can completely change society, and he can do that through our everyday, ordinary acts of faithfulness in living out the Gospel truth.

Let's get a quick grasp of the situation and its context.

If you have your Bibles with you, you can turn to Acts chapter 19, starting at verse 23, or you can just follow along with me.

The text will be on the screen behind me as I read from the new international version.

This is what Dave Beretton meant when he said that it would be a riot.

About that time, there arose a great disturbance about the way.

A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there.

He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and he said, you know, my friends, we receive a good income from this business.

You see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia.

He says that gods made by human hands are no gods of all.

There's no danger not only that our trade will lose its good name but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited that the goddess herself whose worship throughout the whole province of Asia and the world will be robbed of her divine majesty and when they heard this they were furious They began shouting over and over again, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!

The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theater together.

Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples wouldn't let him.

Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, you see, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater.

Some were shouting 1 thing and some another.

Most of the people didn't even know why they were there.

The Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander to the front and they shouted instructions to him.

He motioned for silence in order to make a defense before the people, but when they realized that he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about 2 hours, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.

He said, fellow Ephesians, doesn't all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image which fell from heaven?

Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down.

You've brought these men here, though they've neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess.

If then Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open.

If there's anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly.

As it is, we're in danger right now of being charged with rioting because of what happened today.

In that case, we wouldn't be able to account for this commotion since there's no reason for it.

After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.

The stage is set, and I mean that literally.

The stage is set because the events in today's passage took place on the stage of the great amphitheater of Ephesus, which still stands to this day.

You can go visit in the town of Seljuk in Turkey.

I'm going to briefly recap what I just said.

So I thought while I do that, it might be helpful to just get immersed a little bit in the real physical history of the Bible.

I've got some tourist footage that I found on YouTube here of what the area looks like.

And as I recap, you'll be able to be reminded that what we're reading here aren't myths or fables.

These are historical events that actually happen.

So our instigator in this passage is a man named Demetrius.

We know that he specializes in melting down silver and fashioning it into all kinds of objects.

We know that his best-selling objects pay homage to the Greek goddess Artemis, from rings and amulets to idols and shrines.

If he could sell it, Demetrius would build it.

And business was typically booming, particularly in a city like Ephesus that was home to the great temple of Artemis.

But business was on a downturn lately, for him, for a lot of the tradespeople who depended on Artemis worship to line their pockets.

It's not because the price of silver went up.

It's not because Walmart opened up next door selling cheaper knockoffs.

Business was bad because over the last couple of years, a lot of people started losing interest in Artemis.

They heard that a God fashioned with human hands is no God at all.

And so their hearts were turned away from that as they began a new faith in Jesus Christ.

Now Demetrius, he's a man of considerable wealth and influence and he understood how power worked.

You see, using his commercial connections, Demetrius gathered a crowd composed at its core of other business people like him.

He got that crowd good and emotional by threatening their income, by threatening their way of life.

Paul was going to be his scapegoat, the physical scapegoat of all their problems and misfortunes.

Demetrius rallied this crowd into a fervor by getting them to repeat that slogan again and again, great is Demetrius of the Ephesians, until much of the city was drawn to this crowd.

They were drawn around at first because they were curious and then after just because they were confused.

And finally, when Demetrius got this crowd as big as it could be and as angry as it could be, he brought them to this place, this great big stage, where it wouldn't make take much to spark that riot into acts of violence.

And all he needed was to bring Paul into this trap.

He heard of the riot at the theater, and he wanted to come, but his own disciples and his friends held him back because of the great danger that this would pose to him.

And instead it was, it was a city official, it was a city worker, a clerk who stood up to the crowd and got them to calm down and disperse.

And there's nothing that suggests in our text that the city official was a believer.

There's nothing that suggests that he was even acting in Paul's interests or defense.

What we are certain of is that the official didn't want this riot to catch the attention of the Roman guards.

Because when they come, they're gonna crack skulls.

That's how Romans, That's how Romans operate.

Paul soon leaves after for Greece, and our passage for today draws to a close.

If you recall the big idea that I said that I saw in this passage, it's that God's Holy Spirit can make really big change happen in society through our ordinary, everyday faithfulness in living out the gospel truth.

Where do I see that in these verses and in this story.

We're going to dig deeper into the text now, and we're going to ask some of these deeper questions.

We're going to see that this big idea is revealed through Paul's actions.

We're going to see that it's revealed through Paul's mission that was given to him by the Lord Jesus.

Then we're going to consider what are the implications for us in our actions, in our mission.

So let's start by looking at Paul's actions, decide for ourselves whether he was trying to incite an uprising against Ephesian society and Artemis worship.

Now to do that we need to look at the context of the the entire book of Acts.

2 weeks ago, Brother Stephen McCargan, he preached through the first half of Acts chapter 19.

We'll see that Paul spent over 2 years in the city.

Not once did he directly challenge or oppose the many followers of Artemis.

You can search the scriptures, but you will not find it.

He didn't indoctrinate zealots to destroy property or tear down idols.

He didn't try to change the Roman school system so that they would stop teaching this stuff to the kids.

He didn't organize an economic lobby to boycott, divest, or sanction Artemis worshippers.

We see that Paul baptized people in the name of the Lord Jesus.

We see that Paul taught Jews in the synagogue for a period of about 3 months.

For a period of a little more than 2 years, he taught in lecture, in Gentile lecture halls, primarily to Gentiles, and the scripture even says he held discussions.

It wasn't just unilateral talking to people, there was, There was an exchange of ideas that took place there.

And Paul performed miracles, which doesn't hurt, I suppose, but he performed miracles as he was doing all these other things.

We have to remember, too, that there was a city official who found Paul and his companions blameless.

He offered the crowd a legal alternative to accuse them in the courts, and the crowd dispersed.

They didn't go to the courts because there's nothing to accuse Paul of.

Well, Stephen preached about that too 2 weeks ago.

If we look at Acts chapter 19, verses 18 to 20, it's described that many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done.

A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly And when they calculated the value of those scrolls, the total came to about 50,000 drachmas.

In this way, the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.

So you see, Demetrius and the other tradespeople, they were totally right to feel threatened.

Because many people were visibly turning from their false gods, from their pagan practices, while embracing a new faith and understanding in Jesus Christ.

This was not a revolution, this was a revival, a changing of hearts.

The Holy Spirit creates major social change through revival, not through revolution.

These false idols were destroyed as acts of personal repentance, not as acts of public vandalism.

And all of Paul's activities that we discussed here are consistent with the mission that was given to him by Jesus himself.

In Acts chapter 9, the Lord called to a disciple named Ananias and he gave Ananias this message.

In Acts 9 verses 15 and 16, Jesus told him, This man, Paul, He is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.

I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.

Paul later echoes this mission in Romans 15-20.

He says, it has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known so that I wouldn't be building on someone else's foundation.

And again in Colossians chapter 128 he writes, Jesus we proclaim warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ." So Paul's mission informed how he would minister to the places that he visited.

Maybe by better understanding the mission that we have, we can get a sense of how we might actually be influencing these 80,000 people that we will encounter in our lives, or for us introverts, 10,000.

This passage takes us to the very end of Matthew's gospel story.

At this point in his story, Jesus has already died and he's risen again, So the world is abuzz.

Jesus' disciples meet up at a mountain in Galilee where before being crucified Jesus told them to meet and wait for him there.

And in starting at verse 17, Jesus finally shows up.

And when the disciples see him in the flesh, they worshipped him.

Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

So go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age." This passage is better known as the Great Commission.

This commission is for Jesus' disciples, for his followers, for all of them.

For Matthew and Mark, for Vince and Louise, for Thomas, for you and for me.

When we look closer at the words in the Great Commission, there are 4 verbs.

I believe that I've highlighted them in bold.

But only 1 of the verbs is the driving force, the main verb, with the other verbs functioning as supportive, like satellite actions.

In grammar, we refer to that driving force as the imperative verb.

The other verbs are supporting actions, called participles.

In the original Greek text, the imperative verb in the Great Commission, the only imperative verb, is making disciples.

You'll see the word in blue underneath in Greek.

I'm not going to embarrass myself and try to pronounce it.

The other verbs are there to add color, add texture to making disciples.

Wherever we go, wherever we are, whatever we're doing, make disciples.

While you're making disciples, like we did last week, baptize them.

While we're making disciples, Teach them.

Teach them so they understand and can obey God's commands.

The question is, how do we do it and how can we help each other do it?

How can we participate in this Great Commission together?

You don't hear too much about disciples in the 21st century.

It's not something that we see in our everyday life.

In the first century, the answer was pretty straightforward because disciples were everywhere.

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