Anatomy of a Riot

SERMON: 2017-05-07--ac17171--anatomy-of-a-riot-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:37:08.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: The material maintains a consistent theological and expository tone throughout all candidates. Candidate [15] serves as the concluding summary statement ('That's some of the lessons I think that we learned...'), marking the end of the sermon content. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I want to pick up this morning where we left off last week, which is Anatomy of a Riot, part 2. The scripture passage, as you might recall, is Acts chapter 19. The story, it's quite a lengthy story, runs from verse 23 to verse 41. Last week we really effectively looked at the first 34 verses. This morning we will look together at the concluding verses from 35 to 41. Let's read it together. This is the word of the Lord. The city clerk quieted the crowd and said, "Men of Ephesus, 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 be quiet and not do anything rash. You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. If then Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of today's events. In that case, we would not be able to account for this commotion since there is no reason for it. After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly." Believe me in prayer. Father, again, as we turn to your word, we're mindful of the fact that most of us here have probably never participated in a public riot or even perhaps a public demonstration. And yet, as we've been seeing, there are elements in this story that are not unique to public riots or demonstrations. They show up in any kind of interpersonal conflict that we all engage in periodically. And so I pray this morning that as we continue to look at this story that you'll give me the words that I need to clearly express the burden that is on your heart, I believe, and that, Lord, each of us will be open to just receiving your wisdom and your grace so that at the end of the day, in a world convulsed with the turmoil of conflict, your people joined together by faith in Jesus in the power of your Holy Spirit may truly serve as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We'll be careful, Lord, to give you the glory through Jesus Christ. It's in his name that we pray. Amen. Last week, looking at this passage in Acts chapter 19, the riot at Ephesus, we looked at three of four elements that I believe are just very helpful for us to understand together. Let me quickly review them. First of all, the riot was occasioned by the success of Paul's ministry in Ephesus. Verse 23, "About that time there arose a great disturbance about the way." And the way we saw last week is New Testament language for the followers of Jesus who are living by his teaching as opposed to the teachings of the world. And it's an incredible affirmation of Paul's ministry that it was so successful that it became a threat to the whole culture of the city. Would that God's people were so vitally alive today that a very presence would stir up our communities because they feel threatened by the presence of Jesus. Wouldn't that be great? Well, we're a long ways away from that, and that's a sad commentary on the fact that we've lost our salt and we're not always the kind of light that we need to be. The riot was occasioned by the success of Paul's ministry, and then we saw the riot head a ringleader. His name was Demetrius. Demetrius was a silversmith, it didn't take him very long to figure out that if the gospel continued to have such a success in Ephesus, it was going to cost him and his fellow tradesmen a lot of business. So he called them together, he warned them about the prospect of losing business, and then for good measure he threw in the fact that the goddess Artemis was going to be threatened, and that of course stirred up the rest of the city because now everybody's religious life was on the line. And so the third thing we saw is that the result of all of this was a city-wide riot. Verse 23, "soon the whole city was in an uproar and they rushed as one man into the theater." I was really struck last week when we were watching the Ray Van Der Laan video how huge that theater was, weren't you? I brought along just a couple of pictures to refresh your memory. This thing had seats for 24,000 people and had standing room for another thousand. And just to show you the size of that, here it is with people in it, you see how tiny they are compared to the whole thing. The whole thing is dug into a hillside and I'm always astonished at their ability to fine-tune the acoustics in a day and age where they had no PA systems. Isn't that amazing? I mean, sometimes we think the ancients were primitive and didn't know much, but don't you ever kid yourself, they were smart and they knew things that sometimes we still haven't really caught on to. So the whole city was in an uproar and for two hours, however many there were in that theater, shouted at the top of their lungs, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians." Can't you feel the hair stand on the back of your neck when you imagine that kind of fervor expressed for that many hours? So that brings us then to the fourth observation or the fourth element in this story that I think is significant for us, and that is the fact that the city clerk manages to get the crowd under control. And I asked you to do some homework last week, trying to identify four elements that he used to do this. By Sunday night, I already had an email from one of the couples here outlining all four elements that I had picked. See if it matches yours, assuming of course, assuming that you did your homework. First thing I want us to note about the city clerk in attempting to quiet the crowd, he affirms their belief in their goddess, Artemis. The city clerk quieted the crowd and said, "Men of Ephesus, 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?" Now that's really interesting because nobody quite knows what that means. People think that in ancient days meteorites were assumed to be a gift from the gods, and there is a theory that perhaps the worship of Artemis was associated with some kind of stone that came from heaven, or else somebody who started a rumor that Artemis was from heaven. People don't really quite know, but those are the theories. Then he goes on to say in verse 36, "Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to be quiet and not do anything rash." These facts, he says, are undeniable. And the relevance of this to us, as I pointed out last week, is that the reality of life is that when our most fundamental values and securities are being threatened, whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually, the result is anxiety. And the degree of anxiety that we experience depends, on the one hand, on the severity of the threat, whether real or imagined, and our own ability to cope with it. We all have varying degrees of resistance to things that come at us. The more traumatized we've been in life, the earlier in life we have been traumatized, the thinner our skin is in certain instances, and the more likely we will be bowled over by stimuli that are coming at us. If you've ever had a panic attack, you know the horror of that feeling. That said, we all have trigger points. And if we get pushed far enough to the place of terror, far enough to the place of losing our sanity, our safety, or our security, the result is terror and turmoil that overwhelms our system. Now Valerie will probably talk about this a little bit more next week when she brings the Mother's Day message, but brain science in recent years has determined that whenever we face a traumatic experience, brain chemicals are released that hinder our ability to think logically and rationally. The higher functions of our brain get shut down for the purpose of just getting out of here and surviving. And as I said, if you've ever had a panic attack or know of somebody that's had a panic attack, your whole system is just flooded with a lot of people think they're having a heart attack when they're having panic attacks because their whole body is just under such terrible stress, they'll often go running to emergency and are often, you know, dismayed to discover there's nothing wrong. It's just an emotional reaction to a situation that is overwhelming and overpowering. When that happens, for that anxiety to settle, two things have to happen. First of all, there has to be the passage of time, depending on how many chemicals have been released and how sensitive your system is and how flooded your body is, that needs to settle down and that can take anywhere from hours to days. In this particular instance, you'll notice the city clerk allowed them to go on for two hours because there was no way that he could stop them until that energy had been dissipated. And it reminds me in the olden days of when motors, cars, or tractors had carburetors, remember that? And you'd flood the car or you'd flood the carburetor and all you could do is didn't help to crank it, you just had to wait until it all drained out somehow or another before it could kick in. Takes time, takes time to come back to your senses. But there's a second thing that needs to happen and that is that fears need to be allayed. You need to know that you're okay and that the threat is gone. And so that's what he does here, the clerk. Men of Ephesus doesn't all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of our image which fell from heaven since these facts are undeniable, you ought to be quiet and not do anything rash. Very important principle here, if you ever find yourself in a situation where either your emotions are so rammed up that you're practically out of control or you're in a relationship where something has happened and the other person's emotions are so high that they are overpowered by the emotions, then one of the things that we need to learn in those kind of situations is that that is not a rational place. I won't ask you to put your hand up, but how many of us here haven't ever found ourselves in relationships, sometimes very intimate relationships, where there's no use in talking anymore because the more you talk, the worse it gets, isn't that true? It's like, well, the reason is when your system is flooded, it's no longer rational. So in those instances, we need to give time for those chemicals to wear off, for those emotions to settle down, and then once the emotions are settled down, we need to do everything we can to affirm the safety and the security of where that person finds himself or herself. Does that make sense? That's what's happening here. Two hours have passed by, and the crowd has run out of energy, they're ready to listen. Now he can quiet them, and now he tells them, "Look, I know you're worried about Artemis. I know you're worried that your whole way of life is going to disappear. Artemis is a big girl, she can look after herself and she can look after you. Settle down." That's the beginning of how he quiets the crowd. Very interesting, I think. The next thing that he does then is he reaffirms the real issue. What was the real issue in Ephesus? Was it Artemis? No, it wasn't Artemis. Artemis got brought into the picture because Demetrius and his craftsmen were smart and there is a connection between their miniature temples of Artemis that they make and the worship of Artemis, but the real concern was the business. And I would be greatly surprised if Demetrius was such a religious person that he carried diddly squat about Artemis. It was a convenient tool to get the whole city up in turmoil. And so what the city clerk does here is he brings it back to the real issue and he says the real issue is not that you have to worry about Artemis being attacked because these men that you've dragged into the theater, Gaius and Aristarchus, who were companions from Macedonia that were going with Paul, they haven't said a bad thing about our goddess. Verse 37, "You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess." Two principles here that apply to all of us relationally that I think are really helpful and that is this, number one, when feelings are stirred up, whether in our own lives or in somebody else's life, we are ready to believe almost anything. Did you know that? Remember what the text says earlier about all these folks in the theater? Verse 32, "The assembly was in confusion, some were shouting one thing, some another, most of the people didn't even know why they were there." They didn't even know why they were there. They were caught up in mob psychology. Why? Because when there is a lot of emotion going around and when you have been stirred emotionally, you believe just about anything. My experience about this, and I have more than a little experience in this field, is that when people are troubled about a certain thing, they can't always identify why it is that they are feeling what they are feeling. They come together, they don't know why they have come together, they just know there has got to be something wrong because you wouldn't have this many people upset if there wasn't something really wrong, right? So now, nobody can live with feelings that don't make sense. Now, listen to me carefully, what happens, and we all do this, we try to create a narrative that explains why we are feeling what we are feeling. We become open to what Valerie and I like to call "the whispers." The enemy comes along and he feeds us a storyline. You'll see how this happens in your own life. If you are mad at somebody or somebody has hurt you and you begin to dwell on that hurt, now you look at them through the eyes of hurt and you begin to line up everything they have ever done, everything they have ever said, and you start fitting it into a narrative, isn't that true? And before you know it, I have had people tell me later on that they carry on conversations with me in their head and they have me saying things that I would never ever say in a lifetime to anybody, and then they are mad at me because they have had that conversation. How do you defend yourself against that? Be careful when emotions are stirred and don't buy every story you might ever hear because they will be slanted to get you to side with the person who is telling you the story. I have been astonished over the years the stories that people will believe without any evidence of truth, and they do it sometimes in the name of fearing God. So that's one thing that happens here. When our feelings are stirred, we create a narrative that suits our story line. The second principle then, as I said earlier, is that once the emotions are settled down, then the people are ready to hear the facts, and that's what the city clerk does when he says they haven't said anything bad about the goddess, the reality is far removed from what you have gotten yourself excited about, let's face the truth. So what we have here is that he reaffirms the real issue. The real issue is Demetrius and his people are afraid of losing business. It's not that we're going to lose Artemis or that our city is all of a sudden going to lose its rightful place in the empire with our responsibility for looking after Artemis. You with me? Thank you. Third thing that he does, are you on track with your homework so far? I mean, it wasn't really difficult. If I can figure it out, you can figure it out. He warns against the danger of social unrest. Verse 40, as it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of today's events. In that case, we would not be able to account for this commotion since there is no reason for it. We are in danger of being charged with rioting. Now, if there's one thing that governing authorities fear the most, it is a popular uprising. And the reason for that is that a popular uprising threatens the social fabric of a society and it also threatens the position of those who are in leadership. I don't know if you ever thought about this, but the social fabric of a society is a very fragile thing. And it hinges on the contractual relationship between those who are in positions of leadership and those who follow. One of my favorite lines is that he who leads when no one follows only thinks that he's a leader. He's only going for a walk. You can't lead without people following. And the contractual relationship between leaders and followers boils down to something like this. The people need to know that the leaders love them, care for them, and will do everything that they can to provide legitimately and protect them. That's the function of leadership. That's the function of authority. Authorities, on the other hand, need to know that they have the loyalty, the submission, the willingness to follow on the part of the followers. And where that contractual relationship is honored and works to some degree or another, you have social rest because the authorities can punish wrongdoers and society is a good and a safe place. But we all know that we live in a very imperfect world. And what happens often is that that contract gets broken and you have public demonstrations against authority figures. You have, you know, in Brazil two weeks ago, 35 million workers all stayed home one week or one day to prove to the government that they had the power. Venezuela riots in the streets because there isn't enough bread and whatever else to go around. Those have become very threatening situations and when you get into a situation where your social fabric is broken and the people and the government are at odds with each other, guess what happens? You get riots. You get demonstrations. And depending on the nature of those riots and those demonstrations, two things are going to happen. Number one, the authorities are going to try to crack down because their position is threatened. The social fabric is unraveling. Think riot police, think military coups, think, you know, whatever it takes to suppress the public and we've seen lots of those in our own lifetime. If that doesn't succeed because it doesn't always succeed, guess what happens? The mob takes over. In either case, now listen to me well because we are privileged and blessed to live in democracies where we can change governments every four years at the ballot box. That's what preserves our sanity because four years is about as much as anybody can take of anybody governing in this day and age. Out goes the one and in comes the other. Hopefully that will get worse, believe you me, because people become increasingly ungovernable because there are no longer common values that bind our societies together. That's a whole other story. But in either case, what happens when the social fabric gets broken? You get social chaos and depending on the nature of the revolution, a ton and a half of bloodshed. Do you know that in the last century alone, the rise and the fall of communism in parts of the world have cost an estimated 100 million lives, 20 to 25 million in the Soviet Union, 65 million in China alone with the Chinese revolution, and then multitude of millions in smaller nations. Add them all up and it's somewhere between 90 and 100 million by most conservative estimates. When the social fabric breaks down, horror descends. And all you have to do today is look at the conflict in Syria. It's got the whole world convulsed in turmoil and how many lives have been lost and how much blood has been shed and how much damage do these things do for years and years and years to come. See, sometimes it's necessary to make societal changes. But I love what the British author GK Chesterton had to say about this. This is a quote that is actually a condensation of a longer paragraph that he wrote. He said, and these are great words of wisdom, he said, "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put out." Isn't that neat? Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason that it was put out. There's one thing that the Romans excelled at, let me just back up a moment here because I'm getting ahead of myself. It's so important to understand that sweeping changes in society, while sometimes necessary, are extremely painful and extremely costly. And it's much harder to tear something down than it is to build it up. And so be very careful, please be very careful that when movements start up that try to change things, you don't know where it's going to lead. I mean, I just thought of this the other day with reference to the social changes that are taking place in society. We're re-engineering sexuality, we're re-engineering marriage, we're re-engineering gender issues. For thousands of years, biblical norms have been accepted as creational norms in society, and now all of a sudden we're wise enough to throw all of those old fences away because we want to have freedom and we want to enjoy ourselves. Nobody knows where it's going to lead to and I can tell you it's not going to lead very good or to a very good place because the Lord has his own ideas of how life is supposed to function. I thought of this too the other day when I was reading the scripture, you know, we don't often think of David in the psalmist often talks about how great and good the law of God is and most of us were kind of, you know, a little bit rebellious about being told what to do but the law of God is God's provision to keep us safe and to keep society functioning and to the degree to which we just throw that away, to that degree we are inviting chaos. And I'm old enough to know it's a lot easier to get into a lot of trouble than it is to get out of trouble. And if you haven't yet discovered that, you'll discover that soon enough. So that's what happens here. One final point then. He encourages, the city clerk does, the complainants to follow due process. If then Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open, there are pro consoles, they can press charges. If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. So notice how he works here. First he affirms their belief in Artemis, then he brings them back to the real issue which is Demetrius, then he warns them against the danger of social unrest and then he encourages them to follow due process. Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance, there are the courts. And if there's anything the Roman Empire prided itself in, it was their system of justice. You couldn't just bring accusations against anybody, particularly if they were Roman citizens. You had to go through a judicial process whereby charges could be filed, accusations could be made, defense could be heard, and you had neutral authorities to one degree or another making the decision for you. That is God's way of preserving order in society and keeping injustice from gaining control. Later on Paul uses this to full advantage because remember, and you'll see this as the story goes on, the Jews are determined to kill Paul. It's not just the Gentiles that want to kill him. The Jews are after him all the time if you read the rest of the book of Acts. And what saves Paul's hide in each instance is that he is a Roman citizen, he appeals to a Roman sense of justice, and ultimately ends up in Rome appealing to the emperor and presenting his case there. Authority, government is what God has instituted. Paul writing to the Romans later on says everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities for there is no authority except that which God has established and the authorities that exist have been established by God. Say the alternative, the alternative is vendettas and vengeance. And societies that do not have a strong central government are tribal in nature and when they're tribal in nature, the offense of the one becomes the offense of the other and it's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and you get societies that bog down like what we see in Syria today and in other countries. One of the most foolish things in my judgment that the western world has ever done was try to impose democracy on Middle Eastern nations that are rooted in tribal patterns of leadership. Doesn't work and produces chaos and an incredible amount of bloodshed. God says he establishes authority and authority when it's functioning the way that it ought to be functioning is used of God to resolve conflicts in a just and fashionable way. And that's why western democracies have judicial systems, we have courts, we have police and yes they're not always perfect but they're a lot better than the alternative. Because the alternative always means that whoever's got the biggest mouth, the loudest voice and the most money and the most influence wins the day. The city clerk says use the judicial system Demetrius and there you can file your charges and hear your defense. That's why some years ago in the conflict that we as a congregation had with classes, we didn't just ignore their ruling though we felt unjustly done by. We appealed it to our denominational senate, to the judicial code committee which consisted of lawyers and pastors who were able to have a judicial hearing whereby accusations could be made, charges could be leveled, defense could be made and you know the rest of the story by and large they supported our position over against classes that we were wrongly done by. And even in those areas where we had some questions and disagreed we chose to submit to their leadership. Because you cannot build the kingdom of God on a principle of rebellion, does that make sense? God wants our hearts yielded, even Jesus, yielded to Pontius Pilate, Jesus yielded even to the religious leaders of his day. Because he understood that when all was said and done even when human authorities fail you as sometimes they do, God doesn't want and he watches over you and he will vindicate and he will raise you up as he raised up Jesus. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:37:03.160; remove through 00:37:08.000] That's some of the lessons I think that we learned from the riot in Ephesus. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:37:08.000; resume after this marked segment]