A, The Second Sunday after Christmas - Ephesians 1:3-14 "The Ephesian Experience"

The hatred humanity has for itself has manifested itself in peculiar ways in our society today.  As some hate their created self, they seek a change that pits their feelings against their minds—their feelings  against their bodies. 

In a twist of human perversion against God, folk who through the love of God speak the truth in love, are now accused of hate crimes against those who hate their created bodies, and the positions in which they are placed by God in our modern society. 

Truth has become subjective to the point where right has become wrong, and wrong has become right.  One objective truth outside “the feeling-self” is seen as evil, but a subjective truth from “the feeling-individual-self” is worshipped as the ultimate good.  The ludicrousness of our society today has become a place where people can be charged for hate crimes if someone’s feelings get hurt, while the hurt person actually hates what they were created to be.

This bitterness of humanity’s self has swept through society, and unfortunately the church has opened its doors to this bitterness.  That might seem good and loving to some.  The thought is that by bringing the world in and loving their feelings of hatred against themselves, the church can love them into not hating themselves and the darkness that dwells within.

However, this style of mission is not the mission to which God calls us in his word.  Rather, it’s self-centred, lazy, apathetic, and non-biblical.  The tide is running the wrong way.  A tsunami of spiritual darkness is welcomed into the church, and it destroys the church by severing the sovereignty of its one, holy, head—Jesus Christ.   

Scripture clearly calls God’s church to be cleansed of its sin through the work of Jesus Christ, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit who are sent by God the Father so that the body is grafted back into its head.  As Christ the head was sent into the world, likewise, we having been covered by God’s holiness, are sent into the darkness, as the light of Christ in a fallen world.  

Instead, the church is joining humanity in its deception that the self is sovereign, and God, if he is allowed to exist at all, is no longer supreme nor transcendent, but rather is made subject to how the individual self feels. 

Jesus was sent by God the Father.  Of Jesus we hear, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” (John 1:1–5, 9–10 ESV)

John the Baptist was sent by the Holy Spirit.  Of him we hear, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.” (John 1:6–8 ESV)

As God’s church, we are sent as disciples to disciple the world having been forgiven and fed by the apostolic teaching of those who witnessed Jesus being sent to suffer on the cross for our sin, and was raised to life, as the non-extinguishable light of eternal life.

God’s congregation in Ephesus stands as a lighthouse, warning God’s church—yesterday, today, and tomorrow—as it sails through the darkness of humanity’s hatred of God and itself.  Unfortunately, most denominations, including world-wide Lutheranism has not understood the light shining in the darkness, is not receiving the warning, and is being shipwrecked and broken up on the rocks of human desires.  It’s occurring through navigation using the deceptive maps of human love and feelings, which is really hatred of the human self and God’s placement of humanity through the Holy Spirit.

The Ephesian congregation was led by Saint Paul from the synagogue in Ephesus after three months of reasoning with the unbelieving Jews of the city.  The congregation moved to the hall of Tyrannus, which is the hall of the “supreme ruler” from where we get the English word “tyrant”.  But rather than becoming a tyrant to the Ephesians, Paul daily proclaims the supreme rule of Jesus Christ to both Jews and Gentiles for over two years.

Paul does not proclaim the domination of Christ at Ephesus, but rather the inheritance and predestination of those who trust in Jesus having heard of his salvation.  Paul says, “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1:11–14 ESV)

In Acts we hear how the Holy Spirit powerfully worked through Paul at Ephesus, healing many in the purpose of God’s will.  On the other hand, seven sons of a Jewish priest called Sceva were exposed as powerless when attempting to exorcise a demon which turned, attacked, and shamed them. 

The supreme power of Jesus Christ did not dwell amongst the Jews without their trust that Jesus Christ was the head.  This is demonstrated by the sons who sought to invoke the name of Jesus outside the counsel of God’s will, without the sealing faith of the Holy Spirit.

At the other extreme in Ephesus was the “heavenly place of Artemis”, a popular pagan female worship cult that enticed and tempted the church in Ephesus to welcome the deception of worshipping a rock that fell from the sky.  The Artemis cult loomed large over Ephesus as the town clerk is reported as saying in the book of Acts, “the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky?”  (Acts 19:35 ESV)

A commotion had broken out amongst the metalsmiths who forged silver idols (literally: dwellings) of Artemis.  After Paul’s proclamation of Christ these craftsmen were losing business throughout Asia Minor and Ephesus. So, they whipped up a mob to oppose the truth of Paul’s proclamation knowing that “gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.” (Acts 19:26–27 ESV)

Paul was in Ephesus just shy of three years, after he left, he still had cause to caution them against the powers and principalities of the Artemis cult and to refocus them on Christ as the heavenly place, tabernacling or dwelling amongst them as the only true heavenly place, rather than leaving them in the bitterness of false female idolatry.

What Paul says from the outset of his letter to the Ephesians is of crucial importance and throughout the rest of his letter Paul repeats and restates what he says here at the start,  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight.” (Ephesians 1:3–8 ESV)

We, like the Ephesian church, are called to accept the wisdom and insight of God and return to the heavenly place where we gather around Christ, inside and outside of time—the holy catholic and apostolic church.  We are called out of the world, so we can be sent as the light of Christ into the world, to expose the dark desires of the world, and show them the forgiveness under which we live.  We have the blessing as God’s beloved, to love as Christ, our Beloved, loves us. 

When God spoke through Paul to the Ephesians and then to Timothy, the pastor who served at Ephesus after him, God’s wisdom and prudence was omniscient­—all-knowing.  He knew then that the church would be tempted by Artemis worship today, as it was yesterday, and as it will be tomorrow!

We can thank God that Artemis is nothing. And the temple where the stone fell from heaven is desolate.  And we can thank God that he calls us to see the warning signs given to us through the Ephesian experience. We are reminded by Luke in his God-inspired record of the Holy Spirit’s work at Ephesus in the book of Acts, from Paul’s letters to the Ephesian congregation and Pastor Timothy, and Jesus’ call of repentance to the Ephesus church in John’s Revelation. 

We can also see the Holy Spirit’s warning to us through the science of biology where the bitterness of Artemis has been assigned to a genus of daisy plants named by Artemisia II of Caria .  One of which is “artemisia vulgaris” or “mugwort” from where the city of Chernobyl gets its name and now stands as a desolate radioactive warning in the modern world, and to a church tempted to follow the world in its woke Artemis faith idolatries that hates God’s ordering of one’s place in society, that rejects the designation of our human biology, and hates the fact that God is our Creator.

The Holy Spirit also calls us back into the word of God where another genus of artemisia stands as a warning to the world-wide church following the wide path to destruction.  This is “Wormwood” or  “artemisia absinthium”.

Uncannily similar to the report of Artemis in Acts nineteen, John prophesies in Revelation chapter eight, “The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.” (Revelation 8:10–11 ESV)

Artemis has fallen and wormwood will fall on those who no longer listen to God.  Jesus Christ is the one and only blazing holy star of God raised up into the heavenly realm to his right hand. Now by the power of the Holy Spirit, God continues to split from his church those who welcome an unholy wormwood or bitter Artemis into its midst.    He calls us from the worship of human desires and flesh in all its various perversities to receive Jesus—the Word made flesh.  He leads us from those who invoke Jesus’ name without a faith empowered by the Holy Spirit, and away from baptismal waters that have been poisoned by fruits of vulgar Artemis. 

In the maturity of Jesus Christ, God splits from his church those who’ve embittered the Holy Spirit with a false unionism rather than a unity of oneness in the Holy Spirit to which the obedient church follows—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:5–6 ESV)

Let us pray.  Lord Jesus you are the only one who has ascended to God the Father as God the Son.  When you ascended on high you led a host of captives in your holy train.  Continue to cleanse your faithful captives with your blood as we’re daily led to repentance by the Holy Spirit.  Thankyou for the gifts of your word and sacraments that are given to sustain us in your life as male and female disciples of faith, so that we might love those whose lives are full of hateful desires towards you, hate where you have placed them, and hate the identity you have given to them. Amen. 

A, The Birth of our Lord, Christmas Day- Isaiah 62:6-12 "The Sign for all Times"

Isaiah 62:6–12 (ESV) On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: “I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have laboured; but those who garner it shall eat it and praise the Lord, and those who gather it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.” Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples. Behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, “Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.” And they shall be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord; and you shall be called Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.

Growing up outside towns, country kids ride their bikes on rural roads and over rough tricky terrain.  Many of us have childhood memories of negotiating our way along tracks around sticks, stones, and soft sandy soils.  There was nothing worse than the bike being jolted after hitting an obstacle only to feel its effect on your bottom as the bump shot up through the saddle of the bike seat.  Or, the strain on your legs to keep pedalling when the wheels of your bike sank in sand almost bringing you to a standstill.

When growing up on the farm riding a bicycle, I often dreamt and wished I lived in town.  Oh, how wonderful it would be to ride roads of bitumen and footpaths of cement where my backside could savour the smoothness of the highways and byways prepared for smooth sailing on a bicycle!

We are reminded of this as Isaiah calls God to prepare a way for his people in Zion — a restored Jerusalem. Isaiah calls God to, “Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples.” (Isaiah 62:10 ESV)

Ah, how nice it would be not to hit stones with my wheels, not to struggle in sandy soils, and to ride like a royal on repaired roads of hot-mix and concrete!

Though, this is not just a picture of a childhood dream! It’s a picture of Zion, a new Jerusalem.  What is this Jerusalem, this Zion?  It’s not just a place of pleasant highways and byways!  It’s a place where all roads lead to the righteousness of God!  Where humanity can once again live with God in peace, as God originally intended when he created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden!

For us it is not the city of Jerusalem as such, but the place where heaven and earth, God and humanity, meet together in holy fellowship, where sin is atoned for, where salvation is realised in the recompense and reward of God.

But see what Isaiah says of Jerusalem­—of this holy Zion!  A strange thing occurs in this Jerusalem where God and humanity will meet.  The watchmen don’t merely watch and report what happens outside the city.  Rather, they are heralds, crying out to him who is outside the gates to come and cleanse the place.

The watchmen are called not to watch but to call God himself to remember Jerusalem.  This is unexpected, watchmen exposing the city, but for what purpose?  Watchmen should stand guard and protect the place against the enemy, not uncover the reality of a place to outsiders!

God had become an outsider in Jerusalem.  He had been thrown out of his own holy habitation.  His own people, chosen to be a holy nation turned their back on God; severing themselves from his presence at the temple, its Holy Place, and the Holies of Holies!  But Isaiah does not call the people back, to repent!  No! He calls God to come and establish Jerusalem and make it a praise in the earth.

In God’s eyes Jerusalem and its people had become wearisome to him rather than a praise in the earth.  

Of Judah and Jerusalem Isaiah speaks on God’s behalf, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: ‘Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.’ Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.” (Isaiah 1:2–4 ESV)

God’s people opposed him!  They made themselves his enemy, yet God sought to reconcile them to himself, “‘Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers.” (Isaiah 1:18–21 ESV)

So, God became the outsider, the enemy.  Now God engages faithful watchmen of the city to call God back into the city and restore it.  “Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples.” (Isaiah 62:10 ESV)

So, from behind the curtain of holy eternity a signal was sent.  Like a white flag is a sign of surrender the sign came.  However, it wasn’t a sign of surrender, but a sign of salvation was waved by God’s watchmen.  And God’s watchmen still wave this flag of salvation today, “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:12 ESV)

Shepherds became the first watchmen of God’s renewed kingdom.  Unclean men outside the gates of Jerusalem heard, saw, and witnessed baby Jesus who would become “Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles”. (1 Corinthians 1:23 ESV)

This baby Jesus would become both, “a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 8:14 ESV)

The call goes out this Christmas, for the church to allow Christ in from outside to rightfully take his place back into the heart of Christmas.  For the church to be the Jerusalem of God, to be the sanctuary where God and humanity gather around the throne of grace.

Jerusalem and the temple mound still stand as the testimony from God to Christians and Jews that God removes the stones from his pathway of salvation.  It continues to be so, but worse will happen to Jerusalem at an appointed time by God as a sign so God’s church turns from its sin from which Isaiah was calling Jerusalem and Judah. The desolation that Isaiah proclaims of Jerusalem, will make Chernobyl’s radiation look like a light sunburn.  The brokenness and rock-strewn path of Jerusalem, of Mugwort[1], will be cleared by God’s Son when he returns to put right the salvation of God, proclaimed by Isaiah

Like a child on a bike picturing a perfect pathway on which to ride, God sent his Son to reform the road of righteousness back to his holy presence.  The curtain of temple of God’s holiness has long been torn asunder, and the temple is gone, yet the cornerstone of our salvation remains in Christ Jesus.

The Son of God is now our sign.  From the crucifix the Christ child is risen and comes back into the most desolate of godless places and offers to restore hearts, people, and nations back into fellowship with God our Heavenly Father.  He is our peace through his birth, death, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of our Father, and he is coming again.  Come Lord Jesus come!

Daughter of Zion, know your master’s manger! See the signs! Repent and allow for the restoration work of the Holy Spirit!  Let understanding be with a Holy Spirit-filled understanding within us, your church.  Let us stand firm in faith under God’s word, or not at all! 

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit harness us, your church, call Christ into its Jerusalem and cleanse the stones from Christ’s holy highway.  Let the cross of Christ’s birth and resurrection be raised up as our eternal sign in the world.  Thank you for making your faithful church holy through his sinless blood.   Remove all nuclear reactivity from your church, stop us from split from you and fuse within us renewed righteousness and clear salvation in Jesus Christ alone.  Amen.

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[1] Mugwort is “artemisia vulgaris,” (see Acts 19:23-41, where the Ephesian church followed Christ under the constant shadow of the common vulgar female Artemis cult). Mugwort is from where the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl gets its name. See Paul’s written call for the Ephesians to remain in the “heavenly place” in Jesus Christ and not other “heavenly places” throughout his letter to the Ephesians. (Eph 1:3,10,20,  2:6, 3:10,15 4:10, 6:9,12)  Chernobyl stands as a modern-day sign for the church to reject the worldly vulgarity and the commonness of “Artemis type heavenly places”.  Jerusalem in the next generation will become Mugwort, a radioactive sign, for the church, greater than Chernobyl, even greater than Sodom and Gomorrah (Isaiah 1:9-10, 3:9).  God was prepared to make a similar sacrifice of Israel to save Judah from falling. (Isaiah 7)   Similarly, God will reveal his power to a church that has rejected his Son, the Christ Child - Immanuel, in the future desolation of Jerusalem as a sign calling his people back to him, before the day when Christ will cleanse Mugwort of its radiation with his light of eternal life at his second coming.  It’s the church’s mission to proclaimed Christ crucified to both Jews and Gentiles so some might repent and be saved.

B, The Baptism of our Lord, Epiphany 1 - Acts 19:1-7 "Epiphany in Ephesus"

There were many things going on in the years leading up to Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension.

For two to three hundred years within “Jerusalem Judaism”, murder, scandals, power battles, and political jockeying for favourable positions were occurring at a time when big social changes outside the temple were causing much chaos and confusion in a Greco-Roman world.

Jews whom God had allowed to be exiled to the east, were now not returning to Jerusalem.  Instead, they were spreading as diaspora throughout this new world and were seeking to come to terms with paganism and the philosophical thoughts that abounded in the Hellenisation of the Greco-Roman world.  

Years before, the Greek ruler, Alexander the Great, had annexed the known world under his control.  His kingdom spanned from India in the East to Europe in the west.  He became the father of Hellenisation, which sought to integrate Persian and Greek culture, religion, philosophical thinking, language, and identity.  This was the era in which the philosophical thoughts of Socrates, Plato, and the like, spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.

There were both positives and negatives for Jews in this world.  They were allowed to practice the Jewish faith, and at this time the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek by seventy-two translators at Alexandria in North Africa.  The translation is called Septuagint, commonly referred to as the LXX, or seventy, for its numbers of translators.  This was a notable positive for the mission of God the Father of the Jews amongst the Gentiles.  But the danger for Jewish faith was monotheism was now challenged by a pantheon of polytheistic male and female gods and ideologies.

Into this Jesus was born.  John the Baptist baptised Jews in the Jordan, preparing and refocusing the people of God, for the fullness of time came for God to fulfill his promise to Israel, made through the prophets of old.  Three full years saw the completion of God’s covenant with humanity, and then the work of the Holy Spirit continued in a new way, revealing Jesus Christ as “the way of God” for both Jews and Gentiles in Greco-Roman society.

The way of God born of one man and his remaining eleven disciples, at face value, was not going to survive, for all that long, amongst a hostile Jewish culture, from which it came.  Nor did anyone expect the “way of God” to survive the deluge of polytheistic gods and ideologies competing for people’s attention in this diverse new world.

But it did!  Why?  It was the power of God the Holy Spirit!  The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus, the Son of God, who put his divinity aside, and suffered on earth as did any other person.  But he finished it without sinning!  Jesus allowed the Holy Spirit to lead him in life and death, fulfilling God the Father’s will in the fullness of time!  The Holy Spirit then raised Jesus from the dead to the right hand of the Father at his ascension after the resurrection.  Now the Holy Spirit would continue revealing the ascended Christ to both Jews and Gentiles!

The spread of the Gospel through the way of God was helped by what God allowed to occur in the dispersion of Jews in the four hundred years since the exile to Babylon before Jesus’ coming.  Jews are notable traders, and they were found along the trade routes of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in the Roman Empire, that had grown and won out over all former empires.

Ephesus, once a seaport, was one of these trading places enroute to somewhere else!  But not only were goods traded, many ideas and philosophies were exchanged and intertwined along these routes that passed from the Far East to Rome and onto Western Europe.

Artemis was a female goddess in Asia Minor.  The world worshipped her.  (Acts 19:27) Ephesus housed her temple and the town relied on Artemis for its honour, as well as trade. 

To the Greeks she was known as Artemis, to the Romans, this same goddess is known as Diana.  We might consider her as a Mother Nature cult, since she was the patron goddess of nature, hunters, wildlife, and childbirth, to name a few.

The way of God, the Gospel, first came to the Jews at Ephesus, as Paul briefly passed through its port and synagogue on his way to Caesarea.  This was his second missionary journey.  (Acts 18: 18-21) 

Next came a man named Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria in North Africa.  Being from this town named after Alexander the Great, and encouraged as a centre of academia, diversity of thought, and culture, Apollos was well equipped in the art of rhetoric and debate, and was competent in the Old Testament Scriptures, most likely the Greek Septuagint.

After Paul’s first visit, Apollos made a stand for Jesus Christ in the synagogue in Ephesus.  However, Priscilla and Aquila, known tentmakers and acquaintances of Paul, having heard him, took him aside and explained the way of God more accurately.  From there Apollos moves onto what we would know as Greece today.  (Acts 18:24-28)

After these two encounters some of the Jews begin to believe in the way of God.  They know of Jesus Christ but not of the power of God through the Holy Spirit.  We hear what happens from Acts chapter nineteen…

Paul said to the disciples in Ephesus, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”  And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.”  And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.”  On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.  And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.  There were about twelve men in all.”  (Acts 19:2–7 ESV)

Apollos, like John the Baptist brought a baptism of repentance, preparing for the coming of Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.  Now Paul, in the fullness of time, brings Jesus Christ with the power of the Holy Spirit.  Water and the Law came through Apollos, then through Paul the Holy Spirit brought the fullness of the Gospel.  Just as Jesus has called twelve into service during his ministry on earth, God did the same through Paul’s laying on of hands at Ephesus.

Paul remained in Ephesus for about three years on his third missionary journey.  (Acts 20:31) For the first three months he boldly persuaded them about the kingdom of God in the synagogue (Acts 19:8), but then moved to the hall of Tyrannus, where for the next two years, he continued to preach and teach, not only the Jews, but the Gentiles as well. 

The Holy Spirit gave Paul extraordinary healing powers while in Ephesus.  The sons of Sceva, sons of a Jewish High Priest, sought to copy Paul with their own exorcisms, but were overcome by the evil spirits they were trying to exorcize, because they sort to do it by their own power, without the power of the Holy Spirit.  Here stands a warning to anyone who seeks to work apart from the Holy Spirit, through their own human spirit.

So extraordinary was the event, the Sons of Sceva, were wounded and fled the house naked, bringing a sense of awe upon all at Ephesus.  So much so, a greater depth of reverence for Jesus Christ was fostered.  Even believers came confessing and divulging their practices.  Imagine that!  Such was the faith generated by the Holy Spirit in this event, they made public what they were doing, rather than chance being cut off from the power of God, by continuing in their hidden deeds.

Nearing the end of three years, as the Holy Spirit grew the way of God through Paul and the gathering in Ephesus, some became concerned their livelihoods were being diminished as more and more worshippers of Artemis became believers in the way of God through Jesus Christ.  There was much chaos and controversy in Ephesus, so much so, Paul’s fellow believers would not let Paul speak to the mob for fear of what might happen to him.

So, Paul left after being in Ephesus for just under three years, to continue his third missionary journey in Greece. 

On his way back to Jerusalem from Greece, Paul stopped in Miletus, to the south of Ephesus in Asia Minor and called the elders of Ephesus to him.  Paul teaches the elders in the wake of what had occurred earlier in Ephesus, and by what power he did it. 

He says, “You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia,  serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews;  how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house,  testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.  And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.  But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.  …for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.  Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”  (Acts 20:18–24, 27b-28 ESV)

Paul knows these overseers at Ephesus will be attacked by those seeking to subvert the way of God to the ways of men. (Acts 20:29-32) In fact, Paul was so gifted with discernment in the Holy Spirit, the ministry to Ephesus continues to them through his epistle to them (the book of Ephesians) and in his encouragement for Timothy to remain at Ephesus.  (Paul’s first and second letters to Timothy)

Paul’s letters to Ephesus and Saint Timothy, give us great insight into the congregation and the pastoral care of it in the face of pagan and Jewish persecution of the way of God.

Through Paul, the Holy Spirit leads the church in this era of transformation.  As the pendulum of change swings, Paul seeks to keep the centrality of the cross before the people of Ephesus. 

Paul places the fulfilment of God’s fatherhood in Jesus Christ before the Ephesian congregation, which is caught between, the fatherhood through circumcision in the Law and its extreme opposite uncircumcised fatherless chaos and corruption.

Through Paul and Timothy, the Holy Spirit seeks to put the brakes on the pendulum swing from Judaism to pagan chaos and disorder in the church.  He does this by encouraging faith in the complementarian order within the church, as God had originally ordained in creation and then corrected and restored in Jesus Christ at the cross.  This is done in the face of “new woman” Artemis cultic worship in Ephesus, which is not unlike the mother earth and egalitarian imbalances pushed in our society today.  Not to mention, the Artemis magic similarities with the powers and principalities of the occult.

During 2024, as the LCANZ considers the expectations put before us in the last Synod, we will do well to further investigate and listen to the work of the Holy Spirit in Ephesus in the book of Acts and through Paul’s letters to the Ephesian congregation and Timothy it’s young pastor.  We know and do this trusting the Holy Spirit will keep us in Christ Jesus so like Paul amongst the Ephesians we can be faithfully testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Further reading: Acts 18:24-20:1, 17-38, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and letters First and Second Timothy, the pastor at Ephesus when Paul wrote to him.