Context No. 2800 of 4322 · Acts

Acts 19:21-27: in context

21Now after these things had ended, Paul determined in the Spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.” 22Having sent into Macedonia two of those who served him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while. 23About that time there arose no small disturbance concerning the Way. 24For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen, 25whom he gathered together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, “Sirs, you know that by this business we have our wealth. 26You see and hear that not at Ephesus alone, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are no gods that are made with hands. 27Not only is there danger that this our trade come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be counted as nothing and her majesty destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worships.”

Paul is setting his sights on Jerusalem and then Rome when Ephesus boils over. Demetrius, a silversmith who makes shrines of the goddess Artemis, gathers his fellow craftsmen and lays out the trouble in a revealing order. First he says it plainly: by this business we have our wealth, and this Paul is persuading crowds all over Asia that gods made with hands are no gods at all. Only then does he add that the temple of great Artemis may be discredited and her majesty destroyed.

Watch how he dresses financial self-interest in religious devotion. He opens with the threat to their income and closes with the honor of the goddess, but the sequence gives him away. The gospel endangered his profits first, and he recruited the whole city's piety to defend his pocketbook. Faith is often opposed not because anyone has shown it false, but because it would cost someone money or standing to accept it.

When I resist a truth, is it really about the truth, or about what accepting the truth would cost me?

Sources

Acts 19:26: "This Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are no gods that are made with hands."
1 Timothy 6:10: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."
Acts 16:19: "When her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas."