Sermon Tone Analysis

March 16, 2012

By John Barnett

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What does a grace-energized church look like?

A grace-energized church is where believers are empowered by God to magnify Christ, when God's Word is prevailing in and through their lives, and they are willing to consecrate their lives and rid themselves of anything that hinders or displeases God.

As you open in your Bibles, we will examine one of the most amazing chapters in the Bible, Acts 19.

In this chapter we find a powerful grace-energized church that God used, and where Christ's glory is supreme.

This chapter is the biography of the saints at Ephesus, a phenomenal grace-energized church, and in that account we find *the timeless keys to a church God can use greatly.

*

God's Word explains to us what makes Christ's church powerful in any culture.

It is when:

• *God’s Son is magnified, and*

• *God’s People are consecrated, then*

• *God's Word prevailed.*

Jesus was magnified and God's Word prevailed in this group of consecrated people in the New Testament church at Ephesus.

What a combination to have for the Lord in any generation.

That powerful ministry was the result of a purged and obedient local church.

The grace-energized saints of Ephesus overcame the same pressures facing us as believers today: a pleasure seeking culture, a mind-assaulting media, and a materialism-dominated way of life.

God's Word always has an answer for how to walk in the Spirit, abide in Christ, and see Christ's church prevail in an ever darkening world.

The struggle is always against our flesh and the Devil; and resisting both is what we are charged with as an imperative from God's Word.

In this church we see grace-energized saints, walking in the power of God’s Spirit.

To study this model church at Ephesus is to see…

*When God's Word Prevailed in Dark Ephesus*

Acts 19 records one of the greatest revivals in Biblical history.

Paul went to the godless heart of the Eastern Roman Empire called Ephesus.

There he confronted the evils of culture that godlessness begets: materialism, pride, occultism, and sensuality—each of which is still a constant enemy of our walk with Christ.

The kingdom of darkness was left shaken to the core, confused and fighting against itself.

Then, God called out a group of believers that would form one of the greatest churches of the New Testament era.

By their zenith they numbered as many as 50,000 and were the home church of Paul, Mary, John, and Timothy.

Before we read through Acts 19 for a look at this incredible revival that swept through the church at Ephesus, remember the facts about this place.

Ephesus was a coastal seaport along the commercial trade route linking east to west.

For hundreds of years the worship of Diana (or Artemis) had made Ephesus a thriving, and safe commercial center.

Known as the “Treasure House of Asia” the city of Ephesus also became a center for materialism and ambition.

The Temple dedicated to Diana was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

A forest of 127 bejeweled and carved sixty foot high marble pillars rose around the perimeter; and a statue of a sex goddess, worshipped by unbridled immorality was at the center of everything done in that city.

The worship of Artemis was the worship of the desires of the flesh to their fullest.

Hundreds of prostitutes were always on the grounds to promote this unrestrained indulgence of the flesh.

Ephesus was a magnet for not just the sexually enslaved; it was also the center of the promotion of the black arts, witchcraft, superstition, and all the powers of Satan.

It was like a cesspool where everything occultic was collected.

Ephesus became the watering hole where every charlatan, medium, palm-reader, spiritist, magician, and witch felt right at home.

That helps us understand why Paul would tell these Ephesians that there was so much more than the physical world to contend with.

We recall his words in Ephesians 6:12.

/"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."/

So in this very dark, very worldly, very alluring place of sin—Christ's church was born.

And Acts 19:8-20 records that amazing birth.

Please stand with me and listen to what God can do when His Son is magnified, His Word unleashed, and His children are consecrated for His Glory.

*Facing the Darkness* (Acts 19:8-10)

In Acts 19:8-10 we find the plan God laid on Paul’s heart for reaching a society so much like ours.

Paul faced off against the powers of darkness in Ephesus by one of the longest recorded times he ever got to spend teaching God's Word in a synagogue.

Paul spent three months in intense Bible teaching right there in the shadow of Diana’s Temple of Darkness.

Look how Luke describes that time in Acts 19:8-10.

Acts 19:8-10 /"And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. 9 But when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.

10 And this continued for two years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks."/

Paul rented a lecture hall from a “Tyrannus” and using the customary lunch and siesta time observed each day in the Roman Empire .

Paul didn’t want to just be another religious peddler, living off the hardworking people of Ephesus.

He wanted nothing to stand in the way of his message so he labored night and day with his own hands, and taught any and all who would come on the afternoon break time.

Look at the next verse.

Paul did this daily for two years.

That means Paul invested as much as five hours a day for 24 months.

With the Sabbath off for rest, that means Paul invested over three thousand hours in teaching into the church at Ephesus.

That is equivalent to thirty-years of morning and evening sermons at this church all packed into two years.

Paul gave them a lifetime of learning in a very short time.

Listen to the results of this extensive and focused teaching time shedding Christ's light in that sin-darkened culture.

I like to describe this as--

*Penetrating the Darkness *(Acts 19:11-12)

Acts 19:11-12/" Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them."/

We already saw in v. 10 that Luke said that “all” who dwelt in the Roman province of Asia (which is roughly modern day Turkey) were exposed to God's Word.

In the area surrounding Ephesus there are the famous seven churches that Jesus wrote to in Revelation.

It is very possible that each of them were a by-product of this extensive and intensive proclamation of God's Word.

The word “handkerchiefs” is actual the word for the sweat rags of the workshop .

The word “aprons” is the word for the leather workers apron.

There in the hot and humid seaside tent-makers quarters, the rags that Paul used to wipe his face as he labored to work to pay his way and the way of those who were with him—when taken from that shop by those who wanted him to help their loved ones, healed them.

That is unusual.

God honored Paul’s message, his hard work, and most of all his assault on the realm of Satan’s hold over these enslaved and sin-darkened people.

God looks for men and women to use who are willing to work unhindered by the sacrifice, laboring with an undivided heart, proclaiming an undiluted message, investing even in a humble occupation—all to make the Gospel of Christ known.

This level of commitment was not new to Paul.

Paul sewed tents in the morning, taught the Bible all afternoon, discipled fellow tent makers into the evening, went on visitation, prayed through sleepless nights and wrestled with the Devil.

All that to get the Gospel out, and see a church born in the center of Satan’s lands of darkness.

What a wonderful, inspiring servant of the Lord Paul must have been.

And as always happens: light attracts bugs.

The powerful work of God was so amazing that Satan sent some bugs to hinder that work in Acts 19, they began--

*Faking the Light *(Acts 19:13-16)

In the midst of these “unusual” miracles a clever group opportunists wanted to get in on the action and started ‘selling’ the power of God.

But God powerfully silenced their mockery.

This event and the powerful outpouring of God’s power deeply penetrated the hearts of the believers.

They saw clearly that God was Living and True and that they as His children must be—

*Renouncing the Darkness* (Acts 19:17-20)

This was the turning point.

The power of darkness was broken.

Satan’s house was divided.

Christ triumphantly opened the door to great ministry through this church.

Acts 19:17-18 /"This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.18

And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds.

19 Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all.

And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver.

20 So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed."/

The most remarkable facet of Paul’s ministry to this church is that when Paul taught the Ephesian believers about the strategies of Satan, they collected and burned all of the objects associated with demonic and satanic contact.

The level of their desire to repent and follow the Lord was seen in this costly choice to rid their lives of anything that displeased Him.

Their example recorded by God in His Word should stir us to ask, “Have we likewise carefully purged out of our lives anything that displeases the Lord?”

As you look back at v. 19, doesn’t that verse amaze you?

What did God lead Paul to do to prompt such a huge response in public with such great sacrifice involved?