Avoiding Change with your Mouth and not your Mind
When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Soon the whole city was in an uproar. 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 would not let him. Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater. But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” 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. The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there.
Acts 19:28–34 NIV Read More
Sometimes people don’t deal with new ideas or change very well. That is probably an understatement in this case. This scene in Ephesus reminds me of some marches in the US in recent years where nobody was sure what the real cause was all about. These Silversmiths started it off by shouting “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” and worked the whole city into an uproar. Considering ancient Ephesus, this would be the equivalent of a band of people in Lexington randomly forming a Wildcat parade and marching to the stadium in a frenzy. Nobody was against Artemis in the mass population of Ephesus, only this little sect of Judaism.
But the crowd is always louder than the individual. By the time the riot made it to the stadium (which seated more than the Ford Center, and was open so you could see from a half mile how full the seats were) the people were yelling and cheering and shouting all different things and didn’t even know why they were there.
We might not riot so much, today, but we do tend to join the voice of the crowd and speak in whispers, rumors, Facebook likes, and gossip beyond the facts that we know are true. If you turned the rumor mill into shouts, sometimes we’d be just like the Ephesians that “Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there.”
Proverbs 10 says “Sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent hold their tongues. Whoever conceals hatred with lying lips and spreads slander is a fool.”
Sin is not ended by saying a bunch of words. This riot in Ephesus would come to an instant halt if all the people that didn’t know what they were saying would just be quiet. The same is true for us as we form opinions and judgments of things. A mentor of mine said, “Too often we speak before we find our voice on a subject,” and that what was happening in Ephesus.
Let’s not be like those Ephesians. Let’s be like the Ephesians that would rather stay home and be quiet as they grew wise than shout nonsense in the public square.
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