📖 Acts Intensive — Unit 8: Ephesus and the Long Goodbye (Acts 18:23–21:16)

I. Apollos at the Pier

The third missionary journey opens quietly. Paul left Antioch and went over the inland route through Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening the disciples in every city he passed through. While Paul was still on the road, Luke turns the camera to Ephesus and introduces a man whose ministry will run alongside Paul's for the rest of the New Testament. "Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John" (Acts 18:24–25, NKJV).

Apollos is one of the most fascinating figures in the New Testament. He was Egyptian-born, in a city famous for its great library and its intellectual climate. He was educated, articulate, fervent. His Bible was a good one — he knew the Old Testament Scriptures cold. But he was a generation behind. The latest news he had received from Jerusalem was about John the Baptist's ministry of repentance, and he had not yet heard about the cross, the resurrection, Pentecost, or the gift of the Holy Spirit. He preached what he knew, and what he knew was insufficient.

Aquila and Priscilla — the tentmaking couple Paul had left behind in Ephesus when he sailed for Syria — heard Apollos preach in the synagogue. They did not stand up and rebuke him in front of his audience. They did not write a tract titled The Errors of Apollos the Alexandrian. "They took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately" (Acts 18:26, NKJV). Read those words. The most learned preacher in Ephesus that day was discipled in private by a tentmaker and his wife. Apollos went on to become one of the most useful preachers in the early church — the Corinthians later compared him favorably with Paul, and Paul himself considered him a close colleague. None of that would have happened if a quiet couple in the back of the synagogue had not been willing to do the awkward work of correcting a famous teacher in private. The kingdom of God runs on Aquilas and Priscillas.

II. Twelve Men in Ephesus and Two Ways

Paul finally arrived at Ephesus. He found another piece of unfinished business. Twelve men, disciples of the same incomplete movement Apollos had been preaching, were living in the city. Paul asked them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" They said, "We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit" (Acts 19:2, NKJV). Paul probed further: "Into what then were you baptized?" They said, "Into John's baptism." Paul explained that John's baptism was a baptism of repentance preparing for the One who came after — Jesus Himself. The twelve men listened, were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid hands on them the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

I want to stop and turn this scene into a sermon, because the lesson is one we keep needing. Thomas Edison once said that he had to fail one thousand one hundred times to discover the light bulb. He used to put it this way: he had not failed; he had simply discovered eleven hundred ways not to make an incandescent bulb. There are many ways not to be saved. The Acts 19 disciples at Ephesus had found one of them. They had repented. They had been baptized. They had separated themselves from a sinful world. They were earnest, sincere, trying to live a godly life. And they had not yet heard the gospel. There was a road that ran very close to the gospel road, and they were walking on it. The Didache, the earliest Christian teaching manual we have, opens with these words: There are two ways: there is the way of life and there is the way of death. The way of John the Baptist had been a real road, and a necessary road, and a holy road, but it was not a road that ended where the way of Jesus ended. John pointed to Christ. John was not Christ.

Friends, take this lesson home. Not everyone who has had an emotional experience has been saved. Not everyone who has repented of obvious sins has been saved. Not everyone who has been baptized has been saved. Hitler was baptized. Stalin was baptized. Simon the sorcerer was baptized, and Peter looked at him afterward and said his heart was not right before God. There are many roads that look like the gospel road from a distance and turn out to be different roads when you get close enough to read the sign. The mark of the gospel road is the same in every century — Jesus Christ is the only way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through Him. The twelve Ephesian disciples could have spent another thirty years in that synagogue learning the Old Testament more thoroughly. None of it would have saved them. They needed to hear and receive Christ. So do we, and so does everyone we know.

You may be surprised to know that even today there is a small religious community of some tens of thousands of people, from Iraq and Iran to a worldwide diaspora, who still honor John the Baptist as their greatest prophet. They are called Mandaeans. One of their sacred books is the Book of John. They have not yet heard. The Acts 19 mission is not over.

III. Two Years in the Hall of Tyrannus

Paul's pattern was the same in Ephesus as it had been everywhere else. He went into the synagogue first. He reasoned and preached for three months. When some of the synagogue Jews hardened and began to slander the Way, Paul withdrew his disciples and moved to a lecture hall belonging to a man named Tyrannus. The Western text of Acts adds the detail that Paul taught in the hall daily from eleven in the morning to four in the afternoon — the hottest part of the Mediterranean day, when even the most diligent professor would be napping. Paul rented Tyrannus's empty afternoon hours, taught for five hours a day, and went on for two solid years. Luke summarizes the result with one of the most extraordinary lines in Acts. "And this continued for two years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks" (Acts 19:10, NKJV). All of Asia. Probably a hundred thousand souls. From one rented lecture hall in one Mediterranean city. Brothers, do not despise the small daily work. Two years in a borrowed classroom evangelized a province.

God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul during those years — handkerchiefs and aprons taken from his body to the sick brought healing, and demons left those who had been demonized. The miracles were not magic, and Paul never charged for them, but they confirmed the new gospel in a city famous for sorcery. (Ephesus was the magic capital of the ancient world; the term Ephesian writings meant magical formulas in the Roman empire.) The Lord met the city's pagan strength on its own ground.

IV. The Seven Sons of Sceva

Some traveling Jewish exorcists, watching all this, decided they would try Paul's method without Paul's Christ. They started invoking Jesus's name as a magic word. Among them were the seven sons of a Jewish chief priest named Sceva. They walked into the house of a demonized man and tried the formula. "We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches" (Acts 19:13, NKJV). The demon's reply is the most chilling sentence in the book of Acts. "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?" (Acts 19:15, NKJV). And then the man with the evil spirit jumped on all seven of them, overpowered them, and drove them out of the house naked and bleeding.

Take that scene very seriously. The demonic world recognizes two categories of human beings: those who genuinely belong to Christ, and those who do not. There is no third category called casual user of Jesus's name. Religious people who borrow Christian vocabulary for cultural purposes, who quote Bible verses on Mother's Day cards, who say God bless America at football games — none of that registers in the spirit world. The demons are not impressed by our vocabulary. They want to know whose blood-bought property we are. Jesus I know. Paul I know. But who are you?

The fear of the Lord that fell on Ephesus when the news got out was the most consequential revival movement in the city's pagan history. Many believers came forward and openly confessed the magical practices they had been dabbling in. Then they brought their grimoires and their occult scrolls — Luke calls them their books of curious arts, the most expensive magical texts in the ancient world — into the city square and burned them in a public bonfire. Luke counted the receipts. "They counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver" (Acts 19:19, NKJV). Fifty thousand denarii. About a hundred and fifty years of an average laborer's wages. The wealth of half a generation went up in smoke in one afternoon because the Ephesian Christians decided that the price of an honest fellowship with Christ was higher than the price of any book they owned. "So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed" (Acts 19:20, NKJV).

V. Demetrius the Silversmith

The next opposition came not from the synagogue but from the chamber of commerce. Ephesus's economy ran on its temple of Artemis — the goddess Romans called Diana — one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, with a flourishing tourist industry of pilgrims, sacrifices, and silver shrines. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made his living crafting miniature shrines of the goddess for pilgrims to take home, called a meeting of the trade guild. He gave the most candid speech in Acts. "Men, you know that we have our prosperity by this trade. Moreover you see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are not gods which are made with hands. So not only is this trade of ours in danger of falling into disrepute, but also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised" (Acts 19:25–27, NKJV). Notice the order. Our trade first. The goddess second.

Whenever the gospel threatens an income stream, men start arguing for the goddess. The silversmiths whipped the city into a frenzy, and a mob filled the great Ephesian theater, twenty-five thousand seats, screaming for two hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" Most of them, Luke notes drily, did not even know why they had come together. The town clerk eventually quieted the riot by pointing out that legal grievances had to be brought through the courts, not through mob violence, and the assembly dispersed. Paul was never even brought before the mob. The one missionary the city wanted to silence stayed silent that afternoon and prayed in his lodgings.

Three lessons from the Demetrius riot. First, the gospel really does cost the marketplace something. If our preaching does not threaten any income stream anywhere, we may not be preaching the same gospel Paul preached. Second, mobs are usually paid for. There is almost always a financial interest behind organized opposition to Christianity, even when it is dressed up in religious language. Look for the silversmiths behind the riot. Third, Christ is sovereign over His servants' platforms. He gave Paul the platform of Mars Hill in Athens. He kept Paul off the platform of the Ephesian theater. The Lord knows when we are to preach and when we are to stay home and pray. Both are equally His will.

VI. Eutychus and a Long Sunday Sermon

Paul finally left Ephesus, traveled through Macedonia and Achaia, and after several months of ministry there, headed back east toward Jerusalem with the offering he had been collecting from the Gentile churches for the relief of the Judean poor. The team stopped at Troas for a week. On the first day of the week — Luke's quiet little parenthesis that marks the early Christian transition from Sabbath to Sunday — the believers gathered in an upper room to break bread and hear Paul, who would be leaving in the morning. Paul preached until midnight. A young man named Eutychus — his name means fortunate, which is the most ironic name in the New Testament — was sitting on the windowsill, three stories up. The room was hot. There were many lamps burning. Paul preached on. Eutychus drifted off to sleep. He fell out the window, three floors down, and was picked up dead.

Paul came down, embraced the body the way Elijah had embraced the widow's son in 1 Kings 17, and announced to the church, "Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him" (Acts 20:10, NKJV). The boy was alive. They carried him home alive. And Paul, having lost no time, went back upstairs, broke bread, talked until daybreak, and walked out to his ship at sunrise. Luke, the careful physician, includes the quiet last sentence: "And they brought the young man in alive, and they were not a little comforted" (Acts 20:12, NKJV). I have not personally preached anyone to death yet, brethren, but I have preached some to sleep. The Lord still raises the dead. The longer the sermon, the greater the sign.

VII. The Miletus Farewell

From Troas the team sailed south down the Aegean coast. Paul was determined to bypass Ephesus rather than be detained — he was racing to be in Jerusalem by Pentecost — but he stopped at the port of Miletus and sent for the Ephesian elders. They came down the road to him. And Paul preached one of the most personally tender sermons in the New Testament.

He reminded them of his three-year ministry among them — how he had served the Lord with all humility, with many tears, in trials. How he had not shunned to declare to them the whole counsel of God. How he had taught publicly and from house to house. How he was now bound for Jerusalem under compulsion of the Spirit, not knowing what awaited him there except that the Spirit testified in every city that chains and tribulations awaited him. Then he turned to the practical charge. "Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock" (Acts 20:28–29, NKJV). The wolves would come, and some of them — Paul was honest about this — would arise from among the elders themselves, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples. The pastoral charge ends with a sentence I have read at the funeral of more than one good preacher. "Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears" (Acts 20:31, NKJV).

Three years of preaching with tears. Friends, that is the heart of pastoral ministry, and almost every century has lost it. D. L. Moody — the great American evangelist — once preached on a Sunday night in Chicago and closed his sermon by saying, "I want you to take home the question 'What shall I do with Jesus?' and come back next week with your answer." Even as the service closed there was a commotion outside. Fire engines were rolling. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was beginning. Many of the people in that congregation lost their lives that night. Moody never preached again without an immediate gospel invitation. He told the story for the rest of his life with tears. The closing thought of Paul's farewell was the same: I have warned everyone night and day with tears. The pastor's pulpit, friends, is wet with tears or it is empty.

Paul knelt down with all of them and prayed. Luke gives us the most heartbreaking sentence in his book. "Then they all wept freely, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke, that they would see his face no more" (Acts 20:37–38, NKJV). The men who walked him to the ship were the men he had loved and labored among for three years. They never saw him again. The pastor who knew the names of their children walked up the gangplank and sailed for Jerusalem. The wolves were already gathering.

VIII. The Long Road to Jerusalem

Paul sailed south to Cos, then Rhodes, then Patara, where the team caught a ship for the Phoenician coast. They put in at Tyre and unloaded cargo for seven days. Tyre had a small church. The believers there prophesied to Paul through the Spirit that he should not go up to Jerusalem. Read this carefully. "They told Paul through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem" (Acts 21:4, NKJV). And yet Paul went on. The Spirit warned him through them but had given him personal compulsion to keep going. Sometimes the Lord lets His servants know in advance what awaits them and still requires them to walk into it. The whole company knelt on the beach with their wives and children, prayed together, and Paul boarded the ship.

At Caesarea the team stayed several days at the home of Philip the evangelist — yes, the same Philip from Acts 8, the one who had baptized the Ethiopian eunuch on the desert road. Philip had four virgin daughters who prophesied. While they were there, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea — the same Agabus who had prophesied the famine back in Acts 11 — took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it, and said, "Thus says the Holy Spirit, 'So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles'" (Acts 21:11, NKJV). The whole company begged Paul not to go up. Paul answered them with one of the bravest sentences a Christian man ever spoke. "What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 21:13, NKJV). When they could not persuade him, Luke says simply, "We ceased, saying, 'The will of the Lord be done'" (Acts 21:14, NKJV). Paul packed his luggage and went up to Jerusalem.

IX. Three Lessons Home

First, the way of John is not the way of Jesus. Repentance without faith is not the gospel. Baptism without Christ is not salvation. Religion that stops at moral seriousness has not yet arrived at the cross. The twelve Ephesian disciples had been earnest for years. They were still lost. So is everyone we know who is religious without being saved.

Second, private discipleship matters more than public correction. Aquila and Priscilla took Apollos aside. They did not embarrass him from the back of the synagogue. They explained the way of God more accurately in private. The kingdom needs more disciplers and fewer critics. The next great preacher in your church may be three coffees away from being trained, if someone is willing to do the awkward, generous work of taking him aside.

Third, warn everyone night and day with tears. Paul's three-year Ephesian ministry was watered with tears. Moody preached the rest of his life with tears after the night he delayed an invitation. May the Lord put tears back into the modern pulpit. There is no scarcer commodity in our preaching than weeping for the lost. May we recover it before the Day comes.

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