Acts 19:21-41 - Homiletics

The greed of gain.

Several instructive lessons crop up from this narrative. When two people advancing from opposite directions meet in a narrow pathway, one must give way to the other. When the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ encounters the greed of gain in a human breast, either the Word, with its promises, its hopes, its commands, must stand aside that the love of money may pursue its onward course, or the worldly gain must become as dung in the eyes of the hearer of the Word. We have noble examples in such men as Moses, Elisha, Daniel, Nehemiah, Zacchaeus, Peter and the other apostles, Barnabas, Paul, and many more both in ancient and modern times, of that contempt of worldly gains in comparison with the treasures of heaven, which marks the true servant of the living God. But we have, on the other hand, many sad though instructive instances of the love of gain holding its ground and barring the entrance into the heart of love and obedience to God. It was so in the instance recorded in this section. Here was the blessed gospel of God's redeeming grace preached with extraordinary power by St. Paul, confirmed by signal miracles, attested by the conversion of multitudes, glorified by the open confession and the voluntary losses of so many professors of curious arts; it was presented with a power and a beauty to the minds of the Ephesians which seemed to be irresistible. What sweet lessons of godliness, what glorious promises of immortality, what captivating revelations of the goodness and love of God, did that gospel contain! It could set men free from sin; it could raise them to fellowship with angels; it could give them the victory over the very grave. But when Demetrius heard it he saw in it one fatal blot which obliterated all its excellences: it would destroy the trade in silver shrines. Let men once be convinced that there is one true and living God, the Lord of heaven and earth, and one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, and that to know him and love and serve him is eternal life, and there would be an end of the worship of the great goddess Diana of the Ephesians. The strangers who flocked to the pan-Ionian games would no longer crowd to the shop of Demetrius, that they might carry home with them a silver shrine; silver ornaments would no more be devoted to beautify the famous temple; the skill of the craftsmen would no longer bring them honor and respect; the faith of Jesus Christ would be the death-blow to the magnificence of Diana and to the gains of her workmen. Therefore the faith of Christ must be resisted. It must be kept out of the workmen's heart, and it must be crushed that it spread no more. The true cry was—Our gains are in danger! The pretended cry was—The honor of Diana is at stake! And this leads Us to the further remark that selfish greed seldom dares show itself without disguise. It has an instinctive consciousness of its own unworthiness as a motive of action, and even of its repulsiveness in the eyes of others. It must therefore always put on some cloak of hyprocrisy. It must simulate zeal for God or benevolence towards man. It must pretend to be seeking some end very different from the true one, or at least one to which the true end is quite subordinate. Even if it admit that "this our craft is in danger," it puts forward as the supreme danger that "her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth." And this teaches us the importance of a very close scrutiny of our own motives of action, when our worldly interests are concerned. It is astonishing how much men's judgment and their powers of discrimination are affected by considerations of interest. It is, perhaps, less common for men to act deliberately against their conviction of what is just and right than to be biased in their opinion of what is right by the disturbing force of self-interest. The man whose real aim through life is to do what is right and accept what is true, quite irrespective of any influence which his belief or his action may have upon his own temporal gains, should spare no pains to maintain a judgment quite independent of selfish considerations, and to force his conscience always to give a true verdict upon the evidence before it, unmoved by fear of loss, and unseduced by hopes of gain. Once more, the example of the Ephesian silversmiths supplies a caution, not unneeded to all Christians, against supposing that "godliness is a way of gain." A large part of the corruptions of Christianity, and of the scandalous lives of worldly minded clergy in all ages, has arisen from the attempt to make religion a source of individual gain and aggrandizement. Legacies extorted from death-bed terrors, preferment gained by unworthy means, the sale of indulgences, paid Masses for the dead, the huge treasures accumulated by divers pretences at the shrines of saints, and many other infamous devices to make religion lucrative to the professors of it, are examples of what I mean. The man of God and the chaste Church of Christ must flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. These are the Christian's treasures, the results of his craft, the rewards of his labors. These are the branches which grow on the stem of heavenly truth, and with these alone can he be satisfied. He covets not the wages of unrighteousness; he cares not for the silver shrines; he frames not his creed either to catch the gifts of the wealthy, or to secure the praises of the world. The practical lesson to the Christian tradesman is to beware lest the interests of his trade lead him into any antagonism with the requirements of the gospel. Certain gains may be incompatible with perfect integrity, or with a supreme regard for the honor of God, or with true love to man. Let the Christian tradesman look to it that he is always ready to sacrifice his gains to his higher Christian obligations. His willingness to do so is the test of his Christian sincerity, and it is a severe test. The voice of a thriving, growing, swelling business is a loud voice, and the fear of checking a trade and losing all is a very telling fear. The cry of a feeble business, crying for more aliment and a wider field, is a very pressing cry. Let the voice of conscience, and duty, and fealty to Christ be louder and more pressing still, so that the silver shrines may pale before the claims of the supreme Lord of all, and the treasures of the world may become as dung before the glory of the righteousness of the children of God.

HOMILIES BY W. Clarkson