The Benefit of the Doubt – Acts 19:23-41

I have told you before that one of my more dangerous habits is giving people the benefit of the doubt.

When someone tells me something, I am more apt to accept it as true than to reject it outright.

It’s similar to being gullible, but little girls are gullible;

I am only giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I suppose that this habit of mine is equivalent to letting the other guy take the first punch.

And more than once I have been decked by a good hard right to the chin.

But some long-standing habits are hard to break.

I have plans to come back to this scripture on Sunday and make another kind of application, but tonight, let’s consider some things about Demetrius, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

In some ways he was an honest man, who displayed periodic dishonesty.

If he had been a Jew who was making a fortune fabricating and selling silver shrines to Diana,

we might conclude that he was thoroughly dishonest.

But he was undoubtedly a man raised in an idolatrous home,

and he had been taught to worship Diana in whatever was the standard practice of that day.

The worship of Diana had been around for a very long time, and Ephesus had been its epicenter for centuries.

There had been an original temple there built some time in the 6^th century BC.

So for three times as long as the United States has been a nation, Ephesus had been a worshiper of the great goddess Diana.

But on the night when the future Alexander the Great was born, a man named Herostatus burned that temple down.

Maybe he was just a little jealous of the honor Diana was receiving.

Then, about three decades later Alexander rebuilt that temple, and the newer version became one of the seven wonders of the world.

So the temple to Diana, which was in Ephesus when Demetrius was there, was older than any major building in the United States today.

And the worship of Diana had infested that city and the province of Asia longer than anyone can talk about America or Americans.

Thus for Demetrius, worshiping Diana and in making silver shrines to her honour, was being true to his heritage and upbringing.

Nevertheless, it was dishonest in the sense that it was nothing more than blatant idolatry.

There is only one true and living God, and His name is Jehovah, no matter who a person is or in what heritage he had been raised.

There is only one Creator, and only the Creator should be worshiped and reverenced.

Demetrius’ may have not been guilty of first-degree dishonesty, but like first degree and second-degree murder, the man who is dead, is just as dead.

The worship of Diana is evil and spiritually dishonest whether it’s classified as first-degree idolatry or second-degree god-slaughter.

Demetrius’ trade was that of making and selling silver shrines dedicated to Diana.

Archeologists have been combing the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea for a century now.

And whenever they run across the remains of a really old ship they get more than delighted.

Every once in a while I’ll glance at an article in the National Geographic or the Smithsonian Magazine which talks about a recent archeological discovery from the Aegean Sea or the Adriatic.

Those pictures and articles clearly prove that the craftsmen of Paul’s day, and even much earlier than that, were highly skilled.

Some of the art and jewelry of 2 and 3 millennia ago, are almost breath-taking in their beauty and intricacy.

Even some of the cheap stuff from that period can be auctioned off today for thousands of dollars.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen were highly skilled silver-smiths.

But why is it that so much of the art at that time was devoted to sin in one fashion or another?

Why did so much of Greek and Roman sculpture depict human nakedness?

Why was so much of the rest of it devoted to idolatry, like the silver shrines of Diana and her temple?

Why were so many of the greatest works of architecture somehow connected to idolatry?

We might also ask the same questions about so much of modern art as well.

Might we assume that it is because these were things foremost in those people’s minds?

There is nothing particularly evil with the honest craft of silver-smithing.

And likewise there is nothing necessarily dishonest with the ability to craft words into mind-catching stories.

There is nothing inherently evil with using various kinds of paint to communicate to others what lives in an artist’s imagination.

There is nothing sinful in creating music, weaving tapestries, welding metal or sculpting statues.

But in the sight of God any or all of these COULD be sin.

As I read this scripture, it seems to me that Demetrius was at the heart of this trade in Ephesus.

He seemed to have the authority or at least the influence to bring the entire guild together.

I am not quite sure how to understand the last words of verse 24:

“A certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen.”

Doesn’t it seem to say that Demetrius somehow brought no small gain unto the craftsmen through the silver shrine industry?

Is he perhaps the master marketer of everyone’s products?

In verse 38, as the town clerk tried to calm everyone he said,

“Wherefore if Demetrius, and the craftsmen which are with him…”

It is as if Demetrius was somehow in charge of the silver-smiths.

Was he the union boss, guild president, or chairman of the chamber of silver-smithing commerce?

Even though there may have been nothing wrong with creating silver works of art,

There was something very evil and spiritually dishonest in selling these silver memorials to the pilgrims who came to visit the temple of Diana.

Of course Demetrius and this friends couldn’t see that, because from their point of view that was the way things ought to have been

But in the sight of the One who will judge every man, and Who will …

“In flaming fire take vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”

This is idolatry and the aiding and abetting of idolatry in others.

In 1962 my family took a vacation, driving from Denver to Victoria, British Columbia.

In the process we spent a couple days at the Seattle World’s Fair.

I was 12 at the time, and I came away with several souvenirs.

Of course at least one of those souvenirs was of the Space Needle.

There were Space Needles in every medium possible, and there were certainly some in the shape of silver charms.

There was no sin in either making, selling or buying such a thing, because as far as I know there is no religious significance to the Space Needle.

But if I had bought a replica of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Seattle,

Or if I had bought a silver replica of the Virgin Mary,

there could have been and most likely would have been sin.

Have you ever seen a picture of how the ancient Greeks depicted Diana?

She was supposed to be the virgin goddess of child-birth and hunting.

In other words, she was an oxymoron.

She was the mother of all mothers, bringing life into the world and sustaining it, yet remaining a virgin.

(That sounds vaguely like one of the Roman Catholic deities.)

And Diana was usually depicted as a grossly deformed female figure and always with an open blouse.

Someone today might be amazed at the image of Diana, but not attracted to it.

Many of you have talents and gifts in various forms of arts and crafts.

Look on those talents as gifts from God and use them for the glory of the One Who gave them to you.

Since Jackie isn’t here, I’ll point to her.

Other than the honest secular work which she does for her employer,

In her spare time every artistic thing that she does:

paintings of birds, reliefs of leaves, calligraphy, whatever:

Everything that she uses her talents to create she in some way identifies with the Lord and His Word.

This is as it should be for everyone of us.

Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen were workers in an honest craft, but they had turned it into a dishonest trade.

And they had honest concerns which they expressed in a dishonest sort of way.

If you called for a meeting of our church next Sunday and you voted to remove me as your pastor I would be both hurt and CONCERNED.

Part of my concern would be about making mortgage payments and putting food on the table.

It should be one of the primary concerns of every father to keep his family warm, safe and fed.

Because of the preaching of Paul, the income of the Ephesian silversmiths was taking a beating.

They had put nearly all their capital into silver shrines,

but people were just not buying them as they had in the past.

Poor Demetrius was going to have to sell his cabin AT the lake and his cabin cruiser ON the lake.

His plans for an early retirement were taking a beating as well.

He was totally HONEST when he said to his co-workers:

“Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.”

That was his first thought and his first warning;

And that was the echoing thought of most of his coworkers and competitors in the industry.

But in order to sell that and to enlist the rest of the city against the preaching of the Apostle and the church,

he had to plead a secondary argument:

“ALSO that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised.”

In my reading this week, I found a message on this text by Joseph Parker.

In his introduction he said, “The application of these words to present-day life is a task that might be assigned to a child.”

In other words, the hypocrisy and greed of Demetrius and his friends is so obvious that any child can see them.

And I agree.

Demetrius and his friends had honest concerns about the future of their businesses,

But they were somewhat dishonest when they tried to tell the Ephesians that their primary concern was the glory of their deity.

No, they were as selfish as any other sinner.

Perhaps one of the lessons in this is that sometimes we may deceive ourselves about things,

And we may think that we are deceiving others about those things,

But very, very often we are the only ones being deceived.

Even a child can see the hypocrisy of this man and his friends.

If a child can see it, you can be certain that you will never fool the Lord.

And you can be very sure that your sin will find you out.