Praiseworthy King

If you would, turn in your Bibles
to 1 Timothy. For the visitors, our pastor
is out of town on vacation, and I and Larry have offered to take
the pulpit to give him a time of rest. So we just need to continue
to pray that God would raise up other elders within our body
to give him assistance. But for the next few days, he’s
still on vacation, and we’re thankful to give him this break.
Before last week, it was two years ago that I had taken the
pulpit. Before that, I think it was five years. So come back
in three or four years, I might be here. Two years ago, I preached
on 1 Timothy 1.17 and one of the five faithful sayings that
Paul includes in his writings. As we opened up that scripture,
I laid the context for what Paul was getting to, and basically
this letter was written to encourage and to exhort, to instruct Timothy
in the matter of ministry to the Ephesian church. Leading
into verses 15 and 16, Paul tells Timothy to be sure that the doctrine
is pure, that people are not straying into false teaching,
sin, and worldliness. Then we spent the majority of
our time looking at the faithful saying, which is in verse 15. The saying is trustworthy, deserving
of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I receive mercy
for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ
might display his perfect patience as an example to those who are
to believe in him for eternal life. We considered these verses
and noted the arrival, the mission, and the patience of the divine
Savior. Jesus arrived into the world despite of its wicked rebellion. His mission was to save sinners,
and his patience was manifested in Paul as a perfect example
of God saving a wicked man. If God could and would save Paul,
who persecuted and condoned the death of other Christians, He
is patient and can save anyone who places their trust in Him. I also made the assertion in
the text that says that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners, of whom I am foremost, that just like Paul, as we consider
our own sin, we come to know just how bad we really are, but
we also come to know how big God’s grace is. Like Paul, we
know we’re not as bad as the worst person in history, but
we know ourselves and feel the weight of indwelling sin, and
we marvel that God would save us. So after this, Paul gives
this amazing declaration of how Jesus saved him as the chief
of sinners, and he saves all sinners who come to him. Paul
is drawn into praise. Paul could not dwell long on
the grace of God without focusing on the God who saved him. This
leads to our primary verse for this morning, which will be verse
17. But getting a running start in verse 15, the saying is trustworthy
and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost. But I received
mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ
might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were
to believe in him for eternal life. Now, to the King eternal,
immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever
and ever. Amen. Before I get too far into
the text, I would just want to say two things. One, The word
wise that we’ll be singing in our closing hymn is not included
in the best texts of the Greek text. So it’s not found in our
versions. But before we go even farther
than that, we have to wrestle a little bit with who is this
doxology addressed to? Is it to the entire Godhead?
To the Trinity as a whole? Is it limited to Jesus as the
Son and Savior? Or is it to God the Father? This
doxology could easily be addressed to all three persons within the
Trinity. The Father, Son, and the Spirit all possess all of
the divine attributes. Omniscience, omnipresence, eternity,
self-existence, independence. And so in the case of our text,
they’re all eternal, immortal, invisible, and the only God. So it could be said of all three
persons. Now to the son specifically, to the exclusion of the Father
and the Spirit, what do we think about that? First, we just read
verses 15 through 16, where Paul remembered and was so thankful
for Christ to save him and putting him into the ministry. So it
could be that he naturally leads into a praise of Christ. Also
we have statements from Jesus to his kingship, If you would,
turn to Matthew 25, 31. We are going to get a little
workout today, turning in our scriptures, so this will be the
first turn. Matthew 25, 31. In these verses,
the Son is the King. When the Son of Man comes into
His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on
His glorious throne, and all the nations will be gathered
before Him, and he will separate them from one another, just as
the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will put
the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king
will say to those on his right, come, you who are blessed of
my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. Also, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem
the week he was crucified, and fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah
600 years prior, all the people shouted, the whole crowd shouted,
blessed is the king, the one who comes in the name of the
Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest, Luke 19, 38.
In Hebrews, Hebrews 1, 8 we read, but of the son, this is God the
father, but of the son, he says, your throne, oh God, is forever
and ever. The scepter of a brightness is
the scepter of your kingdom. In Revelation 19, 11 through
16, I did a Reader’s Digest version, condensed it a little bit, but
these verses speak of Jesus. Jesus is the one who is on the
white horse called faithful and true. who in righteousness judges
and wages war, whose eyes are a flame of fire, and on his head
are many crowns. Jesus has a name written on him
which no one knows except himself. Jesus is the one who is clothed
with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word
of God. And Jesus is the one who has a name written on his
robe and thigh, King of King and Lord of Lords. So Jesus is
the King of King and Lord of Lords. He is ruling even today.
That said, what about support for this doxology being to the
Father? Typically, in Paul’s writing,
when he speaks of the Son, he specifically mentions Him by
name. We are certain that he is speaking
of the Son when he is speaking of the Son. So we see this, for
example, in Colossians 1.1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
by the will of God. Titus 1.4, grace and peace from
God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. If you’d like to,
you can turn to Romans 3, 21 through 25, but consider here
that every time Paul says God, he’s referring to God the Father. But now, apart from the law of
righteousness of God, But now, apart from the law, the righteousness
of God has been revealed, being witnessed by the law and the
prophets, but it is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus
Christ for all those who believe. For there is no distinction,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. being
justified as a gift by His grace, that is, God the Father, through
the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly
as a propitiation in His, that is, Jesus’ blood through faith. Now, we’re gonna be in this next
text for a while, so you might wanna put a mark or keep your
finger in it. 1 Timothy 6.13. So 1st Timothy has these two
doxologies that bookend his letter, but in verse 613 he says, I direct
you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and
of Christ Jesus, who testified the good testimony before Pontius
Pilate, that you keep the commandment without fault or reproach until
the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which He will bring about
at the proper time. He who is the blessed and only
Sovereign, the King of King and Lord of Lords, who alone possesses
immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or
can see, to Him be honor and eternal dominion. So we need
to see a few things about this text. Notice first, in verse
13, the distinction between the Father and the Son. I direct
you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. Now look at
verse 14. Paul speaks of the appearing
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now look at verse 15. He says
that His appearing will be brought about at the proper time. So
who will bring this appearing about? Verse 15 says, he. He will bring about at the proper
time. So the question is, who is the
he in verse 15? I believe the he in this verse
is referring to God the Father. The he who will bring about the
appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ is the he who’s the blessed and
only sovereign King of King and Lord of Lords. And this is consistent
with what Jesus taught. In reply to the question of when
Jesus would return, he said, but about that day or hour no
one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the
Father alone. Mark 13, 32. In Acts 1, 7, he says, this is
Jesus, it is not for you to know periods of time or appointed
times which the Father has set by His own authority. It is God
the Father that sets the timetable for all things. It is for Jesus
to carry out what the Father has planned. At the proper time,
Jesus was born. At the proper time, Jesus was
crucified. At the right time, three days
later, Jesus rose from the grave. At the right time, he was exalted
into glory. And at the end, by the Father’s
fixed and determined time, Jesus will return to judge the living
and the dead. These two doxologies are also
very similar in their content. So flipping back and forth, verse
117 reads, King Eternal. Verse 615 says, King of Kings. Verse 117, Paul says, this king
is immortal. In 616, instead of immortal,
Paul says, who alone possesses immortality. Verse 17 says that
this king is invisible. In verse 616, instead of invisible,
says that God dwells in unapproachable light whom no one has seen or
can see. In verse 117, he says, he’s the
only God. In verse 615, he says, the only
sovereign. I believe this doxology is to
God the Father in response to the manifold grace that the apostle
found in and through Christ the Son. So we’re going to look at
this verse under four heads. The king eternal, the king imperishable,
the king invisible, and our unique king. Verse 17, now to the king
eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory
forever and ever, amen. One commentator said about this
doxology that it was well thought out. The Greek word for eternal,
immortal, and invisible each begin with the Greek letter A
or alpha. And the cognate of eternal life
in verse 16 is found in our verse, the king eternal. As we already
noted, this doxology is directed to the king. Our king is described
with those four modifiers, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only
God. We’ll look at each one. As to the king, though, We don’t
need to go on and on about what a king is. We kind of know what
that is. We know that kings rule kingdoms,
and that those in his kingdom are to honor and follow the king’s
laws. As we already heard this morning
in 1 Samuel, we can read about how the nation of Israel wanted
a king like the kings of the nations. God told Samuel that
they had rejected God as king over them. The results were,
for the most part, mildly catastrophic. King Saul reigned 1,000 years
before Jesus. Saul, David, and Solomon reigned
a total of about 100 years. After Solomon, 39 kings reigned
in Judah and Israel for roughly the next 340 years, until 586
BC with the destruction of Judah and the exile of the last king.
That’s 42 kings in roughly 440 years. We have examples of many
kings over the history of our world, and in each case the king
reigns for a limited or finite period of time, and they also
reign over a limited or finite piece of space. Unlike human
kings or rulers, Paul says that God is king eternal. Some translations
read that he is king of the ages, depending on what version you
have, it might say one of those two things. In non-biblical uses
for our root word could mean lifetime, age, generation, time,
and eternity. The point is, God is not king
for 440 years. He’s not king for a thousand
years, but is the eternal king. And it’s not just that the the
word for eternal means that God reigns into eternity. Some translations
use the words ages, as I already mentioned, now to the king of
the ages. One commentator figures the best way to capture the thought
of Paul in using the Greek word that we translate eternal or
age is actually to think literally king of the eternal ages. Of
the son we are told, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today
and forever. As this applies to the son, it
also applies to the father. Listen to just some of these
scriptures and think in terms of the word age. Scripture teaches
that Jesus gave himself for our sins so that he might rescue
us from this present evil age. That he is seated far above all
rule and authority and power and dominion in every name that
is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.
And Paul taught that we are to deny ungodliness, and worldly
desires and live sensibly, righteously, and in a godly manner in this
present age. God is king in all ages, past,
present, and future. Now look at our parallel verse
in 116. The final part, it says, to him
be honor and eternal dominion, amen. Instead of eternal or king
of the ages, here Paul writes eternal dominion. This dominion,
this power, or this ruling or reigning is eternal throughout
all ages. In thinking of dominion, we can
think in terms of power or ruling. God called mankind to have dominion
over the earth. We are to care for, take control
over the earth, and rule over it. When we think of dominion,
we think not only of power or rule, but we also think of the
sphere in which that power is, or that power or rule is exercised.
In the case of man, our sphere of dominion is the earth. In
the case of God, his dominion is the entire universe. From
the following quote, we get the sense of the awesome nature of
this rule. Speaking of God’s eternal nature,
or his affinity, the writer says, Scripture tells us that the world
is finite. That thought implies in the first
place, that the world had a beginning and that it was created together
with time. The question of how long the world has existed adds
nothing to this and subtracts nothing from it. Even if the
world had existed for millions of years longer than it has,
that would not constitute it eternal in the sense that God
is eternal. Even then, the world would be
temporal, limited, coexistent with time. He then goes on to
do this long discussion about how many stars there are, billions
of stars and galaxies and all that. And I thought about the
Hubble telescope and how we get these images from the Hubble
telescope from galaxies and galaxies and it’s awesome to think about. So then he goes on, but for all
of that, the world, including all of what I just talked about,
cannot be thought of as eternal in the sense that God is eternal.
The difference between eternal and the everlasting is one of
kind, not degree. We cannot conceive of a time
and space beyond the world. We cannot imagine that we should
somewhere be able to touch on the boundary of the universe
and be able to point and stare into an empty void. Time and
space are co-existent with the world and extend so far as the
world extends. And insofar as these exist, they
are filled with just created things. But altogether, time,
space, the world is finite. For the sum of finite parts,
no matter how unalterably large they are, never amounts to infinity. God alone is eternal, omnipresent,
and infinite. Scripture speaks this way. First
Chronicles 29 11. Yours, Lord, is the greatness,
the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. Indeed, everything
that is in the heavens and on the earth, yours is the dominion,
Lord, and you exalt yourself as head over all. Psalm 103 22. Bless the Lord, all you of his
works, in all places of his domain. Bless the Lord, my soul. Lastly,
Daniel 4.3. How great are his signs and how
mighty are his miracles. His kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom and his domain is from generation to generation. We
have seen how our God is eternal. We come now to see how our God
is immortal. Our text says, now to the king
eternal, immortal. Our passage reads, he who is
the blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings and lord of
lords, who alone possesses immortality. This word is nuanced. Last week
I said one of the features of us being made in God’s image
were that we were made immortal. So how is it said here that our
king is an immortal king and that he alone possesses immortality
if we are also immortal? The difference is this. Our immortality
is derived. We are given immortality, but
God possesses immortality in himself. It is underrived from
anything outside of himself. This has to do with the doctrine
of the aseity of God. It has to do with his uncreatedness.
It is his attribute of independent self-existence. But when we look
deeper into the word immortal, most commentators agree that
the better word would be imperishable or incorruptible. One said that
immortal, meaning that which is, one said immortal, meaning
that which is exempt from death, is not a correct translation.
Of God we see that his arms never become tired, he never grows
weary, he never changes, he is the inexhaustible reservoir of
strength ever new for his people. Imperishable or incorruptible
captures the meaning of the thought better than eternal. As one said,
God, unlike milk in the refrigerator, does not have a use-by date.
He is imperishable. He cannot decay. So I got a hold
of our resident dairyman, Danny Vanderdusen. And for those of
you who don’t know, he was an elder here. But Danny works with
cattle and produces milk. So I gave him the example of
this to see if he would agree with it. He thought I just meant
my understanding of the Greek word, and so he sent me the definition
of the Greek word, and I said, no, no, no, the thing about the
milk. He goes, oh, yeah, that’s great. But then he had to come
up with this. So this is your dose of Danny
Vanderdusen. My gramps had a saying comparing
a wife to milk. When it’s good, there’s nothing
better. When it’s bad, there’s nothing worse. So that’s your
daily dose of Danny Vanderdusen. The only other time this Greek
word is used in reference to God is in Romans 1.23. And they
exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form
of corruptible mankind of birds. And they go on from there. Here
the world is said to exchange the glory of the incorruptible
God for the corruptible images. We establish that man is immortal,
but we are corruptible and perishable. We see perishability all around
us in all of creation. Stars explode, mountains erode,
trees burn, food gets moldy, the flowers and the grass fade.
The pyramids and Mount Rushmore need constant attention to keep
them from eroding into nothing. Bridges, roads, washing machines,
computers, Young people see evidence of corruption and sickness and
injury. Each year as we get older, our bodies show a little more
decay. Each year people we know die.
Despite all that, we know that in Christ, the dead will be raised
imperishable and we will be changed. We also know that we will obtain
an inheritance which is imperishable. I want to share what Philip Rikens
said about this verse. He begins by quoting Yeats, a
poem from Yeats, which is, I think, applicable for this time. I think
it’s about 70 years old. Turning and turning in the widening
gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed.
And everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The
best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate
intensity. Things fall apart. Persons, families,
towns, cities, nations, empires, civilizations, they all fall
down. But not God. God is not eroding. He is not
cooling off or winding down like the universe. He is not growing
old or wrinkled. His chromosomes are not becoming
shorter. He is not falling apart. Unlike
everything else He has made, God is immortal. Not only will
He live forever, but every one of His divine attributes will
remain unchanged throughout all eternity. God does not become
less powerful, less loving, less just, or less holy. with the passage of time. He
is every bit as powerful, loving, just, and holy as he has ever
been and as he ever will be. So we’ve seen that our great
king is eternal, immortal, and thirdly, we see that our king
is invisible. It’s interesting, in the Old Testament, you don’t
really get the picture of his invisibility as we do in the
New Testament. They don’t really describe God
as invisible. But God’s invisibility was a
stumbling block to the nation, as we’ve already seen. They wanted
a visible king. But Jesus said God is spirit,
and as such, he has no body. Our parallel verse in verse 616
says that this king dwells in unapproachable light, whom no
one has seen or can see. The apostle John said, no one
has seen God at any time. When Moses asked God to show
him his glory, God responded, you cannot see my face, for mankind
shall not see me and live. Someone once commented somewhere,
and it could even have been to you, if I could just see God,
I would believe in him. Then we would say, well, where
is faith? When our eyes are involved, there’s no faith required. If
we can see with our eyes, we don’t need the faith. But the
Bible says that we are saved by faith. One commentator said
that God is to be praised for his invisibility. This may be
one of the most underrated attributes. Which is more worthy of worship?
A visible God or an invisible God? God is without limits and
without boundaries. He cannot be seen. But even though His divine nature
is on display, as we even considered last week, by what He has made,
God understands that His invisibility can be difficult for us. But
what has He done to remedy this invisibility? Well, the Apostle
Paul said that He sent His Son. And the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us. And we saw His glory, glory as
of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. No one
has seen God at any time. God, the only Son, who is in
the arms of the Father, has explained Him. Paul said that Jesus is
the image of the invisible God. The Son has revealed the Father
perfectly because He is the exact image of Him and because He has
explained Him. When we see the Son, we see the
Father. What you need to do to see God
is to humble yourself, and seek him by faith, not by sight. Pray that he would reveal himself
to you. Expose your heart and mind to scripture, because we
know, as scripture testifies, the gospel is veiled to those
who are perishing, because the God of this world has blinded
the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the
light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of
God. As we expose our hearts and our
minds to Scripture, we know that faith comes from hearing, and
hearing by the Word of Christ. That’s how we see Christ. That’s
how we see God. That’s how we see our King. So
we’ve seen now that our King is eternal. We’ve seen that He’s
imperishable and invisible. Come now to our fourth point
to see how our King is unique. Now to the King eternal, immortal,
invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Looking at our parallel verse in chapter six, we read, he who
is the blessed and only sovereign. So here, instead of the word
God, Paul, on the heels of assigning to God his will in the matter
of Christ’s second coming, adjusts the first doxology by calling
our king the only sovereign. The consummation of all things
are part of the Father’s plan and will happen according to
his timetable. So as to the word only in our verse, only God or
only sovereign, the Greek word translated by it, as we translate
only in our verses, has reference to not oneness, but uniqueness
or incomparableness. Paul said in another place that
in 1 Corinthians 8, 5-6, Even if there are so-called gods,
whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods
and many lords, yet for us there is only one God, the Father,
from whom are all things, and we exist for him, and one Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through
him. In these verses, he makes the distinction between only
and one. One is the number one, only is unique. We know that
He is the only true God. Our word only is that God is
alone in His class. There’s no other God like Him.
There’s no other being like Him. He is unique. He cannot be compared
to anything else. The Jews knew this, and they
recited God’s uniqueness often. Here, Israel, the Lord our God,
the Lord is one. Mounce translates this verse,
here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Hendrickson
comments on this final attribute over King this way, such a God,
finally, is the only God, not merely in the coldly abstract
sense that numerically there is only but one God, but in the
warm scriptural sense, namely, that this one God is unique,
incomparable, glorious, lovable, Only God, only He is who He is. God said, I am the Lord, and
there is no one else. Let’s look at just a couple of
things which make our God unique. First, of the world religions,
there are only three that are monotheistic, that believe in
one God. Of those, the Christian religion
knows God as Father, Son, and Spirit. the great three-in-one. Even other so-called Christian
denominations that say they believe this don’t really believe it
because they don’t really believe the formulas that give us the
Trinity. But even as we noted earlier,
Paul thanked Jesus for the salvation that he accomplished to the chief
of sinners. Between 1 Timothy 1, 12 through 16, Paul thanked
the second person of the Trinity for his salvation. So not only
is God unique in his Trinitarian nature, but he’s unique in how
he provides for his people. No other God is like him. Of
all the religions in the world, only the Christian God is one
of grace and sovereignty and salvation. All other religions
and so-called Christian denominations are religions of works. A person
is saved or made whole or gets to heaven through personal effort. Turn, if you would, to Ephesians
2.4. You’re going to see how our God is different
from other gods. But God, being rich in mercy
because of the great love with which He loved us, even when
we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ.
by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, and
seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that
in the ages to come he might show the boundless riches of
his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace
you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourself,
It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no
one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand
so that we would walk in them.” Notice just a few things about
this verse as compared with other religions. And keep in mind too
that this is the same church in which Timothy was serving,
Ephesus. Notice God’s mercy in this verse,
His sovereignty, and that He makes us alive. Notice that we
are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, not some man-made
temple here on earth. And this is all of His sovereign
power. Notice His boundless riches of grace in Christ. Notice our
salvation by grace through faith, and also notice that both of
those things, grace and faith, are both gifts of God, as are
the works which He has prepared for us to do. Everything is of
God. Our triune, graceful, and sovereign
God is unique, unique above anything else. He is God, and there is
no other. So, as a long conclusion, I want
to explore why Paul included these two doxologies in this
letter to Timothy, which was delivered to the church in Ephesus
where Timothy was ministering. Why did he go to these lengths
to describe the kingship of God? I don’t know, maybe it’s just
me, but I find it interesting that there are these two grand
doxologies in this one letter, bookending the book. So what
was it? I think one commentator hit the
nail on the head when he said that these doxologies are in
there because he knew who he was writing to. He wrote to Timothy
who was in Ephesus. Let’s look at one aspect of Ephesus
just for a second. You’ll know this passage, Acts
19.21. So let’s read about the riot
in Ephesus and see what does this riot have to do with Paul’s
doxologies. Reading in verse 21. Now after
these things were finished, Paul resolved in the spirit to go
to Jerusalem. after he passed through Macedonia,
and Achaia saying, after I’ve been there, I must also see Rome.
After he sent into Macedonia two of those who assisted him,
Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while. About
that time, a major disturbance occurred in regard to the Way.
The Way is the Christian faith. For a man named Demetrius, a
silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing considerable
business to craftsmen. So these craftsmen made these
little idols. Either it was Artemis herself,
or Diana, as we’ll see, or little figures of the temple, which
we’ll talk about here in just a minute. So they made these
little things. They were upset. He gathered these men together
with the workmen of similar trade and said, men, you know that
our prosperity depends on this business. So he’s a little worried
about his job security. You see in here, not only in
Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded
and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that
gods made by hands are not gods at all. And that’s ludicrous.
How could he say that? Not only is there danger that
this trait of ours will fall into disrepute, but also that
the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be regarded as worthless,
and that she, whom all Asia and the world worship, will even
be dethroned from her magnificence.” When they heard this, they were
filled with rage. They began shouting, or shouting,
saying, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. So they were breaking
out of their own doxology. Skip down to verse 32. So then,
some were shouting one thing, some to another. For the assembly
was in confusion, and the majority did not even know what the reason
was they had come together for. Some of the crowd concluded it
was Alexander, since the Jews had put him forward. And having
motioned with his hand, Alexander was intending to make a defense
to the assembly. But when they recognized that
he was a Jew, a single outcry arose from all of them, And they
shouted for about two hours this doxology, great is Artemis of
the Ephesians. After quieting the crowd, the
town clerk said, men of Ephesus, what person is there, after all,
who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is guardian
of the temple of the great Artemis and of the image which fell down
from the sky? So since these are undeniable
facts, you ought to keep calm and do nothing rash. So with
some rational words and calmness, this riot was abated and people
disbanded. Ephesus was a beautiful city,
and as we see in this text, was the guardian of the temple Artemis,
also known as Diana. Diana was one of the 12 great
gods of the region. Gill says that the inhabitants
of Ephesus were very much given to superstition and idolatry
and even to devilish arts. The Temple of Diana, which we
are considering here, was one of the wonders of the world back
then. It was built around 550 BC. It was built of pure white
marble. It was burned by a fanatic on
the night of the birth of Alexander the Great in 356 BC. But it was
rebuilt with even more splendor than it had before. It was 425
feet long and 220 feet wide. It had 127 columns around the
temple that were 60 feet high. Each column was the gift of a
king. And 36 of them were enriched
with ornament and color. It was constantly receiving new
decorations, additional buildings, statues, and pictures by the
most celebrated artists of the time. It kindled unparalleled
admiration and enthusiasm and superstition. It is possible
that a fallen meteorite was this image that had fallen down from
heaven. Models of the temple and Diana were sold for people
to set up in their own homes. So you’d visit this, and you’d
get your little statue, and then you’d go home, and there you
had Diana in your house with you. Ephesus, to say this, Ephesus
was an idol manufacturing mecca. As a wise spiritual leader and
mentor, Instead of calling attention to the sin of idolatry and possibly
even inflaming lost sinful affections for Diana, Paul wrote these doxologies
to remind Timothy and the church of truth. Just as in those days,
with literal idols, we too must keep our eyes on God and not
the things of this world. We too must focus on truth and
not falsehood. And it’s not by dwelling on our
sin that conforms us to the image of God, but the renewing of our
minds that changes us. Diana was a queen. God is a king. Diana was temporary and perishable.
God is imperishable and eternal. Diana was visible and made with
human hands. God is invisible. Diana was mass-produced. God is unique. Rikens sums it
up this way. The coming of Christ meant the
end of Artemis. She has now been tossed on the
scrap heap of history, with the exception of a few shattered
columns on a plain near ancient Ephesus. the last fragments of
her temple, a handful of coins and a few broken columns are
now on display in the basement of the British Museum in London.
As we see in Diana, all the world and all of its idols are perishable. Everything that we put our trust
in on this world is perishable. It’s limited, it’s visible, and
typically it’s mass produced. As we turn from idols and focus
on the one true God, we come to understand more of who God
is and His love for us. We understand more of who God
is and our love increases for Him. As we see God’s grace in
Christ to us, despite our sins, we are drawn into the worship
of our great King, who from eternity past wrote our names in the Lamb’s
Book of Life. If you don’t know the wonders
that we have been talking about today, call out to him and turn
to Christ. To the rest of us, we should
follow Paul’s example. Even if we consider ourselves
the chief of sinners, we need to not focus on our sins, but
focus on the God who saves us from all of our sins. Now, to the King of the Ages,
the incorruptible, invisible, unique God, be honor and glory
forever and ever. Amen. Let’s pray. Our great and awesome King, we
marvel at the riches of your grace that you have shown us
in the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Lord, that you
are invisible and that we can trust you by faith. We thank
you, Lord, that you are eternal, that your rule never ends in
any age. We thank you, Lord, that you
are unique. You are not like anything else
in all the solar system. You are unique in how You save.
You are unique in how You provide for Your people in all of our
needs. Lord, we marvel at this. We pray, Lord, that for those
who do not know You, that they would come to know this living
and active King. For those of us who are already
trusting in You, we ask, Lord, that You would enliven our minds
and enrich our hearts with the true knowledge of who You are
as our King. and grant us the grace to follow
You as our King. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.