Title: 13
Author: Joe Griffin
Last saved by: PaulD
Company: GDC

The Church of the Living God

		08-10-16.FBC08-27 /

The Truth of Christ Brings Down Lucifer’s Lies at the Temple of Artemis; Lack of Truth in Believer’s Souls Leads to National Discipline, Jer 17:9-10; Rev 2:23b

4.	Christ and truth brought down one of the most powerful, popular, and prosperous religious centers in history.  He can take down this church as well.  The bedrock on which it is founded is petros and can be easily shattered in to a muddy deposit of gravel and sand at the hands of Petra: the Rock, Jesus Christ.
5.	We should not and must not insult the Lord’s grace to us in this fashion.  Teaching of the problem-solving devices is done.  It is now imperative that we begin to use them.
6.	Get your eyes off people and onto the Lord.  You are His emissary to whom He has assigned the ministry of reconciliation.  Otherwise we could reap the wrath of Operation Artemis since our God is not a God of partiality. 
7.	You may sow wheat but you will reap thorns (Jeremiah 12:13); you may sow the wind but you will reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).  Jesus Christ controls history.  Don’t forget this.  Or this quote from our Lord: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength” (Jeremiah 17:5).
8.	Also, you should remember this: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:7).
9.	In this same context, the Lord identifies our problem and notes a principle of how His control of history references the doctrinal content or lack thereof of believers:
Jeremiah 17:9 -	“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?
v. 10 -	“I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.”
10.	This same concept of the Lord pulling a daily inventory of the souls of believers is repeated in the New Testament in a passage we have just noted:
Revelation 2:23b -	“I am He Who constantly inventories [ retroactive progressive present of ™reun£w, ereuanō: that which is begun in the past and continues into the present; the present of duration ] the emotions and the stream of consciousness, and I will impose punishment to each one of you according to your production from the cosmic system.”
11.	It is apparent that the Lord controlled history in Ephesus by means of His divine attributes: truth triumphed over the lie.
12.	He controlled history in Ephesus by means of the laws of divine establishment: Roman law allowed Paul to teach the truth in the epicenter of evil for over two years and it quenched a riot designed to kill him and his followers.
13.	The Lord controlled history by allowing the hostility of the people of Ephesus to arrive at critical point after which order was restored.
14.	His control of history was evident by the Ephesians liability to the law of volitional responsibility: the error of following the lie was ultimately defeated by truth.
15.	The majestic colonnades of the temple of Artemis that once supported the entablature—its architrave, frieze, and cornice—are now reduced on one lonely column giving testimony to the whirlwind imposed by Jesus Christ’s control of history: He allowed the wrath of the invading Goths to destroy this temple.
16.	The temple was purposefully built in a marsh.  The architect, Scopas \skō′‑pas\ of Paros \pär'‑ös\, a fourth-century Greek sculptor and architect, made this decision in order to protect the building from potential earthquakes.
17.	Today, a house, whose foundation was built on sand, was not struck by earthquake but by Goths who destroyed it, leaving the “temple of the Great Artemis” forgotten, and ultimately buried by the encroaching silt from the Cayster riverbed only to be discovered in 1869 by the excavations of British architect John T. Wood.
18.	The lessons we learn from the demise of what is considered to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world is that the evil of religion may capture the thoughts of men for a time, but ultimately truth overwhelms the lie.
19.	To paraphrase the words of Hosea, when we sow the wind of idolatry we reap the whirlwind of truth. In twenty-first-century America, the idol that is worshipped is self and the god that provides our wants and desires is government with money confiscated from tithes taken from their fellow citizens in the form of confiscatory taxation.
20.	Where is tranquility found in this vortex of historical downtrends?  Where is your place of refuge?
Deuteronomy 33:27a -	The eternal God is a dwelling place of refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms …
21.	And the headquarters for the maintenance of a believer’s tranquility of soul is the church of the living God and for you personally it is Grace Doctrine Church.
22.	This brings us back to our central passage in 1 Timothy 3:14-16, where in verse 15 we paused to amplify the significance of the phrase “the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.”  We resume with a brief review.

© 2008 by Joe Griffin Media Ministries.  All rights reserved.	www.joegriffin.org