Acts 19:19
A Bonfire
Would you build a bonfire using $350,000 worth of kindling? That’s approximately what “fifty thousand pieces of silver” in Roman times would be worth in today’s currency!
The book-burning in Ephesus was expensive, and Luke records how the gospel brought about economic disruption in the idolatrous city of Ephesus. But such changes are often necessary when God is at work, as Albert Barnes explains.
“The Word of God has power in this wicked city, and the power must have been mighty, which would make them willing to destroy their property.
“From this instructive passage we may learn that:
1. True religion has the power to break the hold of unjust and dishonest means of living over sinners.
2. Those who have been engaged in an un-Christian and dishonorable practice will abandon it when they become Christians.
3. Their abhorrence of their former course ought to be expressed as publicly as was the offense.
4. The evil practice will be abandoned at any sacrifice, however great. The question is ‘what is right?’ Not ‘what will it cost?’
“If what they did when they were converted was right—and who can doubt it?—It sets forth a great principle on which new converts should act.”