Acts 19:11-20
You may be seated. Please turn
in your copy of God’s word to Acts chapter 19 verses 11 through
20. We are going to think today about
the power of God, God’s power at work in Ephesus through Paul’s
ministry, through his miracles, but also through his ministry
of the word. We want to see that God’s power
suppresses the power of men and demons. And so as we prepare
to hear God’s word, let’s look to him once more in prayer. Our
father, we thank you that your word is powerful, that it does
its work. It does its divine errand. It
can increase and it can prevail mightily among a people, among
a generation, even in a dark world, a dying generation. Your
word can do its mighty work. So help us to hear, believe,
and see what you are up to in the world through the life and
ministry of the Apostle Paul. This we ask in the name of our
Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Let’s give our attention
now to God’s word. It says, and God was doing extraordinary
miracles by the hand of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or
aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick
and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out
of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcist undertook to
invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits
saying, I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims. Seven sons
of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this, but the
evil spirit answered them, Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize,
but who are you? And the man in whom was the evil
spirit leaped on them and mastered all of them and overpowered them
so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all
the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, and fear fell
upon them all. And the name of the Lord Jesus
was extolled. Also, many of those who were
now believers came confessing and divulging their practices.
And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought
their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And
they counted the value of them and it came to 50,000 pieces
of silver. So the word of the Lord continued
to increase and prevail mightily. Amen. This is God’s word. May
it prevail. mightily an increase among us.
Recently, I was out in the country and saw a beautiful old church
building that had a stone exterior. And I’m pretty sure by looking
around that this was a church built maybe 150, 200 years ago. And these stones all came out
of the farm fields. As a family would come settle
in various parts of the country, they would stake their claim,
they would take over the land as their own. And as we do with
our own homes, we hang our pictures, we tidy up the yard, we plant
our roses and do the things we like. They would work their land
and make it a place where they could prosper, they could grow,
they could live, they could make a living. In order to farm a
field, the rocks have to be removed. And as they ran their plows through
the stony soil, no doubt all of these beautiful rocks that
now paste the side of that church building came up from their hard
work. And think of the beauty of that
building and all the work it took to gather each rock. Maybe to repair the plowshare
from the damage that was done by the jolt of the rock being
lifted out of the ground. But you think of the beauty of
that building and all that it took. And you think of Paul’s
ministry in Ephesus, what a stony ground it must have been. What
a lot of hard plowing and removal of rocks and other objects that
prevented the gospel from prevailing. What a difficult ministry. Now,
when you look back at Ephesus, the ministry of John, the apostle,
and then Timothy, the young pastor, and then on back through Paul’s
early efforts, and you think of what it took to build a beautiful
church, a building of living stones, a building of people
who have left idolatry and followed Jesus, and what it took to build
that beautiful building of God’s people, the hard plowing, the
stony work, the agony, the prayers, the difficulty, the desire to
quit and to give up and all the rest, we think of, Paul and what
he went through to build that church. And maybe we ask ourselves
this question, is there hope for our culture? Is there hope
for the dark generation we live in? Is there hope for the crookedness
and the depravity that we see all over the pages of our daily
history? Last night, just cruising through
the news headlines, You see this takes place and that occurs and,
you know, normal life, but horrible events piled on top. And you
hear news commentators say it’s an evil world. And then the comment
next, and we’re always going to have evil with us, but good
people need to rise up. And I thought, you know, they’re
getting there, aren’t they? They just need to sharpen their
theology a little bit and understand creation, right? God made the
world and everything in it. God made this world good. He
put man in it to rule the earth and to till it and to make it
fruitful and to multiply it and to spread the glory and the grace
of God across the globe. But Adam and Eve were tempted
by Satan. They fell into sin and Cain soon
killed Abel and on and on evil has continued. And brothers and
sisters, the only hope we have is in the gospel. And isn’t it
amazing that Paul, in the midst of all his hardships, all his
ministry difficulties, even his imprisonment, he is able to say
with great clarity, I am not ashamed of the gospel. For in it is the power of God
to save. And it saves all kinds of people
from all kinds of places across the lands. And that’s our great
hope, isn’t it? The darker this world gets, the
brighter the gospel shines into darkness. And we wanna see that
there is indeed hope for this world, for this culture. We wanna
see what type of ministry it will take, what type of hard
plowing it will require to get through the stony soil and to
get the seed growing. And the main thing we need is
confidence in God’s word. Not confidence in our skills
or our abilities or the size or the pocket book we may have,
but simple faith and confidence in the word of God and his power. And people can’t help. People
can’t help, as the word says, to neglect so great a salvation
that is put plainly before them. I want us to see a handful of
things in the life and ministry of Paul from this passage. The
first is the work of God through Paul. The work of God through
Paul is seen very clearly in verses 11 and 12. God was doing,
it says, extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that
even the handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin, they
were carried to the sick and their diseases left them and
their evil spirits came out of them. Isn’t it kind of funny
how it says, Paul was doing extraordinary miracles, aren’t they all? Isn’t
every miracle of God by the hand of God an extraordinary miracle? Now we need a little glossary
here. We speak of God’s work in this world in three ways.
We speak of his work of creation. We speak of his work of providence.
And then we do speak of the word miracle. And what I want to point
out to you is sometimes we use the word miracle a little too
much. Go back to creation. God made
the world and everything in it. And he built into this world
life. He built into this world plants
that would drop seeds and they would grow again and the world
would be replenished. He made us to be fruitful and
to multiply and to fill the earth. There are normal creation ordinances
and orders that perpetuate themselves. That’s how God made the world.
It was made this way and it works this way. And then we think of
the second word providence. God’s works of providence are
his most holy, wise and powerful, preserving and governing all
his creatures and all their actions. God is the creator, but also
the governor. The word tells us that Christ
by his power upholds the world. If God was not involved in this
world, if the son was not involved in this world, it would disintegrate.
It would fall apart. All things are held together
in Christ. And then we think of the word
miracles and we think of miracles in two ways. Miracles God has
done. For example, he made the world
and everything in it out of nothing. That’s a miracle, isn’t it? He,
held back the Red Sea and Israel walked across the sea on dry
land. And mind you did not get muddy
feet. We like to add those are miracles by God. But then there’s
three errors of miracles by men in the scripture. There’s the
miracles of Moses. We’re looking at those on Wednesday
night. He was given the rod, the staff of God. He can throw
it on the ground and it can become a snake. He can pick it up again
and it’s a rod. It’s by that rod he’ll hold in
the air and the sea will part. It’s by that rod that he will
declare to Moses that Yahweh is king over the heavens and
the earth. Then there’s the miracles of Elijah and Elisha. Remember the widow who never
ran out of oil and kept the prophet fed. Then there’s the little
one who died and the prophet laid his body on top of the child
and he was raised to life again. And then you have a third era
of miracles and that’s Jesus and his apostles. We don’t have
to explain Jesus miracles do where he touched, he healed,
he helped, he saved, he called back from the dead. But then
there’s the apostles. There’s Peter and people came
just into his shadow. They came just into his shadow
and they were healed. And then there’s Paul, as we’re
told today, doing extraordinary miracles. God was plowing that
stony soil by Paul’s extraordinary miracles, showing that he was
indeed the God of heaven. and the God of the earth. What’s
the reason for all these miracles by Moses and Elijah and Elisha
and Jesus and his apostles? What’s the reason for their miracles,
but also the timing of them? Well, in each case, God was validating
his work of redemption. Moses through the coming of the
law, Elijah and Elisha through their message and ministry of
prophecy. And then of course, Jesus, his
life and earthly ministry, and then the apostles, the building
of the early church. And we believe as the scriptures
teach that these were special eras for Moses and Elijah and
Elisha, Christ and his apostles. And that with the death of John,
the final, the apostle, that these miracles have ceased. But
boy, don’t we see people all over the news today, all over
the television, all over the ministries of particularly televangelists
doing these things and claiming that they have the power of almighty
God. One thing we must remember, God
can do anything. God alone has supernatural power. God alone can do mighty works. And he validates his work in
the world through the miracles of these eras and these men. But it says here, Paul, Paul
was doing extraordinary miracles. He was telling diseases to go
away and demons to come out of people. And the Bible says they
were healed. They were healed, not by professionals,
but by God himself through the hand of Paul. And so as we look
at the work of God through Paul, it’s extraordinary that whatever
he did was by the power of God. But isn’t it interesting to see
people touched his sweat cloths you know you get out in the yard
and you’ve got your hanky and you wipe your sweat or your towel
most people who gross want nothing to do with it or your your work
clothes that you’re supposed to take off at the back porch
and put in the wash without the good clothes, you know, to wash
them by themselves, the extra rent cycle. Well, people were
touching these. These were his tent making clothes,
his work outfits, the sweat, the smell, but they wanted to
touch. by faith Paul’s garments and
be healed. Much like the woman healed by
touching the hem of Jesus’ garment, and he felt the power go out
of him. Her faith made her well. These folks, their faith in the
power of God, not in the power of Paul, for he had none, but
their faith in the power of God made them well. Now, sometimes
we find skeptics. They read a passage like this
and say, well, there was no healing. There was no supernatural power.
There are no clean spirits. There are no diseases. And you
may as well say there is no forgiveness because there was no cross and
there was no resurrection from the dead. If Jesus did die, he’s
still in the grave. And so be a skeptic, but remain
in your sin. Be a skeptic all you want, but
you’ll overlook the power of God to save, the power of God
to redeem. And so we see here the work of
God through Paul, but we also see the work of men. Verses 13 to 15, I bet some of
you were a little surprised when we read these a few moments ago.
Some of the itinerant Jewish exorcist undertook to invoke
the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits. I
adjure you, they said, by the name of Jesus whom Paul proclaims
seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sheba were doing this and
the evil spirit answered them. Jesus I know, Paul I recognize,
but rather humorous, who are you? P.T. Barnum, Barnum and Bailey Circus,
one of the greatest entertainers in the last century of American
history. Don’t know if he really said it, but we say he did. There’s
a sucker born every minute. And then the same saying from
the gold rushes of the 1800s, there’s gold in them there hills.
Well, you put those two things together, there’s gold in them
there hills and there’s suckers born every minute and you’ve
got a televangelist ministry and you can fly private, right?
How many times have you heard, get baptized with this water
from the Jordan River and you’ll be extra saved, right? And just
send us a healthy donation. That’s between you and God, but
it probably better have four or five figures and we’ll send
you this water and you’ll be on your merry way to a blessed
life. Or the prayer cloths, you wonder
where the prayer cloths come from. Well, here they are. And
all this superstition, all this man-made, man-claimed power to
save and to heal and to whatever. And these televangelists, it’s
kind of comedy, isn’t it, to watch some of it. Lay your hands
on your car and it will get better. Pray over your gas tank and it
will magically fill. We’ll go back to what I said
about creation. What did God make the world and everything
in it and put man in it? He put him in the garden to work
it and to till it. Did God say, Adam, get yourself
a lawn chair and pray over the ground and corn will pop up.
Oh, we get gas. by working and putting it in
our tank. And then we run out of money because of the gas prices,
but you don’t get too much into it here. But you understand the
work of men here, what do we call these folks, snake oil salesmen? I’ve got this elixir and you
put it on your head and it will grow hair, right? We hear these
things all the time, incantations and spells and books and exorcisms,
posters and sandwich boards today, today only. For a small fee,
for a donation to God’s work, get your exorcism. There’s a
warning here, isn’t there? It’s dangerous to enter the world
of evil without the power of Christ. It is dangerous to enter
the world of exorcism. It’s dangerous to enter the world
of ministry without the Holy Spirit or the call of God, whether
it’s for fun or for gain. And here it backfires here in
verse 15. It says the evil spirit says
to them, Jesus, I know, well, this is a showstopper, isn’t
it? This is, this is a good way to kill the cash register. Uh,
this is like having a D minus on your restaurant sanitation
grade. Jesus I know, Paul I have met,
but who are you bozos? Who are you seven snake oil salesmen,
shysters, quacks, whatever you want to call them. Whatever is
not of faith is sin. This was not a work of faith.
This was not a work of God. This was the work of men and
it backfires on them. And we need to remember brothers
and sisters, God will not be mocked. There may be all these
folks on television. There may be all these healing
ministries and all the rest, but if God is not in it, you
can observe Paul and try out his words. You can, you can try
all the techniques you want, And if God is not in his work,
it will not prevail. And so we live in a world where
we flip through the television channels about prayer cloths
and sowing seeds, and God will do this if you will do that.
And we need to beware, the power is not in men, the power is in
God. God ministers to his people by
his word, through his spirit, today through his sacraments,
at our baptism and other mighty ways. Be careful when people
claim power. Around the corner here, there’s
a little closet. And we call this our Benny Hinn room. And
if you ever break a leg and need some crutches or you need one
of those little scooters, you know, cause you’ve had knee surgery,
there’s a wheelchair in there. There’s a couple of walkers and
we call it the Benny Hinn room. You know, the joke is you get
a Benny Hinn and he walks you on the forehead and you, run
and leap like a deer. John MacArthur has a fascinating
book that you ought to pick up and read. It’s a fascinating
book that he wrote in the seventies and it’s called the charismatic
chaos. And he goes through all the faith healing ministries.
He goes through all the interesting ministries that are out there
today. And he says in his research, there is not one televangelist
who can show you a man or woman they truly healed. Not one. The
power of men will do nothing, but the power of God will do
everything. God in this passage, God before
us is the chief actor here. These men are like Pharaoh’s
magicians. They can try to imitate, they
can try slight of hand, but they will never match God’s man in
Moses with his staff and with his miracles that God gave him. Well, there’s the work of God
through Paul. There’s the work of men. I want
us to see thirdly, there’s the work of the evil spirit. And
we find this work in verse 15 and 16. The evil spirit says,
Jesus, I know Paul, I recognize, who are you? And then I think
the funniest thing in the Bible is right here. The man in whom
was the evil spirit leaked on them. He mastered them, all of
them, overpowered them. And they fled out of that house
naked and wounded. It is pretty bad when an evil
spirit calls you out. It is pretty bad when the one
you work for says you’re a fraud. And they’re saying, I adjure
you by the name of Jesus, whom Paul proclaims. Jesus, who? Jesus, I know. Paul, I know.
But who are you? Maybe to put this in good Southern
terms, they received a one-man whooping, right? There was seven
of them. I mean, you can imagine all their
pageantry, all their sandwich boards and signs and propaganda.
And, you know, one of them was probably playing music and the
other one was probably hollering out for people to come in the
door and get themselves a good exorcism. You can imagine all
the pageantry and pomp and circumstance of these sorts of events, maybe
they had a tent and everything. And he overpowered them and he beat
them naked and hollering out of the house. Chuck Norris, he’s the only one
we know on TV that can that can whip seven people at once, right?
It kind of comes to mind all these things we watch. More importantly, God will not
be mocked. God will not be mocked and so when we see these things
and we hear these things and we watch people put their absolute
hope in them, we must recognize them for what they are. And it’s
interesting here, isn’t it? The evil spirit takes these men
who are rich and famous and now they are black and blue. I would
imagine they dusted off their resumes, they’re out of business,
they’re exposed, they are frauds. And even evil said to them, no
thank you. And so we see the work of God
through Paul. We see the work of men and its
failure. We see the work of the demon,
the evil spirit. Now let us most of all, and most
importantly, see the work of Christ. It is said in the scripture
of Christ that light has now come and it shines in the darkness
and light dispels the darkness. And what a hard, dark place Ephesus
was for ministry. But God in his providence, God
in his wisdom, God through Paul and many others will build his
church in Ephesus. It is a deviant culture. It is a dark place. It is literally,
we’ll see this next week, an idol factory. It is a place where
God has not been revered and honored or even considered. But now light through the work
of Christ will shine in darkness And we don’t know how widespread
this conversion was. To me, it has maybe tones of
the Great Awakening. It has tones of a mighty work
of God unseen and unmatched in many other times or places in
history. Verses 17 through 19 tell us
of it. whooping of the seven sons of
Siva, you might say became known. Verse 17 says to all the residents
of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. and fear fell upon them all.
And the name of the Lord was extolled. Also, many of those
who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their
practices. And a number of those who practiced
magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the
sight of all. They counted the value of them
and found it came to 50,000 pieces.” of silver, all the spade work,
all the hard plowing of Paul and the others, all of the rocks
now out of the soil brought good soil, where when some planted
and others watered, God now brought the increase. The soil was prepared,
the seed was sown, the planting and the watering done, and now
an explosion of growth. Or we might say in our theological
framework, we might say the effective call of God through the gospel.
Validated through these miracles, burst on the scene and a group
of people, a number of people couldn’t help but become aware
of their sin. and become aware of the wrath
of God that is to come for sin and aware of the gospel of grace
through forgiveness in Jesus Christ. And so all of a sudden,
a building boom, we might say, in God’s church at Ephesus took
place. And notice the sequence in these
verses, fear, fell upon all these people, they began to recognize
there is a God. He is above all the Greek and
Roman gods, above all the pantheon. He’s above all the things that
are God in our lives. And they began to fear or reverence
him and to recognize him. They no longer put him away or
put him aside into the group of other gods. These people at
Ephesus, they sobered up. They sobered up when they saw
the forces of evil and the forces of God, the seed of the woman,
Eve, and the seed of the serpent doing battle in this fake exorcism
ministry. The word, the work of Christ
comes and shines his light and people fear him. Notice the second
thing it says, they began to regard or extol the name of Jesus. We just saw his name was being
misused. We have no doubt his name was
not worshiped at all in that city. They worshiped Artemis
and others in all their temples. And so not only did fear come
upon them, but they regarded Christ. And they began to confess
their sins, divulging their evil practices. And they then sought
out to rid themselves of their past. I couldn’t help think of
the little bonfire here. When I was a teenager, all my
buddies would go off to camp, summer camp for two weeks, and
they come back Christians, right? Go off to summer camp, become
a Christian. There’s always a bonfire at summer camp. And if you have
fond memories of camp, don’t let me dampen your joy. But my
friends would come back every summer like clockwork. We’re
going to burn our CDs. you know, U2 and REM and all
that. And my brother and I finally
got the great idea. Instead of burning your CDs,
let us, you know, give you 20 bucks for them. And so a good
number of the albums in my current collection come from friends
going to summer camp. And we’ve got to be careful,
don’t we? Not to get hokey, right? Not get superstitious and say,
well, if I do this, it shows my commitment to the Lord. It’s
not just a burning of the books, is it? It’s a change of heart. It’s a change of mind. That’s
what the word repentance is. Repentance is a word that literally
means to turn. I’m going this way. And I’m happy
about it. People in Adam, people not in
Jesus are going headlong into hell. We say the phrase we’re
all going to hell in a handbasket, right? Well, that’s the case
if we’re in Adam and not in Jesus. but to turn from our wicked ways
and to come to Jesus, recognizing He alone is the one who can forgive
us of all our sin and unrighteousness, recognizing that He alone has
the power to save and to heal and to cast out, recognizing
that He alone can save us from sin and death and hell and punishment
and wrath. And so that’s really the point
of their fear. They’re regarding Christ. They’re
confessing their sins, then divulging their evil practices and even
ridding themselves of the past. We think of Paul and other letters
he writes, if anyone is in Christ. He is a new creation. The old
the old man, the old nature is gone and the new the new nature
Christ we put on Christ has come. And so we leave the past behind.
The problem is we still have indwelling sin. We still have
our fingers wrapped around certain idols or we develop new ones
or we get out of step with the spirit, or we quench the spirit,
or we quit coming to church, or we stop reading the word.
And sometimes we pick up on our old ways. And God says in his
word, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. And he
goes through a list of things we should put to death. One of
them is idolatry. Another is sexual immorality.
And I wonder if, I’m pretty sure he does, he has the Ephesians
on his mind, but put it away. And he says, for these things,
on account of these things, the wrath of God is coming. You’ve
been saved from them. So put them to death, quit them,
put them out at the street, put them in the rubbish pile, the
garbage can, let them go to the landfill and rot. where they
belong. And so maybe. You’ve come to
faith in Jesus and you’re having trouble letting go of past lifestyle
habits, past loves, past idols, or maybe you’ve been a Christian
and you’re long in the faith and you’ve gotten kind of comfy
and you developed some. Well, we call them bad habits,
but they’re far worse than that, and maybe you need to rid yourselves
of these things. Maybe you do need to have a bonfire.
And we all need to say and sing, I have decided to follow Jesus,
no turning back. We need to, by his word and by
his spirit and by his power, make good on that U-turn, on
that repentance. We need our faith strengthened.
We need to constantly be quickened in our spirit and pricked in
our conscience and see that our sin is exactly that. It is a
sin before God. I love how our confession of
faith says with grief and hatred of our sin, with a sight and
sense of the wrath of God, a sight and sense of the mercy of God
in Christ, we do hate and turn from our sin. And there’s even
a little phrase in there that says our sin stinks. It uses the word odious, love
that. Does your sin stink? You know,
something in the house smells bad. You find it and you get
it out. Something in our lives smells
bad. And I think sadly we coddle it,
we nurture it, we hide it and we secretly love it. And God
is saying to us today, as he did to the Ephesians, you rid
yourselves of those things and you look only to Christ and his
ways and his kingdom values. Our passage ends with a wonderful
conclusion. It’s one of the significant conclusions. It’s verse 20, and there’s about
four of these in Acts, and it simply says the word of the Lord
continued to increase. The word of the Lord continued
to prevail mightily. One of the commentaries I read
was very thoughtful in this point. It said, notice the book burning,
notice the price of the books, the value of the books, the cost
of the books. Well, the value and the cost
and the price was eternal wrath. They gave them up. But then this
writer, this commentator was very wise to point out, and I
think it’s something we ought to take note of, the books that
did come from Ephesus. From Ephesus, Paul wrote to Rome
the greatest theological treatise in the New Testament. From Ephesus,
Paul wrote to Ephesus where Timothy later would be the pastor. He
wrote first and second Timothy. From Ephesus, we have the ministry
of John the apostle who wrote John’s gospel, first, second,
third John, and then he wrote down the words of the revelation. And we also have from Ephesus
a letter to the Corinthians, two handfuls of books, maybe
a pile of them burned. but two handfuls of books come
from the life and the ministry and the light of the gospel and
the work of Christ. I wonder what comes from your
life, your witness. What comes from our church’s
life and witness? And most importantly, do we believe
that the power of God, the work of Christ can be like a jackhammer
in this hard world that resists the gospel? And is it possible
that from this little place, from us as individuals, a bit
of the light of Christ might make a change, a difference,
a transformation in our part of the world. God says to be
found faithful and he will do the work. Brothers and sisters,
I think you know this. The world needs people who have
a simple faith in Jesus. and a hope in his mighty power.
And so may good things come from each of us and from us as a church
as a whole. Let’s do pray together. Almighty
God, you brought your son, the Lord Jesus, back from the dead. It was by that same power, that
same word that you spoke and all things in this world that
did not exist now do. Lord, we pray that as the world
offers so much, it offers its own power, that we would not
be suckers, that we would not be duped into the things that
will pass away, but help us to pay attention to your word and
to your power and to trust in it so that mighty things, great
things can happen in the work of redemption in this world.
We do pray in the name of our savior, Jesus. Amen.