“Experiencing God’s Power””
(Acts 19:11-41)
Series: The Church on Fire!
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
First Baptist Church Henderson KY
(3-16-08) (AM)
- Take God’s Word and open to Acts, chapter 19.
If you’re visiting with us, we have been preaching through the book of Acts, verse-by-verse, making our way through this exhilarating study of how the church began and how she grew in the early years. And we’re learning powerful lessons about how this all applies to us today. Last week we left off at verse 10 in chapter 19 where we were reading about how the Spirit of God worked through the Apostle Paul as he shared Christ with the people of Ephesus. So we’re back in Ephesus now and building upon our teaching about the power of God. We left off at chapter 19, verse 10 so there’s no question about where we begin. We begin at verse 11 and we’re going to study with God’s help this morning the remainder of this chapter. Get ready: these first few verses are pretty wild!
- Stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
11 Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul,
12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.
13 Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.”
14 Also there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so.
15 And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”
16 Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
17 This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.
- Pray.
Introduction:
I want to get right to our study this morning. We’ve got a lot of exciting ground to cover and I want to talk to you about “Experiencing God’s Power.” We reminded ourselves last week that the key verse to the book of Acts is chapter 1, verse 8. Jesus says to His followers, including you and me: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses…” So the key to living the Christian life is to experience God’s power through the Holy Spirit. God wants us to experience His power. He says, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” So God wants us to live in His power. He wants us to experience His power. Let’s talk about how that power is seen in chapter 19 this morning. First, through the Lord Jesus Christ:
I. We have Power over Satan (11-17)
Let me say this really quickly right up front. Let’s get our theology right. Question: Is Satan real? Answer: yes. He is mentioned in the New Testament many, many, times as either Satan, the devil, the adversary, or other names. He’s mentioned in one form or another at least as many times as there are chapters in the New Testament, at least 260 times. He’s real.
Now I said we need to get our theology right. Here’s the next question: Do we believe in dualism? You ask, “What is dualism, Todd?” Go ahead and ask that: What is dualism, Todd? Well, since you asked: Dualism is like, ‘There are two powerful forces, one is God and the other is the devil. They both duke it out all the time and the stronger guy wins, sometimes it’s God and sometimes it’s the devil.’ Do we believe that? Say no. No, we adhere to Christian theism. There is One God and He is all-powerful. However powerful Satan is, God will always be more powerful. As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ we have power over Satan. Look at your Bible:
11 Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul,
12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.
Grammar lesson: underline the adjective that modifies the noun in verse 11. Okay, just underline the word “unusual.” God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul. Unusual miracles. Sounds a bit like a redundancy, doesn’t it. Unusual miracles as opposed to usual miracles. We would be impressed with miracles, but unusual miracles. This is stuff that had never happened before and has not happened since. Even Paul had to be like, “This is really unusual stuff.” What kind of stuff? Verse 12 says that “even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of the.”
Luke tells us this is unusual. And it was. Our series through the book of Acts is called, “The Church on Fire.” I believe much of the signs, wonders, and miracles of the early church period was kind of like squirting starter fluid onto a fire. Have you ever done that? Am I the only one who gets a little fire going in the grill and then it’s like, “Squirt that stuff on it and watch it grow!” The fire grows larger quickly. I really think God grew the early church that way. These miracles in verse 11 are unusual. Say, “unusual.” Nowhere are we told to try to mimic what Paul did. Nowhere. In fact, the Bible doesn’t even say that Paul initiated this. The Bible is telling us about Paul’s experience. It’s not telling us we’re to experience what happened to Paul. But it teaches a general principle and that is, “Christians have power over Satan.” Look again at this next story:
13 Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.”
Ephesus was sort of a breeding ground for magicians, spiritists, mystics, and otherwise “clairvoyant” people. The Greeks at Ephesus believed in many, many, many, gods and so they would just call upon any and every god. So there’re even some Jewish exorcists who “took it upon themselves”—I love that phrase, they took it upon themselves, because God didn’t have anything to do with it!—to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits. They’re like, “Man, this Paul guy has some power, so let’s invoke the name of his God.” Now watch this:
14 Also there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so.
15 And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”
16 Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
Talk about getting a beating! Look: Satan is real. He is real and he is powerful. And these guys were not followers of the Lord Jesus Christ so they took a beating, big time. Okay, here’s the deal: these guys weren’t followers of Jesus Christ, but most of us are, so can this kind of thing happen to us? Well, let me just say that can certainly be influenced by, harassed, and terrorized by Satan. He is real. But Jesus says in 1 John 4:4, “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” What that means is that—listen!—no Christian can be controlled by Satan against his will. These guys had no choice because the Spirit of God did not live within them. We have a choice whether we allow Satan’s influence to have its way. We must allow the Spirit within us to rule and reign. Don’t give-in to the ways of Satan. Allow the Holy Spirit to rule and reign in your life. Don’t blame Satan for your sin. He’s only a tempter. He can’t make you sin. We have power over Satan.
Now verse 17 tells us that this event causes people to turn to the Lord. Look at it:
17 This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.
So that takes us to the next thing we need to know about experiencing God’s power. Through Christ we have power over Satan and, secondly, through Christ:
II. We have Power over Sin (18-20)
18 And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds.
19 Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver.
20 So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.
See how the word of the Lord changed these people in Ephesus? Verse 18 says that many of them “believed.” That is, they became Christians. What happens when God’s Spirit convicts lost people of their sin? Verse 18: They confess those sins. These people came to know Jesus Christ and they confessed their sins and told of their deeds, that is, the things they had done wrong. To “confess” means “to agree with.” So they’re like, “We are sinners. We have done wrong. We have been living for these other gods and we know now that the Gospel is true. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one and only Lord and we’re going to live for Him.”
And they gave evidence of their newfound faith by renouncing the things that previously held sway in their lives. Verse 19: Many of those who practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. They were not doing this in secret. They were doing this out in the open, taking a public stand for the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Bible says that the total of all these books was “50,000 pieces of silver.” One piece of silver was the equivalent of one day’s wages of the average worker in Ephesus. So this is like millions upon millions of money, but they’re like, “It doesn’t matter anymore. We’re following Jesus Christ now. Money isn’t as important to us as following Christ. The old ways of the world are not as important to us as following Christ.”
Here we see the power of the Gospel; power over sin. The Bible teaches that all of us have this problem called sin. We’re sinners by nature and sinners by choice. We’re sinners by nature because of what happened in the Garden of Eden a long time ago; Adam and Eve, Genesis chapter 3. Paul teaches later in Romans 5 that Adam is the federal representative of the human race. He represented all of mankind in the Garden of Eden and when Adam sinned, we sinned with him. We enter into this world as sinners by nature. Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But we’re also sinners by choice. We willfully do the things we know we shouldn’t and we don’t always do the things we know we should. The Bible says God is holy and we can’t get into heaven and have eternal life even if we’ve sinned just once. So we have this problem called sin and it demands punishment. Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death” and that’s a spiritual death. We all will die a physical death because of sin, but our sin also deserves what the book of Revelation calls “the second death.” Jesus died to take care of that second death so that we wouldn’t have to experience it. The Gospel is that Jesus Christ lived the perfect, sin-free life you and I could not live and then He died to take the punishment we deserved for our sin. If we believe that he died for us personally then we receive the benefits of Christ’s death on our behalf. Our sins are paid for, taken care of, cast as far as the East from the West if we receive Christ as our Lord and Savior and God credits Christ’s righteousness to us.
That’s the message Paul was preaching. That’s what these Ephesians “believed” there in verse 18. They believed and God’s power immediately went to work in them, evidenced in a changed lifestyle. They’re burning all the vestiges of the old way of life and that’s what we’re to do, too. We break with our old lives of sin and walk in a new way of life in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What we read in the remaining portion of this chapter is largely about people who don’t have this power over sin. Let’s take a look at this. If we’re followers of Christ, then through Christ we have power over Satan and power over sin, and thirdly:
III. We have Power over Secularism (21-41)
Secularism is simply “the ways of the world.” In this life we either live for the Lord or for the world. We live either for the things of heaven or the things of earth. Secularism is following the things of the world, the things of earth. First we read a little bit about Paul’s travel plans:
21 When these things were accomplished, Paul purposed in the Spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.”
And that’s not the “must” of a tourist, but the “must” of a missionary. He’s not like, “Oh, I’d just love to see Rome!” He’s, “I’ve got to get to Rome. They need the Gospel!”
22 So he sent into Macedonia two of those who ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus, but he himself stayed in Asia for a time.
And remember when we read “Asia,” we’re reading about what is today modern Turkey. It’s where Ephesus was and Colossae and the seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation. Okay, now let’s read this wild story beginning in verse 23:
23 And about that time there arose a great commotion about the Way.
24 For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Diana, brought no small profit to the craftsmen.
25 He called them together with the workers of similar occupation, and said: “Men, you know that we have our prosperity by this trade.
26 “Moreover you see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are not gods which are made with hands.
So there’s this Demetrius guy who’s a silversmith. He makes silver shrines of Diana (Greek: Artemis). Now Diana is the Greek goddess that came to be worshiped in Ephesus as a fertility goddess. And Demetrius was in the business of making small silver shrines of Diana. I’ve got a picture of one of these that archaeologists have unearthed. There’s a picture of one shrine. This one was made of terra cotta. They’ve found bunches of terra cotta shrines of Diana. Demetrius made his of silver. So they would make these things and sell them. And so Demetrius calls together the local trade union and he’s like, “Man, we’re losing money here to these Christians because “this Paul” guy is telling everybody that man-made gods are no gods at all.” Now, Demetrius is in it for the money, but he adds a little religion to his speech to make it sound like he has greater concerns:
27 “So not only is this trade of ours in danger of falling into disrepute, but also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised and her magnificence destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worship.”
The temple housed an image of Diana. I’ve got a picture of the temple here. Beautiful, isn’t it?! That’s all that remains of the temple. It was originally quite a sight, one of the seven wonders of the world. I’ve got another picture here of what the original may have looked like based on an artist’s conception. It was 425 feet long, 200 feet wide. There were 127 marble pillars, reaching 60 feet in height. Many of the columns were inlaid with gold and jewels. So Demetrius is like, “This Christianity business is hurting our economy and, furthermore, it’s hurting our worship of Diana.” So Demetrius incites a little riot scene:
28 Now when they heard this, they were full of wrath and cried out, saying, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”
29 So the whole city was filled with confusion, and rushed into the theater with one accord, having seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians, Paul’s travel companions.
I’ve got a picture of this theater, too. It held about 25,000 people. So they all rush into this theater. Demetrius had no trouble getting together a crowd. Apparently the city was full for the annual festival of Artemis (or Diana) where they had a month-long of drinking, carousing, and engaging in sexual immorality all in the name of worshiping Diana.
30 And when Paul wanted to go in to the people, the disciples would not allow him.
31 Then some of the officials of Asia, who were his friends, sent to him pleading that he would not venture into the theater.
32 Some therefore cried one thing and some another, for the assembly was confused, and most of them did not know why they had come together.
Is that not laughable?! “Most of them did not know why they had come together.” People are shouting, “Great is Diana” and one of them asks, “Why are we doing this again?!” That’s the way of the world, that’s the way of secularism. The purposes of the world are short-lived.
33 And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward. And Alexander motioned with his hand, and wanted to make his defense to the people.
34 But when they found out that he was a Jew, all with one voice cried out for about two hours, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”
Two hours! These politicians making their speeches now: they’ll get a crowd going. But for two hours!
35 And when the city clerk had quieted the crowd, he said: “Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Zeus?
Apparently, a meteorite fell in Ephesus and was fashioned into the image of Diana.
36 “Therefore, since these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly.
37 “For you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of your goddess.
38 “Therefore, if Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a case against anyone, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another.
39 “But if you have any other inquiry to make, it shall be determined in the lawful assembly.
40 “For we are in danger of being called in question for today’s uproar, there being no reason which we may give to account for this disorderly gathering.”
41 And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly.
The clerk is like, “We can go to jail for this behavior” and the crowd is like, “Okay, never mind” and they walk away. Secularism. Living for the world. Living for the moment. Attracted to materialism, sensuality, pleasure, and wealth. Sounds a bit like our culture.
My third point is, through Christ we have power over secularism. The question is, “Do we, really?” Why don’t we have the same kind of impact and influence upon our community that the Apostle Paul and the Christians had in their community? How come there are not “Demetrius’s” in Henderson worrying about what Christianity and the church is doing to business?
Maybe it’s because the church isn’t evincing the kind of power it’s supposed to have. Maybe because many Christians are so entwined with the culture that we’re no threat. Here’s a little quote I came across in my study:
Kent Hughes, “Today many believers’ witness is anemic and corrupted. Much of the church is clamoring to get on the world’s bandwagon. Christianity sells—so give people a gospel Grammy, or add a gospel number to the concert to balance out the repertoire and appease Christian critics. But it is impossible to be filled with the Spirit and set our minds on things below. It is impossible to be filled with the Spirit and live for the dollar. It is impossible to be filled with the Spirit and watch a drama that feeds the base appetites of the flesh.”
Only through Christ are we delivered from the ways of the world…
-
Stand for prayer.
COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: The text contained in this sermon is solely owned by its author. The reproduction, or distribution of this message, or any portion of it, should include the author’s name. The author intends to provide free resources in order to inspire believers and to assist preachers and teachers in Kingdom work.