NOT A MAGIC TRICK
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[a] 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[b] them, and prevailed against them,[c] 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. 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.
It has been a couple of weeks since we have been studying in the book of Acts. Let me remind you where we are at.
When Jesus left earth, he told his disciples that they were going to be witnesses of Jesus unto the ends of the earth. The church begins in Jerusalem. It soon begins to grow, and go throughout what we would now call Israel. Then into Syria. Then God led Paul and Barnabas to begin a mission to the rest of the Gentile world. Paul and Barnabas go separate ways after a while, and Paul drafts Silas as his ministry partner. They go further into what is now Turkey, and then make a foray into starting a church in Europe with their visit to Athens. This is where we left off in the middle of next month.
In Acts 18, Paul and Silas also went further south in Greece to community of Corinth. They stayed there for about a year and a half. Pastor Mike shared a little about Corinth last week in his sermon from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. The missionaries spent over a year and a half planting that little church in Corinth, with Paul making tents on the side. While doing that he met a couple of other tentmakers named Priscilla and Aquila. They were a married couple who quickly became some of Paul’s most trusted ministry partners.
After a year and a half, Paul sets sail toward home. They land in Ephesus. Paul leaves Priscilla and Aquila there, and runs home for some missionary deputation in Syria and Israel. Having reported what God has done, he goes back out on his third missionary journey. He quickly visits churches he has founded before. And then he gets to Ephesus, and re-joins Priscilla and Aquila.
And that is where the missionary Paul is when we join him today. He is in Ephesus, and while some of Paul’s trainees have begun to make inroads in Ephesus, when Paul arrives he brings the kind of energy to the ministry in Ephesus that just takes it to another level. Paul’s ministry is especially relevant because he engages the powers of evil and darkness in spiritual warfare.
One of the things that happens is that God gifts Paul with amazing power of healing. People began to be healed by handkerchiefs and aprons that Paul had touched. Demons were being cast out of people even.
Now there is something that you need to know about Ephesus. Ephesus was an important city in the Ancient World. It was important because it was home to the temple of Artemis. The temple of Artemis was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was a marvel.
This temple thing, as well as its strategic location as a seaport on the Aegean sea, made Ephesus a very powerful city, and a very populous one. As a matter of fact, at this time it had over 250,000 people in the city, which made it the second largest city in the known world.
The temple of Artemis was also the center of the occult for the known world. If Harry Potter would have lived in the ancient world, he would not have trained in Hoggwart’s Academy, he would have trained to be a magician in Ephesus. This is why Paul had to directly engage is spiritual warfare in Ephesus. To demonstrate the power of God in the spiritual realm.
Ephesus was full of spiritual activity, and people who fraudulently imitated powers of ghosts, demons, and other spiritual powers. People experimented with the supernatural. They sought supernatural powers. They would magic talismans in their windows, magic crystals in their living rooms, and books of the dark arts in their basement.
Bible does not deny the supernatural world or deny speculation about powers we cannot see. As a matter of fact, a primary theme of Paul’s letters to the Ephesians talks about how to deal with ungodly spiritual powers and to confront the principalities and powers.
Here in Acts, we have a short, somewhat humorous, yet very serious story of some young men who engage in dealings with the spiritual realm, and end up losing their shirts, and much more, in the process.
The young men are not mentioned by name. They are all brothers, a
nd sons of a man named Sceva. Sceva and his sons were Jewish. And they were travelling exorcists. They would roam around from city to city and cast out spirits from people from money.
They had heard about Paul, and a few others, casting out demons from people in the name of Jesus. They did not know much about Jesus, but they thought this would be another good incantation to add to their collections of spells.
So the sons of Sceva confront a man who is possessed by an evil spirit. They say to the evil spirit inside the man, “I exorcise you in the name of Jesus of whom Paul preaches”.
Possessed by a demon, a demon spoke through the man he possessed. The demon said, “Jesus I know, Paul I know, but who are you?”
Then the man whom the demon possessed attacked the seven sons of Sceva. The Bible says that those boys ran out of the house that the man lived in, the man they were trying to take the demon out of, and they ran home naked and bleeding.
Scripture says that everyone heard about this. Both Greeks and Jews took notice. As a result three things happened. The people were filled with fear. They began to confess their sins—their dishonesty and idolatry, and they were so convicted of the evil of their occult practices that they gathered together and burned all of their books of magic and spells. The total loss in value of the books was the equivalent of 10,000 days labor for the average blue collar worker.
The key word in this story is the word fear. It only shows up once in the whole paragraph, but it defines the purpose of what God is trying to tell us through this adventure in the life of the church.
The fear of the Lord. There is much debate about this phrase. Some people try to soften it up. God does not want us to be afraid of him, some people say. We should understand the fear of the Lord as respect instead of fear. Fear is too mean and too harsh of a word. After all, some say, why would God and his angels say “Do not be afraid” so often?
I am not one of those people.
The book of Proverbs says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Throughout the book of Acts you see the church seized with fear of the Lord after God’s power is exercised in powerful ways over and over again. God wants us to have a holy fear of Him. He wants us to have that sense of awe in his presence. He wants us to have an awareness of his Almighty power. He wants us to know that his power transcends all the other powers in the world. That there is no nation that is more powerful that he is. He wants us to know that there is no spiritual power greater than he is.
So these Sons of Sceva come along. They want to turn “the name of Jesus” into a magic trick. Into some power that they can manipulate and control and own and use for their own benefit. And God will have none of it. So he allows the demon to attack these young men. Through this event God teaches the people of Ephesus that they need to fear him. They can’t treat him like some ghost or spirit that they can use or manipulate. They cannot use the name of Jesus to line their pockets. God will have none of it. The power of Jesus will not be used as a plaything. It will not be controlled and manipulated. It will only be found through surrendering one’s life to Christ, and giving oneself in service of Him. God will not be taken for granted. He would not be taken for granted that day with the Sons of Sceva. And he will not be taken for granted now.
I believe we live in a generation today that has forgotten the fear of the
Lord. We have forgotten that our God is an awesome God. We have forgotten that we serve the God that conquered the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. We have forgotten that we serve a God that made the sun stand still in the book of Judges, or that send down fire from Heaven with the prayer of Elijah on Mount Carmel. We have forgotten that God struck Zecheriah mute and Paul blind. We have forgotten a Jesus that spoke much more about hell than he did about heaven. We have forgotten about the Jesus that will come again to judge the living and the dead in the last days.
No, instead we have painted God as a cosmic co-dependent. We picture God like some cosmic version of Mr. Rogers, telling us that I’m ok and you are ok, patting us on the head and emploring us to be his friend and neighbor. And, in the process, in our generation, in this nation, I believe we have forgotten the fear of the Lord.
You will see all around us that our church is decorated to celebrate July 4. July 4, technically, is not a celebration of a military victory. It is not the day we adopted the constitution. It is the day that we ratified the Declaration of Independence. The document that states in its second sentence that “all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…”
I think it is good to thank God for the country he gave us. I am so glad I was born in a land where I am free to worship as I please. I am so thankful to live in a place that God has blessed with so much wealth and privilege and beauty. And I am truly blessed to live in a nation where the truth of Jesus has had such a strong influence.
But I also am concerned that I live in a nation that takes so many of those blessings from God and God himself for granted. It is one thing to believe that our nation’s founding was heavily influenced by Christian theology, which it undeniably was on several levels. It is another thing to take that history for granted, and to believe that God unconditionally endorses our nation because of those foundational principles. That is taking God for granted. That is forgetting the fear of the Lord.
My friends, being an American will not make you a Christian any more than being in a garage will make you a car. We can put “in God we trust” on our money, and we can sing “God Bless the USA”…but if we are not surrendering our lives to Christ, we are just using these phrases like magic phrases, and we are not any different than the Sons of Sceva.
The power of God will not be reduced to a slogan or a catch phrase. It will not be reduced to one nation’s self-interest. It will not be manipulated for political gain. And this weekend should not so much remind us that God is on our side, but that we should seek to be on HIS side. As a nation. As a church. As individual people.
So often we take God for granted. We do what we want instead of what God commands, planning on asking for his forgiveness later. We take God’s patience for granted, putting off until tomorrow what God has called us to do today.
We forget that our God is an awesome God. We forget to fear God.
A few months ago we had this goofy yahoo running around the country saying that he knew the day and time when Jesus was coming back. I rolled my eyes, and at the appropriate time went in the front yard for rapture practice.
But I wonder sometimes, if we really knew that Jesus was returning in a week, what would change. I suspect you would see massive changes in many people’s lives. They would begin to understand that they were mortal, and that soon they would stand before the judgment throne of God. They would stop taking God for granted. They would begin to experience the fear of the Lord.
I was in Montana when Sept 11 happened about 10 years ago. People had their bubble burst. They did not feel as safe in this country. And as a result, churches in our area began to experience a rapid rise in attendance for a few months. As folks began to feel more vulnerable, they experienced the fear of the Lord. They knew he was mighty and powerful. They began to turn to God in their time of distress. They stopped taking God for granted. For a few months, they began to be filled with the fear of the Lord.
This did not last for long though. Many folks went back to taking God for granted again pretty quickly.
As we come to the Lord’s Table, we remember God’s great sacrifice for us. We remember that he died for me and for you and for the whole world. And we remember this sacrifice until he comes again. Our coming to this table on a regular basis reminds us that we are not to take God for granted. Instead we are to surrender ourselves to Him and give Him the honor and awe he deserves. Amen.
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