Hey. You're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the North side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. Each week, I'll sit down with one of our preaching pastors to discuss their Sunday sermon. Cut for Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday.

Thanks for listening. Hey, everybody. Good morning. Welcome to another episode of cup for time. This is pastor Jeff, not Claire.

Mhmm. The newest thing cup for time. Joey and I are actually out of town together at our denominational district conference in the Chicago area, and, Claire and the rest of the Kingsleys are taking some much needed vacation. Yeah. So you guys get us.

You get the 2 of us. Yeah. We're gonna go back and forth about, well, if if I preach the passage, I would have emphasized and be like, well, you know, but there's a reason I did. No. I'm just kidding.

Gonna say that? Like, you're gonna say if you preach the passage? If I could do it again, I would include yeah. Well, Joey, this is a really interesting passage. Mhmm.

One of these unique events of seeing the holy spirit apparently move in some unusual ways Right. And people responding. So, run us through the passage and, the overview of your message, and then we'd love to get into some questions that some people sent in and, anything that you had to cut for time. For sure. Yeah.

So acts 1911 through 20, this is Paul in Ephesus still. It's just about, like, I think I mentioned at the beginning, it's like lighting the fuse of what's coming, with a riot that erupts in the passage we're looking at next week. And so, these verses are extraordinary in a couple of ways. 1, Luke tells us extraordinary miracles. Like, all miracles are extraordinary, but these are like extra extra.

This does not this kind of thing doesn't happen any other place. This is the only place we see this kind of thing happening. So anyway, what's interesting is that people are watching this happening and then kind of we get these 2 different pictures of how people respond. Some see the power of the word of God and want to harness it for themselves. Others see it and think I need to come in line with that and let that power control me and see me control it.

And so with these two different kind of responses, we saw these 7 sons who were trying to use the name of Jesus in a magical way to, you know, to perform exorcisms. But on the flip side, we see the 100 and 100 of followers of Jesus who begin to realize because of this, like, oh, I need to bring my life into line with Jesus' power instead of the other way around and get rid of their books of magic and stuff like that. Of course, we had to spend some time talking about magic and what does that mean and what is all that. And we've got more questions around that, of course, that we should talk through. But, that was the the sermon as a whole really was asking us to ask ourselves, like, do I tend to wanna use Jesus to get what I want Or do I want to conform myself to what Jesus wants for me?

So the the bottom line or big idea that I kept coming back to was, you know, if Jesus isn't working for you, it's because Jesus doesn't work for you. Right? Yeah. That doesn't work for you. And and if you think he works for you, it's never gonna work for you.

It's just emotionally, spiritually, whatever. It's just not gonna work for you if you think Jesus works for you. Yeah. I wanna dig into that. Yeah.

But, we actually had some questions that came in just about some of the events we see happening in this passage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In your study, like, how common is this?

Like, would there have commonly been Jewish people doing demon exorcisms and, and the, like, traveling around to places like Ephesus to do things like that? Yeah. This is fairly well known, actually. Jewish magicians of a sort were kinda well known. In fact, there's a there's a suspicion that, from historians at the time, writing at the time, that King Solomon was the one who started the practice of Jewish exorcism and passed down a tradition of it, all the way up until this day.

I I don't know if we we have any textual proof of that anywhere. But, yeah, there's this suspicion that it went all the way back to Solomon. And so that kinda gives it, you know, some credence, of course. Now we we do see, you know, Jesus expelling demons. Right?

So this is not unheard of or unnecessary. And Peter, Paul, others do something similar. But this the question here was, like, and I'd say, how how much does that happen more broadly? We don't know. And these particular 7 sons, like, their practice of it, is this legit?

Is it showmanship for money? It's just it's hard to tell from the data we have. Makes me think of the passage, where king Saul in the old testament goes to this witch or necromancer. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, that seems really odd, and and that's not, I mean, the fact that that happened is not so much the point in terms of how common was that or what actually happened as much as what was going on in Saul's heart that motivated this. Yeah. And I wonder if this passage is a little like that. Like, maybe it was a well known enough practice that Luke doesn't really feel like he needs to expand on. Sure.

Yeah. It's different to our world, but maybe not. And for that, it was like, oh, yeah. So some itinerant exorcists. Yep.

Yeah. It's just, well, you know, those people are always coming through. Whether they're snake oil salesman or not, you know, we don't know. Yeah. There there's definitely culturally at the time, there's an understanding that some of this is legit.

Mhmm. That because there's this there's the taken for granted belief that the material world, the physical world, and the spiritual world interact Mhmm. And that there is a spiritual world. Now for us, of course, intuitively for us, we're we attribute nothing to the spiritual world. It's all everything's physically explainable.

But I remember a missions professor saying once that the difference between our perspective on the world and the ancient perspective on the world is if I got sick if I get sick, I'm gonna ask the question, what caused this? And back then, if someone got sick, they'd ask the question, who caused this? Mhmm. Because it was seen that even if there are material processes contributing to it, germ theory or whatever, that that's being directed by some sort of intelligence in the spirit world that is causing these things to happen. So that maybe leads to another kind of related question that we got, as well.

Jesus is not, you know, sort of a magic wand that we wave. Right. And yet in the New Testament even, we do see passages like Jesus telling the disciples when they couldn't cast out a demon, it's because this one only comes out through prayer and fasting or Right. So it's not as though there's a technology to unlock, but it feels like is it Mhmm. Is there something there?

It's well, it's really interesting because, like, our world is fascinated by technique. What are the steps? How do I do it? What's the right thing? And scripture is all within a relational context.

In fact, that's one of the huge differences between magic and miracle. When a miracle occurs, it's always relational. When magic happens, one of the characteristics is that it is, it is always coercive. It is not relational. It is the physical person, the magician or the magus trying to use words of power in a specific, you know, technique, in a specific way to force a god to do what he asked them to do.

And that's why it's all in secret and there's specific recipes and words you have to use, you know, the spells and things like that. So in the in the ancient way of thinking, I mentioned magic and miracle exist on kind of a sliding scale or a spectrum with miracle on one end and magic on the other. But there's always a sense of, like, you know, where are we on the spectrum of pure miracle and and pure magic. And then, of course, you can also you could plot another, line on the graph that goes vertically that is like, you know, am I controlling this or is it controlling me? In other words, like, can I make it happen or is it being hap is it happening because of someone else's as in the spirit world's, impetus, not not my own?

So, yeah. When Jesus says, hey, pray in my name or this kind of demon only comes out with prayer and fasting. He's not giving us a technique like, oh, you know, this kind you have to approach in this way. He's giving us a relational context of, okay, if you're going to, in your relationship with me, you worked here with this, like, we have to be way more relationally connected Mhmm. In order for your, you know, your authority in order for Jesus's authority to go through that person and to the demon.

People listening at home cannot see all of the hand gestures that I'm using. So, Jeff, these are just for your, your benefit, I guess. But, it's kind of like, you know, at the very end of the sermon, this probably wasn't in the podcast. So if you caught it just online, you wouldn't have heard this part. But in the closing comments, I told a story of when I remember Anna being, being young and with one of her cousins.

Right? And Anna comes up to me and says, dada ice cream. I'm like, yes, of course. Right? And her cousins tries to say the same thing, dada ice cream.

I'm like, no. You're you're not my kid. I'm not giving you ice cream. Ask your mom, you know. Ask your dad, not me.

Right? So if we were looking at it, like, say we're writing a book for toddlers, you know, would we say, hey, this kind of ice cream only comes if you use the word dada? Well, maybe. But you use the word in the context of the relationship Mhmm. That the person has, you know, that Anna has with me as her father.

So we need to we need to remember when we are told to pray in Jesus's name or to pray or fast or do these other things, those are techniques for getting God to do what we want. That's magic. Magical thinking. Those are relational pathways in which we deepen our relationship with God and know better what he wants for us and then can accurately represent his authority in the world when we're, you know, exercising a demon or when we're just trying to make decisions about the future or whatever. Exercising patience.

Or exercising patience. Yeah. Exactly. So that maybe I think it sounds like you were heading towards, the the other question that comes to mind, which is Jesus telling his disciples, pray and whatever you ask in my name Right. The father will give to you.

So, okay, he's not given a formula, but there's something there. Yep. Some kind of authority. Yep. And how do I know?

I guess the the question is, I mean, I thought you did a really great job bringing this out that following Jesus will never work for us if we think Jesus works for us. And, how do I discern what I want and turning that into what I think God wants for me? Because, I mean, I think all of us, hopefully, as sincere followers of Jesus would say, yeah. I want God to be in charge of my life, and yet we could probably also acknowledge ways or even times in our lives where it was easy to convince myself that what I wanted 100%. Yeah.

Was obviously what God wanted. Yeah. Yeah. So are there ways that we taking Jesus' words about encouraging us to pray and ask for things in his name, how do I know if what I'm asking is what God wants or if it's just me baptizing my desires in Jesus' name. Yeah.

No. It's it's a great question because so praying in Jesus' name doesn't mean end your prayer with in Jesus' name, amen. Right? That's not a bad practice, but what you're saying in praying in his name is saying, okay, Jesus. Everything I just asked for, I'm I'm asking for under your authority, which doesn't mean I command your authority to do this for me.

It means if this lines up with what you desire for me and for my life, if this lines up with your will, how you wanna work in the world, how you wanna work through me, then let it be done. You know, amen. Let it be true. Okay. And so Sure.

I'm gonna pray something and say, you know, Jesus, I'm praying this in your name. Not because using your name makes it happen, but because you are the relational context in which I find out if what I'm praying is is correct or not. It's what you would want for me or not. So how do I know, if what I'm praying is, like, what God wants or not? Well, the easy answer is wait and see what he does.

Right? Yeah. Okay. Because if he does it, then yes. And if he doesn't, then no.

But at the same time and also the the words in the name of Jesus or in Jesus name, amen, invites us to stop and consider is what I'm asking for what Jesus would want for me. Or another way to put it, I'm trying to remember who I heard say this, is, like, God will, always do what we would have asked for if we knew everything he knows. You know? If he if we knew everything he knows about who we are and what's going on and what other things are happening and and what other what other plans he has in mind and all of that. So I don't know if I'm answering the question because, again, if I can come back to the idea of looking for a technique.

Mhmm. We're looking for steps. You know, steps of discerning God's will when it's it's not so much about a technique as it is about wisdom. Mhmm. Exercising wisdom in repeated observation over time.

You know, I've noticed when I pray asking God to materially bless me, that tends not to happen. But when I pray and ask him to work spiritually in others' lives, boy, I see that happen all the time. Right? If you kinda observe that over time, after a while, the sort of wisdom kicks in and you're like, I think what God wants to do is actually more of that than this. That doesn't mean he's not going to materially bless.

It doesn't mean he's always going to spiritually bless. But over time, you get to exercise a bit of, a bit of wisdom, which is one of the reasons why the church is, you know, supposed to be a family of people of all ages because we get to see people who've walked with Jesus for decades and ask them, like, I don't know. I've I've thought about this. I'm hoping God does something like this. And someone who's walked with Jesus for 60 years can say, well, good luck with that.

Or, yeah, that's that's the kind of thing in my life that God has always blessed. Yeah. That's that's really helpful. It it makes me think as well of whether it's books about, prayer or parenting Mhmm. That particularly, I think as American Christians, we definitely want to know the technique.

Mhmm. And there are people who maybe life has, in a sense, quote, worked, unquote, for them. Right. And those are the people that often get invited to write books about how to get your kids to be what you want them to be Right. Or how to get how to unleash God's power in your life.

Right. Is there a sense in which you're like, we as American Christians fall into the same temptation Oh, okay. As these believers in Ephesus? Like, just give me the technique. Tell me the formula.

Tell me the program. So what's the difference between that and discerning godly wisdom for How life works. Parenting Yeah. Yeah. Or Yeah.

Honoring god in my work Yeah. And having a successful or, you know, godly marriage in the sense of what God would actually want it to look like. Well, let me so let me see if I can illustrate it with an analogy. And this is off the top of my head, so we'll find out if it works. But imagine you're canoeing.

Like, I know you enjoy kayaking. I enjoy kayaking from time to time as well. You're in a river. Right? And so as you're kayaking down this river, you're going to experience the way the river bends and moves.

You're going to, you know, you're gonna end up in the eddies and in the currents. You know if you wanna rest, you need to pull aside to one of the quiet spots and then go back into the current in the middle. Things like that. That is analogous to the process of sort of discerning God's will for our life. You you go with the flow of what's there, of the river that is there.

The techniques that we try to implement for, you know, rate you know, gay getting better kids or financial freedom or whatever it is, is a lot like dredging that creek into a straight line Mhmm. Or turning the river into a canal. Mhmm. And saying, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna build walls around this. I'm gonna border it in.

I'm gonna make it go in a straight line so I can control it, and I know what's going to happen. Yeah. It it comes back to that idea, that I talked about in the sermon that because we have so much technology and techniques for making life work, we just intuitively assume we should be able to bend the world to our will instead of bend ourselves to fit the objective reality of the world, which works great until you run into, like, you know, a problem with your hamstrings. And it doesn't matter how much you wish it to be better. You you just have I just have to face the fact that I can't control these muscles.

I can strengthen them, but I can't just change them to take I can't dial down my pain receptors. I have to actually strengthen the muscle. I think the analogy that you use is itself helpful because it's based on almost an assumption that there's a goal that I'm heading towards, and I need to figure out how to get to that goal. And God, I of course, I wanna do it God's way, but then God can just become a tool or a power To get to. To help me get to the goal that I want.

And maybe a good or a godly goal, like getting safely through the river is a good thing, but we're in a relationship in which we're supposed to be changed and transformed because of encountering this God. Right. Not using him as a tool even towards good and godly ends, like having godly children. Right. Or doing well in my work or even loving my neighbors or being doing good in the world.

Mhmm. So saying, like, I wanna do it God's way is is like saying, I wanna follow God's formula for success, for getting what I want versus what God does, especially, like, in Proverbs When he simply in Proverbs, he describes the way the world works. He says he just describes, like, this is the way the world works. Wisdom conforms the self to the world in the way it works, the way it operates, the way morality works, the way I don't know. I can't think of a better way to say it than the way the world works versus how do I change the way the world works so that I can get what I want.

And and calls us as well both in old testament wisdom literature and New testament wisdom. To reflect on so what is the nature of this situation and what do I need here and what would godly wisdom look like? Mhmm. I think of, you know, the passage in Proverbs, I think it's 26, where there's the 2 verses right next to each other. Answer a fool according to his folly, so you you don't become like him.

Don't answer a fool according to his folly. Yeah. Yeah. So the fact that those are right next to each other, I think, is meant to be a big clue that there's not a technique. This is not yeah.

This is not rules for godly living. This is wisdom for godly living. Yes. Rules and wisdom are very different things. And we're Americans.

Like, right, we believe that we can make life perfect if we just pass enough laws. Right? The technical term for it is the omni competence of law. Mhmm. That laws are all competent to directly order life to make it work.

Mhmm. But scripture doesn't give us rules. It gives us wisdom. It doesn't ask ask us to exercise obedience to a list of rules. Now I know I'm getting into more questions here.

It invites us to align ourselves with the way of life, with God as the ultimate goal of that life. With the relationship at the center of that. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Not just a body of even wisdom or wise observations. No. No. It's how how do I live in it's not how do I live in the world. It's how do I live in God's world.

Yeah. In relationship with him, which you you remember when we preached, the Sermon on the Mount. That was a whole thing. It wasn't rules for kingdom living. It was in light of the coming of the kingdom of God, how do we live as citizens of that kingdom in relationship with him anticipating the coming of the kingdom?

Yeah. Which is way more requires way more wisdom and thinking than follow these rules. And Yes. You'll get blessing. Yeah.

Yeah. Because we can even take the commandments and directions in the new testament and turn them into a new set of rules to follow, that becomes, well, if I just follow in this path, then I'll be pleasing God and doing the right things and things will generally work well. Excuse me. Is it? Exactly.

No. That's that's good. Anything you had to cut from the message? Well, as I was, part of my application, I I think, came from, as I was reading about, you know, the context of magical thinking, in emphasis. It reminded me of, one of CS Lewis's essays where he talks about how, magic and science or scientism are, twins.

You know, they're born of the same mother. He said magic withered and died, but science grew stronger. And what he's what he's trying to say there is, like, if you go back to the middle ages, there's not, like, most people think all this magical thinking going around, like, Merlin and magicians and stuff. That's figments of our imagination. The most, like, magical thinking and, you know, Theosophism and all of these other movements, are Renaissance movements.

At the same time, we have more learning and more science and more technique and technology. At the same time, we're trying to control the world through magical incantations and so learn how to control the world. They both come from the same perspective of how do I make the world conform to my will? And so then how do I conform my will to the world? So, anyway, that would have, you know, taken 5 or 10 minutes to explain and talk about and all that.

So I just skipped it. But it was definitely in the back of my mind as I was talking about technology is part of the problem because it trains us to believe we can change the world to fit us instead of that our our, you know, the wise way of living is to change ourselves to fit the world. Goody. Which will incorporate wisdom from God and empowerment by the spirit Mhmm. Directed by his word towards the ends for which God has created us Yep.

Not our ends Right. Necessarily, which doesn't mean what we want is inherently sinful or wrong or No. Not at all. Selfish. Right.

But we have this tendency to then, yeah, wanna wanna grab the steering wheel, and and drive the thing where we think it ought to go. Yep. Which is usually right through a barrier and off a cliff. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like those barriers are there for a reason. Yeah. Any final words for us, Joey? You know, yeah. Last thoughts.

One thing I didn't use in the sermon that I had thought about, was reflecting on how a how most relationships begin. Especially, like, intimate relationships like a marriage. Right? When you first start dating someone, fall in love. For most of us, we don't actually fall in love with the other person.

We fall in love with how the other person makes us feel. Mhmm. Right? Alright. Our our idea of that person.

Our idea of that person. Idealized. Yeah. The question. I love you really means I love the way I feel when I'm with you.

Yes. You know? I love that you love me. I love that you love me. And that's that's how we come to Jesus as well.

Like, we have a need, and he meets that need fullness. Like, we recognize we're sinners. We need forgiveness, and the only way to find forgiveness is in Jesus. And he loves us enough to give us that forgiveness. We're, like We're blind, and we need sight.

We're deafening. We need spiritual life, and Jesus is offering that. Yeah. Absolutely. So he's he's meeting a need for us, And that's kinda analogous to how a a marriage starts.

I love the way you love me. And then as it matures and, you know, as the honeymoon period is over and it's, like, all the fire kinda burns out and burns low, eventually, like, in a marriage, you start to actually love the other person for who they are, not just how they make you feel. Mhmm. Because the how they make you feel, starts to get a little more normal and a little less ecstatic all the time. And it's very similar with our relationship with God is that we shift from being, like, I love you because you loved me, which is which is absolutely true.

We love because he first loved us Right. To becoming, like what the psalmist say, I love your holiness. I love who you are. Mhmm. I love not just what you're doing in the world, what you've done for me, but I love you.

And that's a big part of our discipleship. Our everyday apprenticeship to Jesus is shifting from, I just love the way you love me, Jesus, to I love you, and I want what you want in this world. It's sort of the maturing of the relationship. So I'd leave us with that. Like, where where are you on that spectrum of a maturing relationship?

Because I'm definitely still in the, like, you know, I love it when you make me feel good and give me what I want and give me clarity about the future and past and fix things and all of that. But I'm slowly learning to just love Jesus and what he's doing in the world instead of what he's doing for me or how he makes me feel. That's great. It's a good place to leave us. Thank you, Joey.

Thank you all for listening in. That's right. We'll be back to our regular scheduled programming next week. Claire will be back. She'll be interviewing Tom Waltz, though.

Tom is preaching this Sunday covering the riot, the next, gosh, 21 verses, I think, from acts 1921 to 41. And, if people remember, you know, I mentioned in the sermon this week that burning these books was like a $15,000,000 hit hit on the economy of destroying valuable assets, and that does not go unnoticed. And the people who made a living off of some of those things, and because the worship of the goddess Artemis was intricately tied with all this magic Right. And magic practice, like, they're starting to go, woah. My way of life is going up in flames.

This is not okay. These Christians are living in a way that maybe challenges me or It's gonna cost me my job, my living. What about my kids? Right? Why is you know, anyway, so all of that's gonna come, into play next week.

Good stuff. Yeah. Thanks, Joey. Alright. Thank you.

We'll see you all later. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following their sermon, you can email them to podcast at faith, live it out.org or text them into our faith church texting number, and we'll do our best to cover it in the week's episode. If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share with others. Thanks for listening.

We'll be back again next week.