You're listening to audio from Faith Church, located on the north side of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now here's the teaching. Hey. Good morning, everyone.

My name's Joey, I'm excited to open up Acts 19 with you. We are in this portion of Acts that we've been calling disturbing the peace, that's the hammer there on the right there, chapter 18 through chapter 20, roughly, because this is where we're seeing as lives are being changed by the gospel and people are beginning to live in different ways, it's starting to grate a little bit on the broader society. And in fact, what we're gonna look at today is kind of the lighting of a fuse that's set to blow in the next couple of weeks. Now, last week, when we last left Paul, we saw him living and working in Ephesus. He's sharing the gospel, putting into place his strategy for church planning throughout the whole province of Asia Minor.

He was there for 2 years. He spent that 2 years splitting his time working in the tent making shop during, the work day and then lecturing, preaching, teaching during his off hours. And and this was, like, this is the high point of Paul's career, his his preaching, the work of his team, the strategy. It's so successful that Luke tells us that the whole region heard the word of the Lord. Hundreds of thousands of people spread over tens of thousands of square miles and hundreds of cities and dozens of islands had some sort of active gospel work in their communities.

And it starts swinging shut this week. Let's pick up where Luke Luke takes us in Acts 19. Before we get in there, though, once a week for the last couple of months or so, I've been, I've been going to see a physical therapist, which I assume is surprising, given the specimen of a man that I am in front of you today. Thank you. But my hamstrings have been giving me pain while running, and I have not been able to figure out what it is.

So, my doc sent me to physical therapist. He did a bunch of exercises and evaluated my hamstring strength and, said they're pretty weak and off balance and everything, so he's been giving me, like, these exercises that I have to do to increase strength and mobility. It's not been all bad. I've gotten to learn some, you know, fun new exercises with fun names, like Romanian deadlifts and Bulgarian split squats. And I asked, could there be something, like, easier?

Like, something Canadian, maybe? And it's like, you could you could shrug and apologize, but Now, honestly, I when he sent me to the physical therapist, I wasn't really hoping that I would go learn a bunch of exercises that if I were faithful and applied them over time, they would eventually increase the strength and mobility of my hamstrings so that I could run without pain. I was hoping that I'd go to the PT and the therapist the therapist would, I don't know, wave like a magic science wand or something over my hamstrings, and I would just be healed. Right? That's what I was hoping for.

That didn't happen. Instead, I was given exercises, that I usually tell him I did in between appointments and I I thought about doing. Turns out that doesn't help very much. But the the point of going to the physical therapist, no matter how faithful I have been or haven't been, and actually keeping to the workouts and doing the exercises, the the point is I I'm going to see the physical therapist because I've got a goal that I'm trying to get to, something I'm trying to achieve. Pain free running, and there's an obstacle in the way pain.

And physical therapy is, hopefully, the means that's gonna get me to what I I want. If there were easier ways to do it, I would do that. I've tried. I've tried just lots of Tylenol. That didn't help.

I've tried sports massage. That didn't help. So here we are. But the point is I'm I'm only going to the physical therapist because I think this is the guy who can help me get what I want. Right.

PT is isn't an end in itself. It's a means to some other end. Right? That passage we're looking at today invites us to ask that same question of Jesus. You know, is Jesus and a relationship with God through him, is Jesus what I most deeply want, or is a relationship with God through Jesus, is that a means to an end?

Am I following Jesus because there's something else that I want more that I think maybe he can give me? You know, in other words, do I want Jesus, or do I follow Jesus in order to get what I want? This story in acts 19 invites us to ask that question, because we see 2 opposite reactions to the preaching of the gospel in these verses. One person or one group of people, they see the power of a relationship with Jesus, what it looks like in Paul's life, and they think, wow, I need some of I need to be able to control that and use that for what I want done. Others see the power of a relationship with Jesus in the lives of his followers, and say, I want to conform myself to it, to that relationship, to become what Jesus wants me to become.

These are 2 very different ways of understanding who Jesus is and how we relate to him. Right. Does he do what we want or do we do what he wants? Does Jesus conform to us or do we conform to him? Could it be maybe for some of us that following Jesus isn't really working for you because Jesus doesn't actually work for you?

Or to put it the other way, and this is the the point I'm gonna keep coming back to this morning, is following Jesus will never work for us if we think Jesus works for us. Following Jesus, it's never gonna work for us if we think Jesus works for us and reports to us. Well, we pick it up in acts 1911, seeing how these two perspectives play out. In verses 11 and 12, Luke begins the passage describing some extraordinarily miraculous events. I mean, miracles are always extraordinary, but these are like extra extraordinary.

This kind of thing doesn't happen hardly anywhere else. We don't hear of this kind of thing anywhere else. These extraordinary extraordinarily miraculous events happening during these 2 years Paul's living and working in Ephesus, verse 11, and God was doing some extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, literally through Paul's hands, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons and those are the words for, like, the sweat rags when you're working in a hot shop and you've got a towel and you just kinda wipe off your face, or or the the mop up cloth you use to wipe off your work service. Even the the the handkerchiefs, the aprons that had touched Paul's skin were snatched and carried away to the sick. Diseases left them.

Evil spirits came out of them. Now do you remember how, in the very first verse of this book, Luke tells us he's done all this research, and he's written this all out, you know, primarily for a guy named Theophilus? You Remember this? He's a Greek speaking follower of Jesus, and Luke is writing this. He's probably the guy who kind of paid for all the research to be done to say, hey, lay out the story of the church for me so I can understand it all in in one place.

Well, if we were like Theophilus, if we were 1st century readers of this book, and if, like Theophilus, we were familiar with the reputations of the places the story takes us, we'd be in these verses about Paul working in Ephesus, and we'd be wondering about the reputation of a place like Ephesus. You know, if Corinth was the the Vegas of the ancient world, Ephesus was, was like Salem. So how does the gospel work in a place like that? See, Ephesus was known for being a place where the practice of magic thrived, so well known for this, in fact, that that, you know, books of spells or incantations or whatever, were just casually referred to as Ephesian writings, you know, whether they came from Ephesus themselves or not. It's that's what the city was was known for.

See, magical thinking was was woven into the everyday fabric of Greco Roman life, from the big cities to the small towns. One historian says the practice of magic, his word, was omnipresent. It's just everywhere. Everybody grew up thinking, well, there's just spirits you need to appeal to in order to take care of different situations or things that are going on in your life. So the average person used magical amulets, or dolls, or or trinkets, or tablets, or various, you know, other things to do the stuff that you'd expect.

Right? Get this person to fall in love with me, take control of my shadow, become invisible, help me make business decisions, change the outcome of a chariot race, treat an illness, get rid of all these mice in the pantry. We have records of spells for all of these things from this time period, Because everybody back then took it for granted that the material world, what we can see and interact with and experiment on and observe, like, this world is not all there is. There's more than what you can just see and touch. It didn't matter Christian, Jewish, pagan, whatever.

Everyone assumed that there was a that there is a transcendent world, some sort of nonphysical spiritual world that operated with its own rules, populated by its own spiritual beings. Right? The physical world is populated by physical beings and has physical rules, and same for the spirit world. And everybody took it for granted that the physical world and the spiritual world could interact with one another, and that actions in one could influence outcomes in the other, both directions. So living in a world that's just populated by spirit and trying to understand, how do I relate to this, in general, most people thought of the relationship between the 2 kind of on a sliding scale from, like, miracle, on one end, that is uncontrolled spirit world breaking into the physical world, nothing you can do to make that happen, all the way to magic on the other end of the spectrum.

That's the physical world using words of power and secret rituals to force the spirit world to do something in the physical world. It's almost kind of what it looks like is happening here. Right? Like, these sweat rags and and wipe up cloths are imbued with some sort of, like, healing power. But Luke is careful to insist for us that it might look like it's on the magic end of the spectrum, but it's really miracle.

God is the one choosing to work through these things as evidence of the truth of what Paul's preaching and teaching. But the people that are watching this happen, don't have the benefit of Luke's editorializing. You know, they don't get to read Luke's interpretation or explanation of what's happening. They're just seeing it happen in front of them and saying, this looks a lot like magic. There's this certain group of individuals that sees what Paul is able to do, how he's able to work.

Miracles work magic using the name of Jesus, and they want in on some of the action. Look at, look at verse 13. Well, then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists 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 Siva or Sceva were were doing this. Seven guys, 7 brothers, all sons of the same priest, guy who was probably part of one of the families from which, like, the chief priest was chosen in Jerusalem every year, guy with with high connections, Skiva or Siva.

Every time I typed that name into the computer, it autocorrected to Steve. So I'm just gonna call them the sons of Steve, because then I know I'm saying it correctly. Plus, it makes them sound like a motorcycle gang, but anyway, calling them the sons of Steve here of 1 of the the high priests is supposed to tell us a couple of things. First, that these guys should know better. They should know better.

As sons of a priest, they should know better than to think you can manipulate the God of Israel into doing what you want, except it's well known in antiquity. There were lots who said they were followers of the God of Israel. They would wander around the ancient world and expel demons or heal diseases for a fee, but they should know better. Secondly, being sons of a priest, though, it gives them a little bit more credibility among those who would pay for their services. If your dad's a priest, you you probably have inside access to the words, the names that will work to get God to do what you want.

Inside access, like, you know, being the kid of the boss gets you a leg up in the business. So these 7 sons, the sons of Steve, who are not followers of Jesus, they've heard that Paul is working miracles by invoking the name of Jesus. To their eyes, he's performing magic by binding Jesus to his will by using his name, so they try to they decide to try the same thing. In the case of a man who's being demonized, all 7 of them there together, they tell this guy, I adjure you. I command you.

I demand in the name of the Jesus that Paul's been talking about. That one, in case you were confused about a different Jesus. See, they're seeing this through a magical lens, thinking the name of Jesus can be used in a in a formulaic incantation, that just speaking the name of Jesus itself, those two syllables will force Jesus to do what they ask. Spoiler alert, they're wrong. It doesn't go well.

The evil spirit responds to their use of Jesus's name by asking them their own names. I command you in the name of Jesus to come out of him, and they're, like, Jesus, I know. Paul, I've heard of. Paul, I recognize. Paul, I respect is another way we could translate that, but who are you?

Like, I know Jesus, and my colleagues have been talking about Paul, but who are you guys? It's a bit of comedy and irony kinda rolled together, be because these are guys who have seen the power of a relationship with God. They see Paul. They see how God is using Paul. They see how God is showing up in extraordinary, unexpected ways.

They're watching as the future kingdom of God is breaking into the present right now and putting things right physically, spiritually, and they're thinking, how do I get some of that for me to control? That would really come in handy in the business. They're not thinking, man, if that's that's reality, if God is really breaking into the world right now, then that means I need to conform myself to what God is doing. They're thinking, wow, if that's reality, if if the name of Jesus has power like that, then how can I use it for me? How can I get Jesus to show up the way I want him to show up, the way I need him to show up?

It doesn't go well. Turns out Jesus doesn't work for them because, you know, Jesus doesn't actually work for them. The man with the evil spirit reacts violently. He I picture, like, this scrawny little guy like me, all of a sudden overpowering 7 of these guys all at once, attacking them physically so that they run out with togas torn, like, flapping in the wind, black eyed and bleeding and scratched all over. Right?

It's the kind of thing you, like, bust out of that house and look around like, did anyone see? I hope this story doesn't get out. But they're not so lucky. Verse 17. 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.

There goes the business. Street credit down the tubes. But it's significant that in Ephesus, when this story is heard, that fear is the reaction. So think about what the average person is processing. This whole area is hearing about Paul.

They're hearing about Jesus, yes, but they're hearing about Paul as well. These are some of his greatest days. This is his best ministry season. Jesus is changing lives, and Paul is his chief representative. People knew that Paul was preaching Jesus, that Paul was working miracles in Jesus' name, or maybe Paul was was doing magic by invoking the power of his control over Jesus.

You start to wonder, like, who is the powerful one? Is it Paul? Is Jesus just a a talisman or a magic trinket or some power you can coerce and manipulate and force to conform to to what you want? But then they see these guys using the name of Jesus, and if Jesus is just a magical formula, it doesn't matter who you are or what kind of a relationship you have with him. All you have to do is use the right sound, and they try.

It doesn't go well. So verse 18 actually shows us their conclusion that walking the way of Jesus, being an apprentice of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus, is just utterly incompatible with a lifestyle that relies on on magic. Verse 18 says, also, many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices, their their magical practices, and magical practices, and and a number of those who practice magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of of awe. And see, here's what the people are realizing. You can't believe that Jesus is Lord of all, he is uncreated, he's the one who holds the world together, he's the one who's all powerful, all knowing, all good, that Jesus is the one who cannot be manipulated, coerced, or controlled.

You cannot believe all of that and still believe at the same time that with the right words or the right prayer or the right sacrifice or the right obedience, you can get him to do what you want. Those two beliefs are not compatible, and you certainly can't claim to follow the Jesus who is Lord over all, and at the same time appeal to lesser powers, false deities, spiritual forces, to get you what you want. So the the hundreds and hundreds of people in Ephesus who've begun following Jesus, but hadn't yet made the connection between their everyday apprenticeship to Jesus and their magical thinking of how you do the normal stuff of life, like manage your business and get rid of mice. They hadn't put these things together yet. They're starting to realize now, this is these are not compatible, and they begin to come forward.

Verb there, it's kind of like over an extended period of time, almost like a revival that just keeps gaining momentum, going on and on. Week after week, more and more people are bringing their secret books, and their talismans, and their amulets, and that scrap of papyrus that had a, you know, a blessing over the house written on it that they kept special and hidden so that it would protect the house. They're bringing all of these things, whatever they have, and and burning them in public. When Luke tells us there in verse 18 that they divulged their practices, it's almost a technical term for rendering the spells useless or powerless. Superstition had it that spells only had had power if they were kept secret.

You know, you follow the recipe exactly. You keep it secret. You do the whole complex ritual, all of that stuff. So these disciples of Jesus, when they bring them out in public, they're saying, look. You see it?

Now it's worthless. Power's taken out of it. Might as well burn it. And notice, no one is forcing them, to burn these books. No one's putting emotional pressure on the congregation.

You know, there wasn't a youth group all nighter saying, bring your CDs, and we'll burn them together. I just flashed back to the nineties youth group there for a second. I'm back. This is happening voluntarily as the Spirit of God in the congregation is moving individuals to consider how their life of following Jesus lines up with, or matches, or is compatible with other parts of their lives that they've just taken for granted this whole time, because that's the way the world works. Except it's not the way the world works if Jesus is king.

It creates quite a stir in Ephesus, such a stir that everyone knew all about this, even down to the value of the the big old pile of books that were burned over the course of these weeks. So we get the sense from the words that the they who counted the value of them is not the disciples. I don't think people are coming and being like, I burned 3 pieces of silver worth, and it's like, well, I burned 4. People are kinda watching, going like, there's a lot of valuable stuff that's being burned here. Everybody just kinda knew.

It's like, man, that's the church that just burned 50 1,000 silver coins. I did the math on that, and in today's dollars in Indianapolis, that's equal to the buying power of somewhere around $15,000,000 That's a pretty big hit to the economy. Keep in mind, as we get into next week, that's a huge hit to the economy. Well, for however long this revival lasted, books of magic going up in smoke, you know, literally poof, and they're gone. Never mind selling them and giving the money to the poor, you know, or widows and orphans.

I said, well, once you recognize there's a spirit world, like, you don't wanna mess with the dark powers. You don't necessarily wanna resource anyone else to either. It's not something you mess with. It's almost as if they they recognized that following Jesus meant conforming your life to him, not asking him to conform his commands to you. It's like they realize that following Jesus might mean being willing to give up even your entire old way of life if you're gonna walk in his way.

Now you might be wondering, okay. It's interesting story. What does that have to do with us? Very curious what the application's gonna be. We've got a fire going right outside.

Just kidding. I mean, we don't generally worry about exorcisms these days or traffic in books of spells and incantations, you know, in order to take care of the rodents in the house. We don't we don't need magic because we have technology. Right? It's actually part of the problem.

We have so much technology today that we just intuitively think that everything around us should be conformable to what we want out of it. If the world isn't the way you want it, surely there's an app for that. Right? Can't sleep? I can recommend some sleep aid apps.

Can't get your mind to to calm down? I can recommend some meditation apps. Can't remember the exercises your physical therapist told you to do? I've got an app for that. Our world tells us that to survive in this world, we have to shape it to fit us, not shape ourselves to fit it.

And and so there's really only 3 things that you need in this world if you're going to survive and be happy. There's only happy. There's only three things you need. You need a smartphone with a good connection. Right?

You need a credit card with plenty of credit, and you need access to a pharmacy. Right? If you have those three things, how could you possibly ever feel sad, alone, or unhappy? That's the world we live in. That's the magical thinking that characterizes our world.

One of the reasons it's so difficult to walk the way of Jesus in our world today is that we just intuitively think that everything around us should be conformable to what we want from it, and we take that intuitive assumption into our relationship with Jesus. It's it's really hard not to believe that he exists to serve me. In fact, when I talk with people who've walked away from their faith, whether it's young adults or middle age or whatever, it doesn't matter the age, the the reasons are always a variation on the same thing. Nobody ever says something like, well, you know, I looked at the evidence, or I used to believe, but then I read some books about how you can't really believe that Jesus really existed. People say that, but then there's always something underneath.

It's always a variation on the same thing. You know, I tried following Jesus, but he he just didn't come through for me the way I needed him to. He didn't make my life easier. He didn't take away my suffering. He didn't make me feel better about myself.

He didn't help me reach my goals. He didn't take away my temptation. He didn't show me he didn't give me assurance about the future. He didn't, you know, give me a sense of ownership of my own life. It's like, I tried Jesus.

He just didn't work for me, because Jesus doesn't work for us. He doesn't exist to serve us. We exist to serve him. Jesus didn't give himself for us so that we could figure out how to control him and manipulate him into doing what we want and giving us what we want. He gave himself for us so that we could join him and become part of what he's doing in the world, part of his work to set the world back right by calling people back into a restored relationship with him.

He doesn't exist to serve us. We exist to serve him. See, if you're if you're there and you're like, man, following Jesus just isn't working for me, It's because Jesus isn't working for you. He's working for the glory of his father. Now, I am happy to admit, right now, there's plenty going on in my life and in our lives where I just wish I knew the magic words.

I just wish I had the the right incantation, or sorry, I'll put it in Christian words, the right prayer. I wish I knew the right sacrifice or the right step of obedience. I wish I just knew the right thing to say to get Jesus to do what I want, and I'm happy to limit myself to the good things. Come on, Jesus. Take away the pain of of losing people you care about.

Come on, Jesus. Fix the those relationships that that seem to be broken beyond repair. Knit those that family knit that family back together. Heal the person that we love. Give us clarity about the future.

Bring back that person who who took off. Come on, Jesus, fix it. Make it right. You said you would. What do I have to do to just get you to do what I want?

But he doesn't he doesn't work for us. We work for him, and he'll do what he wants in his time. Does anybody else hate that? At least we know whatever it is, it's good. It's good.

We know it's good because he is not taking us anywhere that he himself hasn't already gone, so we can wait. Alright. I we need to pray. Let's pray together. Father, there are so many good things in this world that our hearts desperately long for.

They are good things because they are reflections of your goodwill and work for how the world should be. Father, forgive us when we want the good of the way things should be more than we want the good of knowing you. Father, for those of us who who don't even realize, don't even know that that the way we're thinking about what we want is is we're using you to to get us something else, something more, something bigger, something we long for even more deeply. Father, forgive us. Show us what we're doing.

Father, for those of us who, we know that's what we're doing. We've bargained with you. We've made promises. And we've said, Lord, if you'll just do this, then I'll give that. Father, forgive us for trying to control you with magic words, instead of conforming ourselves to your will.

Father, for all of us, draw us back to your son and what he has done for us, where he has gone before us, that he, working to glorify you, may inspire us to the same work. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.