Emptying the closets
Ephesus - Year 2
Acts 19.11-20
Sin will stifle your growth and hold you back as a Christian. It will stunt your faith. Regarding sin, the Ephesians went through a significant turning point.
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon possessed. They would say, “In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas. In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
Acts 19:11 20 (NIV)
God was doing great things in Ephesus
• He began a church through competent and willing people
• He established the gospel among the Jews
• He brought them from the repentance of John to salvation in Christ
• He is doing incredible miracles
People are touching items touched by Paul and being healed. This is quite extraordinary. As far as I can tell, Paul and Jesus are the only two people in the Bible who did something like this. Elisha tried it, but it didn’t work for him.
People are also being delivered from demons. As happened at other times in the book of Acts, the power that caused this to happen was misunderstood. Paul, through the power of the Holy Spirit cast out demons, and someone thought it was a matter of incantations and spells - simply saying the right word ... magic.
It is a natural mistake. The religion of Diana (Artemis) that was so important in Ephesus was full of magical practices. Some of the magic was associated with the Zodiac and astrology. Some of it was earth or nature based magic. Some of it was fertility magic. The large image of Artemis housed at the temple in Ephesus had 7 powerful magical spells inscribed on it. Magic was prominent in Ephesus, so the misconception that a person could speak some words and a demon would leave was not surprising, even if it was wrong.
Are demons real?
The question must be asked. Should we believe in demons, demonic possession and exorcism? Most public conceptions of these subjects comes from horror movies out of Hollywood, a bad source for understanding anything.
The Bible says demons are very real. They are unclean spirits, angels who decided at a critical moment to follow Satan instead of God. As we see here, they are also dangerous. They cannot be controlled with words or spells, and they must only be confronted in the power of Christ.
Both angels and unclean spirits are accepted by many religions, not just Christianity. I believe that when people steeped in pagan religions in tribal Africa, South America, and tribal North America - when people in Asian pagan religions talk about unclean spirits, they are demonstrating an awareness of the spiritual realm that the Bible talks about when it speaks of demons. People’s experience throughout history convince them that these things are real.
In our scientific age, we are tempted to relegate demons to the realm of superstition. We would like to explain possession in terms of psychology rather than spirituality. This has a certain appeal. If we admit that a person or a place is dominated by demons we are saying that they are in bondage to Satan. We are thought to be saying that a person or place is ...
perish the thought:
bad
That is soooooo judgmental. It is so much nicer to say they are sick. It is not their fault and with the proper "non-judgmental" treatment they may be cured.
This is a misunderstanding of demonism. Of course the person is bad ... so is everyone else in the world.
The Bible makes it clear that all have sinned. I am bad, you are bad, and apart from Jesus, no good thing can be found in us. We are created to be like God and sin has marred that likeness. Until the righteousness of Jesus is reflected in us, we are utterly bad, and that determines what God sees in us.
The presence of a demon does not mean a person is worse than anyone else. It means they are more vulnerable. They are in a position, for whatever reason, that Satan’s servants find appealing for their own purposes and they exploit that person or place.
So, the shorthand answer is yes, we should be aware of demons in the spiritual realm. We also should recognize and treat mental illness for what it is.
People who suffer from diagnosable and treatable mental illness are not possessed. The two things are very different and demon presence can be distinguished because it will find its expression in spiritual and moral activity. Demons are not responsible for all the bad things that happen in a person’s life, but they could be responsible for some of it. Paul and the sons of Sceva were dealing with a real spiritual demonic presence.
Awareness of the importance of following Jesus was profoundly deepened
It became important to the Ephesians to draw a stark distinction between Jesus and other religions. The Judaism of Sceva was not powerful against demons, and the magic practices of Artemis were dangerous.
Verses 18 and 19 are very telling:
Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.
This might be interpreted as the general public becoming aware of Jesus’ supremacy over the demon realm, but that is not what is happening here.
The people who were moved by this deepened awareness, according to verse 18 were believers:
• It was believers who confessed their sin
• It was believers who had been practicing sourcery
• It was believers who came to burn their books publically
When I saw this fact, I was quite surprised. Who would have thought that the believers of the church of Ephesus, under the leadership of Paul would have been dabbling in sorcery.
But they weren’t, they were deeply steeped in it. The value of the books that were burned came to 50,000 drachmas:
A drachma was a silver coin. The value was the same as a dinarius. It’s real value was the price of a sheep and it stood for about a day’s wages. It is always an uncertain thing to try to translate values from New Testament times into today’s money, but if we calculate based upon a day’s wages - at minimum wage, this value would have been nearly 3 million dollars.
Imagine burning 3 million dollars worth of anything.
These people were not just reading their horoscopes in the paper. They were not calling the psychic hotline or having their palms read. They were practicing magic on a huge scale. It was a major element of their culture and daily practice.
In our contemporary way of looking at this, we might think this is a terrible thing. These believers are mixing their true faith with pagan practices that involve demons. What a contradiction! If we thought there was a pagan, demonic root to something we were doing, it would probably frighten us a bit and cause us to reassess our practice.
• Of course, we might just look at our horoscope
• For laughs
• It doesn’t really mean anything
In Ephesus, people had been coming to Christ for 2 or 3 years. There had been problems and solutions. Some people had not completely abandoned their pagan practices. But this event dramatically clarified the spiritual landscape and the war in which the disciples of Jesus are engaged. This awareness sparked a certain amount of fear, but more importantly, it motivated repentance.
Repentance is changing your mind.
• It begins with a realization of what you are doing wrong
• It continues with a desire to do something different
• We decide what we want to do
• Then we do it
These are believers
• They had already trusted the grace of Jesus to change them and give them eternal life
• They have been under very good leadership
• They have developed a viable church
• And they had continued to practice what seems to us to be particularly dangerous sin
Then they repented. Their repentance was demonstrated by two actions:
• Open confession
• Rejection of their sinful things
The truth is, even Christians sin
There are some believers that you probably think do not sin. There may be some that you believe think they do not sin. Believers in our place and time try to hide their sin. They don’t like to be identified as "sinners." They want to seem above it all.
I was recently reading a magazine for ministers. They were talking about how important it is for ministers to have other minister friends that they can confide in and be held accountable by. They recommend prayer and discussion groups in which open sharing is a regular part. In the article they were talking about the temptation and sin that ministers deal with:
• tension in our marriages
• the enticement of pornography
• spending issues
• cynicism
You might think that this sounds like the same list of temptations you deal with ... it is.
All believers are tempted and all believers sin.
Sometimes believers, like anyone else, even mature believers have sin problems that are habitual or addictive. Sometimes they have problems in their lives that you would never believe.
In the case of the church at Ephesus, they had problems turning from their paganism.
Now here is the problem
• You are a believer
• You are tempted like the rest of us
• You sin like the rest of us
We may want to sit in judgement on one another because of the sin in other people’s lives, but we are wrong to do so. We all have sin. We judge, not because we have no sin, but because we like to think that your sin is somehow worse. I can take comfort from the fact that my sin is no worse than yours. In this way, we play a game called "I’m not so bad."
This leads to a vicious cycle.
• We all sin
• We all look at everyone else’s sin
• We all justify our own sin (everyone does it)
• And we continue sinning
This is a direct, unequivocal path to spiritual failure.
When the Ephesians saw the danger and violence latent in the sin that they were hiding, they had a visual representation of the havoc that was being wreaked on their own souls. The wounds of the sons of Sceva were representative of the wounds on their own hearts from the sin they harbored.
What sin are you harboring? What is scarring your soul?
Repent
Just like the Ephesians, it is important to break the sin cycle by changing your mind and turning around.
Open confession
Your first confession is to God. He wants us to admit our sin, and it is His joy to forgive us. Jesus came not just to die and save lost people from Hell. He also died to save saved people from the bondage of their sin. He wants you to be free. He wants you to overcome.
This also means telling a believing friend or a small group in which you are involved what kind of temptation you struggle with. This is hard. It is very hard. It is like kids when nobody wants to be first. We know that all the people in that group struggle with temptation and perhaps even habitual sin, but nobody is talking about it. It must have been surprising to the Ephesians to see which other believers were standing next to the bonfire burning their spell books. How could they have known that others were struggling with the same spiritual issues they struggled with?
Somebody has got to be first. Who will be courageous enough to take the step? Who will find a believing friend you can trust to keep your confidentiality and who will help you pray and help you monitor your temptation and tell them. I know how hard this is. I have been the one to take the step only to watch others sit in silence. It is not fun.
This is not like catholic confession. In that tradition people depend on a priest to forgive them and mediate their absolution. Your forgiveness comes from Jesus. Telling this person or few people is only a way for you to come to grips with the reality of your sin. As long as you keep it hidden it can control you and hold you back spiritually.
Walk away from your sinful situation
They burned magic books. What do you have to do?
• Flush some pills?
• Cancel a pay channel on Cable?
• Find another job?
• Cut up some credit cards?
• Send someone else food shopping?
• Sell your car?
I knew a man who invested far too much love, attention, money and care on his old Thunderbird. In the end, it became an idol to him. The only way for him to put that sin behind him was to sell the car.
Leaving your sin behind may cost you. You may have invested a great deal of money in maintaining your tempting situation. But sin will stand between you and God and you will not progress as a disciple of Jesus any further than your sin will allow.
We must see our sin as God sees it. We want to see it from our own narrow and private perspective that allows us to judge others worse than ourselves.
But how can we stand against Satan when we give him a foothold in our lives?
If you wonder why the church at large is failing in our country
And make no mistake it is failing
it is this problem. Christians sin and keep that sin hidden and do not repent and leave it behind. Look what happened when they finally flushed the sin from their lives.
In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
When they lit and fed this bonfire, if we could have had spiritual eyes to look into the flame, we would have seen a door in the spiritual realm opening. The rejection of this sin, on the part of so many people, was the gateway into a surprising movement of the Holy Spirit to grow the Church into something powerful and lasting.
Confess
And turn
This is repentance. It is surprisingly simple in theory. It does not take any special knowledge of the Bible or theology. It does not take any honed skills or spiritual maturity. It just takes willingness.
Your confession may involve getting help from somebody if your sin has a powerful hold on you. It is still good. It may not feel good sometimes, but it is good. It is your vehicle for continuing to walk away from that sin. Maybe that involves a program or counseling. But don’t be fooled. I’m not just talking about serious addiction here. Most sin is more a matter of our will and does not have that kind of hold.
Paul describes a process of turning that involves replacement. When you quit doing one bad thing, replace it with something good. This is turning. It isn’t just not facing south, it is actively looking north. It is a new outlook and a new direction.
If you struggle with a sin, don’t struggle alone. This week, today, leave it behind:
First pray, confess your sin to God. Admit that it is wrong and that you know He is not pleased with it. He will freely forgive.
Second, go to another believer that you trust, one who is more mature in Christ than you are. Tell them what that sin is. You don’t have to go into gory detail, but just get it out in the open with another person who can pray for you and who can perhaps give you perspective and who can ask you how you are doing from time to time.
If you are that person, be confidential and trustworthy. Don’t take this person’s confession lightly or pretend to offer forgiveness that is not yours to give. Don’t tell them it is ok, it is not ok, and they know it. Instead pray with them and go to them occasionally to see if they are following through. Help them see what they need to do to gain victory over this sin.
Finally, turn. Replace the sinful activity with something spiritually healthy and helpful. Sometimes it helps to define the righteous opposite of your sin and embrace that:
• sexual sin may be turned to loving your spouse more
• lies may be turned to learning to speak the truth in love
• stealing may be turned to working harder to alleviate the desire to steal
• gluttony may be turned to the discipline of fasting (not eating disorders, a discipline)
• drinking or drug use may be turned to an intentional appreciation of the beauty and vitality of your unaltered life and reality
• Hatred can be turned to intentional expressions of selflessness and love
This is true and active repentance, not just turning from facing one way, but intentionally and actively looking and walking in the opposite direction.
When we see sin as a direction to face and walk, it leads to death and destruction.
Righteousness, on the other hand, is a path that leads directly to our LORD, and everything He holds dear.
