The word of the Lord was growing
Acts 19:8-20 · Vern Peterman · Jun 3, 2018
Acts (2017-18), No. 65
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261910287522

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We're going to be adventuring our way through the book of Acts here, chapter 19, 8 through 20, as Craig just read for us. And as we do so, one of the things we want to do is to get you oriented. Last week we offered this as a full page map. We haven't done that in your handout this week. But so in the middle of this and slightly off to the left would be Ephesus. And so that would be the location. What we have included is kind of the upper left quarter of that. So this is what is on page one of your map.

So what we find is here's Ephesus there in what is now the western end of Turkey. And just to get a sense, since we were reading last week in the passage about Apollos and about the Apostle Paul and some of his ministry there in Ephesus on this, the third missionary journey of the Apostle Paul. And so as we look at this, here is Ephesus, a great city. It is one of the greater cities of the Roman Empire.

In terms of population, if you're trying to think of what does that relate to, roughly half the size of Colorado Springs, if you were to take that population. But they're actually put in, as we'll soon see, into a smaller area. So this is an important city. give you an idea. Here is a map. You also have this on page one of your handout or you're supposed to.

Here's a map of the central part of Ephesus and we're going to be revisiting this next week because the rest of chapter 19 continues on in Ephesus there. And right in this area here is the theater and the Agora or the marketplace. That's going to continue to be really important.

Here's an aerial view of Ephesus on a kind of a computer reconstruction, so you have an idea what that might have looked like. What you see is, yes, there are some large things there, but also lots and lots and lots of smaller buildings, and basically enough for a population within a walled city, a population of about a quarter million people, all in this area. So here's here's emphasis in looking this area. This is on the upper part This is where the theater is located and then the lower part of that is the Agora we're going to be looking at those again next week because those are critical to what we see described in The book of Acts chapter 19 So looking at our map here and looking at the theater, this theater, this is the way it looks now with some degree of archaeological excavation. Actually, Ephesus has been in the process of being excavated.

They're not done. for the last one and a half centuries. Can you imagine that? They're working on it really, really slowly. There are portions of it they haven't gotten to yet, including the area that is most likely to contain the synagogue we're going to hear about here shortly. So they haven't gotten there yet. We're going to talk about that. But one of the things we're able to do from what is there and from what descriptions they have, this would be what it would look like reconstructed. Can you imagine that? So quite a structure.

It had just been reconstructed and expanded and upgraded just shortly before Paul arrived on his third missionary journey. So what you see here is a theater of a capacity of 25,000 people. This is a very large theater. It had, with this reconstruction and the expansion, that was done just before the Apostle Paul got there.

It was quite a place, and it's going to figure into what we look at in the passage next time we get into Acts. Also looking at this map, here is the Celsus Library. This library is a structure that is, at least at the front of it, fairly well restored and intact.

This is the way it looks today with some degree of restoration put back in place. Archaeologists have done a good job of putting what stones they found there, but here's what's cool. Look at this. This is what it likely looked like from the reconstruction that they have. That's one of the things that's really neat these days, we have the ability to do computer reconstructions and they'll take as much as little flecks of paint that show up here and there and be able to expand that and show what it would have looked like.

So here is a reconstruction. what the front of it looked like, and you go inside, and it was a huge library inside. In those days, quite a few books of ancient times, and so what we have now is the remains of just the front, but it was quite a structure. Here is the artist's rendering of the Temple of Artemis. Now what I've shown you previously is, here's what it looks like today, and then here's how it was when it was constructed.

This, I'm showing you the reverse. This is the artist's rendering, and I'm showing you that in reverse because you cannot imagine what it looks like now. It looks like this. It looks now like a boggy, soggy cow field. Matter of fact, I do have another picture I didn't include with a cow grazing in the middle of this thing.

So compared to what it looked like, this was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. A magnificent structure, as structures go. But it got completely wrecked after the time of the Apostle Paul. So this is more like the way it looked during the time the Apostle Paul was visiting. And this is the way it looks as if you were going there now. Not quite the glory days, huh?

Okay, here is a reconstruction of some of the nicer homes in Ephesus. Look pretty nice, kind of a cutaway view so you can look at, you know, upstairs structures, you can look at the lower structure and that sort of thing. Real commonly among a lot of the buildings there are three stories, three stories tall, fairly commonly. Rome, by the way, they have stories up to eight in one building. Here, real commonly, three stories in Ephesus. So this would be an upscale residential home. Here would be a middle kind of plaza in the middle of a larger home, just to give you an idea of what those would have looked like. So they did have some nicer upscale homes.

And then one of the big factors that made Ephesus a great place for ministry, Ephesus was a primary channel for what we brought up much earlier, and that's the Silk Road trade in the Northern Roman Empire. There was trade coming all the way from China and India into the Roman Empire. As a matter of fact, before the Apostle Paul arrived in Ephesus, one of the things that Tiberius and the Roman Senate tried to prohibit was silk. They didn't want people buying so much silk. You know how well that worked? Not at all. It didn't work. People loved it so much, the prohibition just fell flat on its face.

But this Silk Road was really important because it brought in lots of trade in the harbor and on land from the Silk Road trade. In addition to that, it brought a lot of Eastern ideas and Eastern philosophy. And so that was also brought in. Ephesus also had a relatively large, still a minority, but a relatively large population of Jews who were influenced by their Greek culture. There is substantial evidence that the book of Hebrews was written to Jews who lived in and around Ephesus.

So looking back at the church at Ephesus, Acts chapter 18, which we of course read previously, We read of the founding of the church at Ephesus when the Apostle Paul was first there, and most of this chapter, chapter 19 and 20, the next one, are in or about Ephesus. Paul spent more time there than with any other church so far as we know. You can imagine, if you were to say, okay, who gets most of the Apostle Paul's time committed to them? It's the church So far as we have any information. Paul sent Timothy there, that's what First Timothy is written about, to correct the false teachers.

There's strong evidence that Timothy stayed there in Ephesus and at the end of Hebrews, again with the clue that Hebrews is likely written to the Jews in and around Ephesus, Timothy is mentioned at the end of the book as just getting out of prison. The Apostle John spent many of his last years there, or nearby, some estimates as much as two decades in and around Ephesus, although that total amount isn't sure. He did apparently spend the last years, with the exception of that time in Patmos on the island, spend that time in Ephesus. So the question is, how did things turn out at Ephesus with all that apostolic attention?

The Apostle Paul, the Apostle Paul writing this fantastic letter that the people in the Ephesians elective get to study. Oh, I mean, it just amazes me. So a fantastic letter. He sent Timothy. Here's an apostolic delegate. And so far as we know, Timothy stayed there. The Apostle John came in. There was just lots, decades of apostolic attention. How did the church at Ephesus turn out? We'll get there later, right? Okay.

Now, Acts 19.8.

And he entered the synagogue and continued speaking out boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. So here's the Apostle Paul. He did as he typically did and went to the Jews there in Ephesus. And what's extraordinary is that he got three months before things got rough. Three months, because remember it was three Sabbaths at Thessalonica and they were ready to kill him, right? And so here, three months, that's really an amazing tolerance among the Jews for his message. So archaeologists have unearthed about 3,500 inscriptions in Ephesus so far. They're not done. Several of those indicate that there was a synagogue in Ephesus, although they haven't excavated in the area where the synagogue is most likely to be found. So there was one. The exact location hasn't been nailed down yet.

Paul spoke at the Ephesus synagogue for three months, which we say is that that's extraordinary. We don't have any other church founding experience where he spent more time. So he got a good, solid chunk of time talking to the Jews there, and he would typically speak on the Sabbaths. He would speak as a disciple of Gamaliel, fully trained and honored as a rabbi coming in.

So he spoke of the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of substitution. And everybody's saying, what? What is that? Two different gospels. The gospel of the kingdom is Christ is the Messiah. He is the king of the Jews. He is going to rule and reign over Israel and over the earth from Jerusalem. That is the gospel of the kingdom.

The gospel of substitution is Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose again. He died in your place. That's why we call it the gospel of substitution and everything else that goes along with that. So two different Gospels, he brought both of those, and we have a record that both of those Gospels were taught from the beginning of Acts all the way to the last verses, as we'll see eventually in the book of Acts.

He would bring those messages into the synagogues and he reasoned and spoke persuasively with them that Jesus was the Messiah. Our translations will typically say the Christ. Here's Peter, he is speaking on the day of Pentecost. He says Jesus is the Christ. That would be the Messiah. In chapter 3, Peter again tells the Jews there in Jerusalem, Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ.

Again in chapter 17, the Apostle Paul says Jesus is the Christ, Christ who must, as the scripture says, be the one who was killed and crucified and buried and rose again. And then what we see in chapter 18, again, Jesus is the Christ, the one who suffered and died and rose again. Jesus was the Messiah and that's the message that he brought here to Ephesus as well But what's interesting is you go through the book of Ephesians somewhere around three dozen times It has in the Greek Jesus is the Christ the Messiah, right? It's one of the best-kept secrets in Ephesians that starts in Ephesians 1 10 and So anyway, he continues that message even a decade roughly after he has first established the church there.

Here's Acts 19.9. But when some were becoming hardened in disobedience, speaking evil of the way before the people. Alright, so here's the first part of verse 9.

And so he had three months, and then the Jews started to say, hey, wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it, you know, you're telling us Jesus is the Messiah? You're telling us Jesus is deity? You're telling us that he had to be crucified? I mean, crucified, that's a swear word in that culture, right? He had to be crucified and buried and raised again? So you're telling us that?

And so he starts seeing a real reaction to it. And then from that point in time, it must have been distressing and discouraging. He could no longer look at the Jews as continuing to receive his message. I think one of the things that for us we need to just ponder is just like the Apostle Paul, Gate came to a point where there's some real resistance and difficulty with the gospel there in the synagogues, and especially after he'd seen three months where he continued to be able to come in, now all of a sudden there's lots of resistance. And I think that's important for us to remember when we get into circumstances that may seem discouraging.

So I'd like to read you a little poem. It goes this way, our race had an excellent beginning, but man spoiled his chances by sinning. We hope that the story will end in God's glory. But at present, the other side's winning, right? So we can get into that circumstance where we get discouraged by, here's the circumstance. And in fact, in the end, no matter what it looks like now, the other side is not going to end up winning.

But we can be in the middle of circumstances and get pretty discouraged. It's important to just see, even though Paul encountered great opposition to the point where he had to pull away from the synagogue, God was just simply creating different opportunities. He withdrew from them. It took away the disciples.

Reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. Now, we need to talk about the school of Tyrannus. You know what the school of Tyrannus is. The school of Tyrannus was somewhere there in Ephesus. We don't exactly know the precise location. But it just so happens that my daughter Becky and her husband Kurt had the school of Tyrannus Friday, just on Friday. So there they went to the school to pick up their kids from school. in Tyrannosaurus Rex outfits, right?

So there's the school of Tyrannus for you, right? Well, maybe not. It's a great way to end the school year. No, that's probably not what the Apostle Paul did, right? Okay, likely not. So what happened? The name Tyrannus has actually been found among the inscriptions there in Ephesus.

Schools of various kinds were located in the cities of the Roman Empire. So they'd have a school, and here's a school and they're teaching rhetoric. And here's another school where they're teaching philosophy. And so they'd have various schools at which people could be trained in different things. private schools generally, and they'd have them for a variety of purposes.

So this was one of them. We don't know the particulars about this one. However, the Tyrannus name has actually been found inscribed in this column in Ephesus. So it was a name that actually existed there, and perhaps with further excavation, we may even find the exact place.

Again, after a century and a half of excavation, archaeological excavation, they're not done. so in order to to have avoid rather direct hostility against the way this was one of the terms used for the Christians right Paul withdrew to the school of tyranny so that he could continue with the disciples Jew and Gentile to teach them Remember, disciples in this case was a term used from Acts chapter 6 into Acts 21, and we'll talk about why it gets ended. But it's a term that talked about basically two things. It was used for male, female, Jew, Gentile, from the time that they believed. And the focal point, you can look at John chapter 13 and John chapter 15, the focal point was abiding in Christ and dependence upon Christ and loving one another. Jesus talked in both those chapters about my disciples.

So we have Acts 19.10. This took place for two years. so that all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks." So after a three-month period of time there at the synagogue, then there was a two-year period of time approximately with the School of Tyrannus. So you had the combination of both of those.

So here would be Ephesus, which would be in Asia, which is not China, India, those kinds of things, but Asia and the Roman Empire was a province on what we would now call the West End of Turkey. So it talks about all who lived in Asia. So the continuous ministry of Paul with others alongside him impacted that whole region greatly. It's later on where the seven churches of Revelation, chapters two and three, are located all in this area of Asia and it starts in Ephesus and goes to the north. It goes clockwise around those cities in Asia and so continues on there.

So the gospel had gotten to a great many places beyond just Ephesus. People would be traveling through Ephesus and from Ephesus. From Ephesus, the path going through the seven cities of Revelation, that would be following a Roman postal route, where they would go from Ephesus around to the seven cities, including at the end, Laodicea.

Acts 19, 11, and 12, God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hand of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick. the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out. So we have here, and this is an extraordinary instance, so let's take a look at it. These were extraordinary miracles by the hand of Paul, and it even says by the hand of Paul, God used miracles in the times of the apostles to validate and draw attention to their message. So the Apostles performed miracles, but not just the Apostles. Others in the church were gifted to do miracles of various kinds. So you have, for example, Stephen outside of the Apostles is one that is given as having performed miracles. There were various apostolic era gifts.

And one, for example, Paul when he was in Philippi, Paul cast out from this woman a python spirit from the slave girl. The slave girl was freed from this python spirit, but she could no longer tell fortunes. That's as we saw in Acts chapter 16. In my own family history, I will tell stories from time to time. My grandmother was a missionary to the cannibals in Fiji. And when she left Fiji, she wasn't done. She had spent about a year and a half in Hawaii as a missionary as well.

And so one of the instances, one day when they were teaching on the ten lepers out of the Gospels, a lady who had leprosy, her fingers were like this on both hands, down to the knuckles. Her fingers were much shortened, just the rest of it was rotted off, so to speak. She had white gloves on her hands and had the gloves stuffed because were she caught having leprosy, she would be sent out like her husband already had, out to the leper island, and she was concerned who would take care of her daughters. Very worried about that. Well, they prayed for her, and so this is a picture of her with her daughters. Not only was the leprosy healed, her fingers grew back. Her fingers grew back. Now, why am I telling you this story?

In Paul's time, miracles happened here, and even by people taking objects and bringing it to Paul and then taking it to the people who were sick. Does that mean that everything that was ever a problem, Paul took care of by a miracle? The answer is no. He asked the Lord, you know, take this thorn in the flesh, and he didn't describe what that was, from me, and the Lord says, no, my grace is sufficient for you.

Grace is many things, including its sufficiency. In my grandmother's case, the missionaries there prayed for this lady Hattie, and she had a miraculous not only healing from leprosy, but the fingers grew back. That just doesn't happen. But the Lord decides who needs healing for what. Even though now we're outside of the apostolic era, they prayed for her, a miracle took place, but my grandmother continued to suffer from knee problems until her last days. even though she asked so the Lord can heal yes but it's the Lord's choice as it always was even with the Apostle Paul he didn't get to say okay take this away Lord he even wrote to Timothy says drink a little wine by the way a little bit right a little wine for your stomach's sake he didn't say here let me pray for you I'll heal up that stomach problem you keep having Some have extended the notion of holy relics to later times and other people.

Oh, we've got the bones of this person and so on. So the Bible presents a more restrained view of these miracles, healing and miracles by objects related to the apostles, specifically Paul. This is the one account of objects being connected to a healing that's in scripture. Here's Acts 19, 13 and 14. but also some of the Jewish exorcists who went from place to place attempted to name over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus saying I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches. How about that for name-dropping?

Seven sons of one skeeve, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. So magic Jews, it was actually fairly common. We have accounts both like this, also a similar one with Simon the Magician in Acts chapter 8, in which Jews were thought to have special powers of magic, blessing, and cursing, and the power to evict evil spirits. It's called an exorcism, and this is what they're supposedly trying to carry out here. Even today, the Jews continue on a lot of that. Jews having magic and things of that sort. Even on to this very day, as a matter of fact, the popular singer, Madonna, she tried to get into this, right? So a lot of the Jews said, eh, not so much.

Okay, so this account of the seven sons of Sceva, a supposed Jewish high priest, a high priest there is of that kind. People would market, was this guy actually a high priest? Okay, he wasn't actually qualified as a high priest. And if he was, what would he be doing here? He'd be in Jerusalem, where the temple was, right? And so this is bogus, but it's marketing. Such magical powers were not biblical, and fake knowledge of Christ is really, as we'll soon see, very dangerous.

Acts 19.15, And the evil spirit answered and said to them, I recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you? And probably with more vigor and shrill and intensity than I just used. For these seven sons of Sceva to call upon the power of the name of Jesus that Paul preaches without knowing Jesus himself was a serious problem and a great hazard as they were to discover to themselves.

We see in Acts 19.15 that recognizing Jesus and knowing about Paul don't do this evil spirit any good either. This evil spirit will spend eternity in the lake of fire. Oh, I recognize Jesus. I know about Paul. Does that do any eternal good? No. That by itself will do nothing.

Acts 19.16, And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, and subdued all of them, and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

Now after very careful and lengthy consideration, But you may be glad to know I decided not to show the Seven Sons of Sceva naked and bleeding on the screen. So, anyway, besides that, you're about to eat lunch here after this. So, we just won't do that, okay? And use your imagination or not, we'll not go there. The Seven Sons of Sceva very likely never offered this stunt again, okay?

Matter of fact, it very possibly ruined them, because this account got spread far and wide, and people heard about it, as we'll soon look at here. This account underscores it is exceedingly important that we truly and personally know Christ. It's not just a, hey, I'm going to name a name, right? But that we know Him personally, okay? Knowing about him or about the apostles, but claiming something more than that is very dangerous. It's dangerous to one's eternal soul. Oh yeah, I'm going to name Jesus. Don't know him, do you? That's a problem. Hey, I know about Paul. Well, that's no good.

Acts 19.17, this became known to all, both Jews and Greeks who live in Ephesus, and fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was being magnified. So you can imagine, this news got around town really quick. It's amazing in a situation where we don't have telephones and we don't have high-tech, how fast news gets around.

My dad was working with a missionary, a Wycliffe missionary down in Mexico. This was with the Tarahumara Indians. And so he was in a small town and he was in a circumstance where people in the town recognized he might need some help. And so he noticed that they were going to try to do some things to help him out.

And he tried to tell them, don't make a special trip for me. Okay? Don't make a special trip for me. He mixed it up. Don't make a vieja for me. A little old woman. Right? So anyway, do you know how fast that got around town? By the time he got to the other side of town walking, everybody on the other side of town already heard the joke. They were all laughing at it. Okay.

There's a difference between fake power and real power. The pagan culture of Ephesus was into all kinds of fake power. When the real power shows it up as it only happens in Christ, the fake power shows itself to be what it really is. So the fear of the pagan spirits and deities and seeking the favor of the gods was being replaced by the fear of the Lord Jesus. Jesus being seen as the name above all names.

We see that in Ephesians 1.21 and Philippians 2.9. Among the pagans, it was common to go about naming names, and as many names as you could call upon to gain power, the better. Here's Acts 19, 18, and 19. Many also of those who believed kept coming, confessing, and disclosing their practices. And many of those who practiced magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone.

And they counted up the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. This was pieces of silver, very likely what's called the drachma. A drachma was a full day's wage for the average wage earner. To give you an idea what this would be like, it would be like 150 people what they would be paid for working full time for a year.

So they had spent a lot of money all together on these magical documents. Here is an amulet that shows all the names and they had angel names and they made some up beyond what was in the Bible. But this is an example of the kind of thing they had. They put lots of money into that practice and it was big business to sell that. The magic items that they bought were worth lots of money. So why didn't they just sell them instead of burning them?

So here's a magic document on papyrus from the New Testament era, and we'll look at just the top of that just to give you an example. And so they would sell these papyrus documents with spells and names and things like that on them to people, and people would pay a very high price for those. Boy, you give me some magic names, oh great! And they would pay a high price for that.

They burned them because they came to recognize them as worthless, They also did not sell them because they didn't want to promote the evil that these items represented to others. So was there an opportunity to make money on it? Yeah, but they didn't compromise that way.

Here's Acts 18.20.

So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing through Paul and through others who were becoming believers. And Paul spent more time there than teaching people. So we find the Word of the Lord here, as it has been used previously in the Book of Acts. You find a number of listings there at the top of the slide. The Word of the Lord is used for the gospel. There is one place in the New Testament where it has a different meaning, but used for the gospel in these passages, and this is the last time that particular term is used for the gospel in the Book of Acts. The gospel is this.

Jesus Christ died for our sins. He was buried and he rose again. Could there be more explanation to that? Most certainly. Might I need to explain certain parts of it to people? Is it important that we believe in the Jesus Christ that scripture presents? Yes, it is. But the penetration, the power, and the impact and geographic spread of the gospel in and around Ephesus was growing steadily during this time. a time of over two years amidst moments of tumult, trial, and controversy.

Here taken from Ephesians 1.18-21, and I won't read through all of it, But one of the things that becomes clear, Paul was still talking about the pagan mindset where you go and you, I'll buy a magic document or I will buy an amulet and the amulet will give me special magic names and I'll try to list all the names that I can to give me more power and advantage. He says you don't need to do that.

Why? because Jesus is the name above all those names. Starting at the last half of this passage, these are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named. This is still addressing the attraction of magic, the attraction to, well, I'm just going to name this name and that name. And in truth, we have that temptation here in our culture. People are always looking for some advantage, personal advantage, instead of recognizing Jesus is the name above all those names. He is the power to whom?

I need to appeal. And, next time we look at Acts, you're going to want to listen in, because we'll be in chapter 19, and what I have to tell you about is a real riot. Okay? Alright, let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for as we go here, Heavenly Father, we just thank you for what you've revealed here in this account.

We see that Jesus is indeed the name above all names. We see that as we go through this passage that the various things that the world tries to sell us falls way, way short. And that we would ask that our hearts be turned and turned to you. We would ask that we would have the eyes of our hearts turned upon our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.