The Sons of Sceva | Episode 27

We talked with Kevin Watson about Acts chapter 19 in this week's YTTB Podcast.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Don't play around with magic. Don't mess around with dark arts stuff. If you have a Ouija board, you should burn it. Get rid of it. Like, don't play with that kind of stuff. It's real. There's like it's exposing yourself to things that are dangerous, and people should take that stuff uh seriously.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

All right. Welcome back, everybody, to the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams. I'm the executive pastor at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And today I'm joined by my colleague in the ministry, Dr. Kevin Watson. Kevin is the senior director of Christian Formation here at Asbury Church. He's a pastor. He's also a seminary professor. Kevin, glad to be working with you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

It's fun to be here. Um, here's what I'd like to do today. So we're in this, as everybody knows, we are reading through the entire Bible this year. And we started on January 1st. We're going to end on December 31st. But we're using the one-year Bible format. And all of our listeners know that. I just feel obligated sometimes to restate the obvious. The format is strange. Yeah. It's strange because you have an Old Testament, a New Testament, a Psalm, and a Proverb every day. And so your daily readings are not always chronological. A lot of times it feels um disjointed. I know for me personally, I've had a hard time really getting into the New Testament because I've been so focused on the Old Testament. We don't read that stuff very often. And the narrative is just compelling. But we just finished the Kings and we're moving into the Chronicles. And a lot of the Chronicles say a lot of the same things that the Kings say.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yeah, a lot of repetitions.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

And then they don't, in our Bibles, and particularly in this format, that the Chronicles don't necessarily fit chronologically. So we're not abandoning the Old Testament, but we are going to kind of start shifting our focus to the New Testament, largely because also at our church, um, we're in our kind of summer of fire um sermon series, our summer series, however you want to say that. And um that was kicked off by a big Pentecost worship service that we have, and we're also happening to be reading through the book of Acts. So what I'd like to do is um let's stay in the book of Acts for this episode.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Can I just say a couple of things about that too? I mean, I think for for folks who do feel kind of times of stagnation, the point of the one-year Bible is the habit, right? We're trying to build a daily Bible reading habit. And you do habits when there's like an immediate payoff and it's awesome, and you do it when it just felt like another day of getting a rep in. Um, so it's okay when there's times where it's it's difficult and like continuing to keep pressing and keep going is kind of the point. And in the Christian life, there's these journeys where you sort of, it's not always just a gradual uphill, there's actually like steps. And so you might feel like you're at a plateau and you're there for a while. I'm sure for a lot of our people, it was exciting to like commit, like, I'm gonna do this every day, and they've been doing it, and they probably felt like a surge kind of from that initial commitment that's maybe like kind of played itself out, but you just have to keep going because the next breakthrough is gonna come. So I'm really excited about like kind of being in this place where we've been far enough in that it starts to stall and people actually get to like exert their will and kind of press because I think there's gonna be breakthrough.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

We talked a lot about that as a staff when we started this year. Was we knew, you know, our job as church staff and pastors is to kind of is to help people grow in their faith and kind of keep people in the game a little bit. So we we come up with these um structures of reading and praying, different things that we do for the purposes of building up the body, for building up the saints, for the work of their ministry. We kind of knew going in that summertime was gonna was gonna we'll have been in it for six months, we've been in the old testament for a long time. Yeah like you you kind of get lulled to sleep a little bit. I'm so I'm reminded of the psalmist in Psalm 1 where he says that um blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night. What he doesn't say is who's on fire for the word every day and has an emotional response and loves being in the word every day, but that that he or she meditates on it day and night. So to your point, like our um a life lived full of blessing is a life lived in the word, not a life lived loving the word every single day, if that makes sense. I've I have found though that the more I'm in it, the more I love it. Yeah even the weird parts, even the hard parts, like I mean, just think about this for a second, and then we'll get into the book of Acts. Um I say this all the time about Christ Church. Like the fact that Christ Church as an institution, with all of its problems and all of its brokenness and all of its sin on the inside and all of its stuff, the fact that it's lasted not only 2,000 years, but is as prolific as it's ever been is itself like a miracle, right? Like, like just that alone is a miracle. But the same is true of the word. Like it's a hard road, like it's hard. It's not easy to understand. What other book or what other collection of writings do you know of that is out there that is hard to understand? It's really long, there's resistance to even picking it up and and reading it, and yet it's the like by a factor of a million, the most widely sold like collection of writings on the planet every year, year over year, and also like brings life and blessing, and people still read it every year, even though they don't want to. I mean, that alone is like worthy of our of our like honor and and the weightiness of being able to even get to open the scriptures and do this. So um, I have energy for it, but some of this stuff is weird and hard.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, well, and if people are sleepwalking through this is kind of a check because when we go through this passage today, if they haven't noticed these details, then it's a chance to be like, oh, because there's some really interesting, uh, even kind of strange things in the passage we're gonna look at from Acts today.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah, so here's what I want to do. Um in our in our reading plan, I believe today we were in around Acts 24 or something like that, but but I want to kind of catch us up to some stuff that has happened before we got here. Um I want the book of Acts, this is just my opinion and my estimation. The book of Acts is not terribly difficult to understand. Now, there are some things happening that if you don't have your ears or eyes um kind of tuned to them, you could miss them. And so that's why pastors and teachers are are here to kind of help. But generally speaking, if you just do your daily readings, it's like, well, Paul went over here and he preached the word and some people liked it, some people didn't, and then he went over there. Like you can understand it. What's happening, what's happening in front of your eyes is what's actually happening. But then you have these waypoints along the way that are kind of strange. So earlier in the scriptures, I think it's in chapter, well, now I can't remember, and I don't want to flip there right now. Um, you had um Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, right? Definitely actually definitely like this weird thing where Philip is told um by God to go into the desert. He goes into the desert, he runs into this foreign eunuch who is in a chariot reading from the book of Isaiah, like doesn't understand it, asks Philip to interpret it. That leads to his conversion and baptism. Then Philip is like whisked away, teleported to like some other place on the planet, literally. Yeah. Very, very, very strange. Pastor Graham preached on this on this several weeks ago. So, what I think is interesting about Acts and things we can do is we're not gonna kind of give a full survey of the entire book of Acts on this podcast. We just don't have time. Yeah. But there are some waypoints and one waypoints along the way that kind of they stick out like a bright light like that, that I think we can spend some time on. Yeah. So um for me, one has always been chapter 19, and particularly the first half of chapter 19. This is not our first introduction to the to the demonic or to the spirit realm or anything like that, but something unusual happens here that just it just it sticks in your brain and you can't get rid of it. So, what I'd like to do is um why don't I read chapter 19, one through verse 20? Okay. I'm just gonna read the whole thing for everybody. And then um we've got some things we want to kind of point out here. So my Bible, the ESV, which everybody I guess is reading in, but but my regular Bible, not my one year Bible, has a little heading on this chapter that says Paul in Ephesus. And if you're a new Bible reader, then you'll you might recognize that Paul's letter to the Ephesians comes later. That's to he's he's going to Ephesus, from which his letter to the Ephesians, the Ephesian people will kind of come from, be related to. Okay. Verse 1. And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. We just met Apollos um in the last chapter. Another another teacher of of of the word. And he said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, No. We've not even heard there there is a Holy Spirit. And he said, Well, into what then were you baptized? And they said, Into John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. There were about twelve men in all. And he entered the synagogue, and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them, and took the disciples with them, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyranus. This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that he had that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them. 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 Skava were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you? And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them, and overpowered them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded. 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. Also many of those who were now believers came confessing and divulging their practices, and a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them, and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. Okay, let's stop there. Um I'm curious to get your reaction just as we've read through this thing in its entirety.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Yeah, I mean, I there's there's kind of two two key scenes that happen. Um the first one, I think it's really interesting, um, noticing the connection of the Holy Spirit to faith in Jesus and baptism and how those things are connected and um the the timing of them. And then in the second part, I mean, there's just it's interesting to me. And I even when you just now read it, I hadn't I hadn't thought about the connection of I I think about this story as basically don't play around with the name of Jesus because the spiritual realities are real, and there's seven people who get beat up by one guy because of the power of the demonic within him. Um but I th I hadn't noticed the way in which that story actually leads to exaltation of the name of Jesus, and then all these people realizing the stuff they're messing around with is a bad idea, and they like turn all this stuff in, repent, burn things, and so it's it kind of goes from uh a really bad experience of spiritual warfare to like a pretty high level, like you know, kind of spiritual warfare. Um it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Well, and yeah, as you're saying that the scales are kind of balanced too. So like you have you have these guys that are um essentially using the name of Jesus as like a tool in their in their little exorcism toolkit.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Um so they're using it wrongly, like they're they're they're using the name of Jesus without themselves believing in the name of Jesus, yeah. And it works against them. Yeah. Like they the the spirits, so the spirits are like, I don't know who you guys are. Yep. Remember earlier in the Gospels, before Peter claims um Jesus as the Christ, remember when uh Jesus says, Who do you say that I am? And Peter says, You are the Christ. But prior to that, there are many accounts where the the spiritual realm has already identified Jesus as the Son of God. Right? So you have um, and when Jesus speaks, they listen. There's a clear, clear authority that Jesus has over the spiritual realm. Everything is under his under his hand. And then when he gives authority to his apostles, they begin healing and casting out demons, and they have authority, they have the authority that Jesus has to go and do his works. But these guys are trying to essentially um get the ends, the ends that they want without the means, which is the actual belief in the Christ. So it works against them, and they end up essentially getting beat up by these by the people who are possessing these demons.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

And it's a, I mean, it's a it's a concrete expression of what is true in the Christian worldview, which is that there isn't just physical or spiritual, but the two things actually are related. And sometimes if you're kind of playing around in the spiritual, there's physical consequences. And this is a really stark example of that. I also think it's interesting uh that in it it's so unnecessary because the immediate passage is showing that the Holy Spirit is available, right? So verse two is just, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They're like, We didn't even know there was the Holy Spirit. And they're like, Okay, well, how are you baptized? And a John's baptism. So Paul's like, Well, that was the baptism of John for repentance, but you need to believe in Jesus. So they're like, Okay, let's be baptized in the name of Jesus. And then he lays his hands on them and they receive the Holy Spirit and they begin speaking in tongues and prophesying. There's 12 people, like, there's no, they're not having to pay money for it, they're not to do anything, they just receive. And then you have uh kind of like a heightening of the kind of the power and the authority in verse 11, where it's like just emphasizing that there's extraordinary miracles being done by the hands of Paul, and this really interesting and um thing in verse 12 that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them. And so, like, it's almost like these Jewish exorcists are kind of like, oh, this would be even better than what we've been doing. This will be more effective. But they like they try to use the ends without actually having to receive the person, right? And so they're they're playing around with it. And I I just I mean, the Bible does this again and again, but the setup is so brilliant because the reader should almost just be frustrated. Like, well, if they have enough faith to like try to use Jesus, why wouldn't they actually receive Jesus? And then they could actually do the thing, you know, they'd they'd be able to actually be a Christian exorcist instead of one that doesn't actually have the authority in the name of Jesus um to cast out demons.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah, it kind of makes you wonder these are Jewish itinerate exorcists or Jewish exorcists. So presumably, because it's what the text says, they're Jews. Um they believe in Yahweh. They are um I'm just gonna assume I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm not gonna assume any impropriety here. I'm just gonna take the text for what it is. These are probably good guys, they're the sons of a priest, or some kind they belong to some type of order, priestly order, or they're literal, literal sons of this guy, or whatever. But regardless, like they're there's some type of little order here that they're and they're casting out demons. I mean, they themselves are exorcists. So they want presumably they want good things to happen. Yeah. But they've not yet professed faith in the Christ. Yeah. And so but but by trying to invoke or or use the name of the Christ, again, like we've said, without actually believing, it starts to work against them. What it doesn't say is if they were part of the group that came to faith later, so um, so the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. Um or if they just kind of ran away all messed up because the demon demon guy beat them up and then that's the end of it. We don't really know, but um it's I guess this also takes me back to just the like the frothiness of the early days of the church where um there's just this sorting that's happening, like they're they're who believes in what and in whom and and who is Jesus, and everything is so confusing and convoluted at times. And but but when the pot the apostles show up with the power of the Holy Spirit, like they bring clarity and that there's this like sorting that happens. I think that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

When we talk about authority a lot, I mean you and I talk about authority and kind of the way it works in the church and in ministry, and it is it's a it's a pretty strange story because what what I think you're totally right that it doesn't help to read like bad intentions into the uh these priests. Um, it's about who actually has authority. So in verse 12, there is there seems to be some kind of authority that through Paul, things that sort of like he's touched and done something with, though like these material things actually are casting out evil spirits, like he's not even there, but somehow his authority is actually still manifest in a way that is like doing something. And then you have people there who are like using the name of Jesus, but don't have authority to do it. And so basically, what what it seems like the the evil spirits are saying is like we don't know who you are, you don't have any rights here, and so the the people that try to use the name of Jesus without proper authority are actually the ones who are like vulnerable and the sort of evil spirits are like protected in a sense. Um, so I mean the the details and and dynamic are they're complicated and rich and just so interesting, but it also seems like at some level it's pretty straightforward. Like if you're in Christ, then you have authority over the powers and principalities in a way you just don't if you're not.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

You know what this makes me think of, and um I'll just I'll just raise it because it's it's a potential hyperlink, but I haven't studied it deeply, so take it for what it is. But remember in the Gospels, um, Jesus says that many are gonna prophesy, many many will say, Lord, Lord, like you know, we've prophesied in your name, we've cast out demons in your name, and I'm gonna say, Depart from me, I never knew you. That kind of makes me think of this. Like these these guys are these guys are definitely using the name of Jesus to cast out demons, but it doesn't go well for them. Yeah. Um, that's just kind of what it makes me think of is is would this be like an example of that? And I don't have more information on that, but it's probably worth looking into. Yeah. I think maybe it's worth pointing out a little bit going back to the earlier part of this this passage. Um so the distinction between the baptisms. Just to kind of maybe help clear, help clear some of the air, if you're a new believer listening to this or or just haven't really given it a lot of thought until a trouble spot came up. There's a Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, No. We've not even heard that there was a Holy Spirit. And then he said, into within what were you baptized? And they said, into John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is Jesus. And then on hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. There are about twelve of them. It's just worth pointing out, they're talking about John the Baptist. So um John the Baptist is was a forerunner to the Christ. So John is out in the wilderness baptizing people in the Jordan. And everybody, people were coming from around baptism was not water baptism and like water purification rites and all that kind of stuff. Spirit using water for religious purposes and particularly different types of baptism was not new. Like the, the um, Jesus didn't like um, this sounds weird to say out loud. He didn't invent it. He wasn't, he didn't, he didn't institute baptism and by water as like the first time anybody in human history had ever done it. Paul was out um baptizing people in the Jordan, and it was a baptism of repentance, like get yourself right, like the Christ is coming. Whereas these guys participated somehow in that baptism, even though they're living in Ephesus. Um so they would have participated in John's baptism, and then now they're part of this diaspora, they've been spread to other places because of persecution or whatever. And um that was not the same as being baptized in the name of Jesus and receiving the Holy Spirit. Do you have any, do you have any sort of thoughts on that or or um any anything that you think could be clarifying to someone that's wondering about all these different types of baptisms? You know, in our tradition, we only baptize one time. Yeah. And this is this has come up in in ministry several times over the years, where someone maybe was baptized as an infant and then they want to get baptized again, or maybe they were even baptized as an adult and then kind of felt like my faith has fallen off the last five or six years, and now I had this another emotional moment where I came back to Christ. I need to get baptized again. Do you want to just talk about that a little bit? Do you have any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Yeah, I mean, I think in in some traditions, baptism is a thing that you do to sort of show that you've made a decision to follow Jesus. So it's kind of like the primary actor is the person deciding to get baptized. In our tradition, baptism is thought of as a thing that the Lord does in the church to bring people into like the family of faith. And so the primary actor and agent is God. And the reason we don't repeat baptism then is because if if Joe is baptized and then Joe goes and squanders his faith, we believe you actually can make shipwreck of the faith. If he makes shipwreck of the faith and he wants to come back to the faith, we say you need to repent. You need to confess faith in Jesus again, basically pick it back up. And so then it's it's logical that people be like, so I want to be baptized because I are it's from it can come from a like valid place of like repentance. Like I know I've like ruined this. Sort of like if you were uh the difference between being separated in a marriage and actually being divorced. If you get divorced, you got to get remarried. Like you can't just like start acting married again. You actually have to be married again. Um, and I think in our tradition, though, with the reason we don't do that is we say in baptism, God has done something that can't be undone, and he doesn't ever invalidate it. So he doesn't like take your baptismal certificate and rip it up so you don't have it anymore. You just pick back up your side of the covenant, and the Lord has never dropped his side of it. Um, and so the that's why we remember our baptism. You know, you do a baptismal remembrance. Um, the other piece though that I think is interesting in this, so we'll ask pastorally, you know, if somebody comes to us, we and they want to be what seems like re-baptism, we're going to clarify well, have was your baptism in the name of the triune God? So if someone doesn't didn't receive a Trinitarian baptism, then we don't think we're rebaptizing them. We think we're baptizing them because they didn't have a valid sacramental baptism. So there's there's ways in which a person could have experienced something that was like in the community described as baptism, but we don't see like the correct baptismal practice. So we think we're doing it for the first time. Um that can be kind of a nuance. But then the other thing that's interesting in this passage is the that there is a baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus, and uh, and then there is laying on of hands and praying and receiving of the Holy Spirit. And I think one thing that folks um sometimes uh wrestle with is the the sort of ways that you in experience in your life are encountering and aware of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Like our faith is Trinitarian. Um, and so the the litmus test for a lot of our listeners might be like, when you pray, do you just pray to God? Like is it kind of a generic God language all the time? Um, or do you actually have ways in your prayer life that you're relating to the different persons of the Trinity and actually engage in the full life of God? And then the other piece is just for me, there the verse six gives this clarity that uh if a person hasn't doesn't have any kind of awareness of receiving the Holy Spirit, like they need to have an awareness of receiving in the same way that it's not good if you don't actually know that you have faith in Jesus. If you don't, but I like the idea of Jesus. I want to believe in him, but like, do you know? Like, we want to we want to lean into that and help you know that you know. And this is kind of like the sermon that you preached at the beginning of our summer fire series of like sometimes you actually have to wait to receive the Holy Spirit so that you're actually empowered by the Spirit to do the work that you're supposed to do. Otherwise, you're just like treading water, wearing yourself out in your own strength.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Yeah. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I I really don't know. I can't I wish I I wish I knew more about how this worked. But there is something to if you're baptized in the name of of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit into Christ's body. Yeah. Um it's not always the case that with the laying on of hands, you you feel filled with the Holy Spirit. A lot of people do. Um not everybody does, and I can't really explain that. Yeah, I can't explain the feeling of it. Yeah. But what I do know is that um for all of us, the the more obedient you are to the promptings of the Spirit, um the more audible the voice of the Lord becomes. I I think I can say that with confidence. And by that I mean um it's a little harder to do when you're an er when you're a beginner Christian because you have to learn what the voice of the Lord sounds like, and you have to learn how to sort of test whether what you're hearing is from the Lord or what it's not, or at least do you have good reason to believe? Is are the fruit of the spirit present? Yeah, is will this lead to patience, um, kindness, self-control, love, joy, and peace um in me and in the others that I'm being asked to act upon? Or is there something that opposes that's opposite of those, or is there an opposing sort of um dynamic? You just learn over time. For me, when I feel a prompting that might just be um, hey, you know, um, pray for Kevin. Oh, okay. Well, I'm gonna add Kevin to my prayer life today. I don't know, I don't know why I'm supposed to pray for Kevin, but I'm gonna just do it because it that doesn't seem like something that's gonna work against me or Kevin, right? This is something that's gonna work for it. And my experience has been that the more you say yes to those things and the more that they you respond, the more audible they become and the and the less audible sort of the opposing the opposing sort of um non non Holy Spirit things become. So I guess I just wanted to to point out for a moment that um in our tradition, but in the Christian tradition, and this has really always been the case, there is one baptism in Christ Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

And what Paul is saying here is that what you did was a spiritual practice, but it was not baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It was it was something else. It wasn't wicked, but it was definitely not being baptized into the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, um, therefore, you need to be baptized, and then of course he lays his hands on them, the Holy Spirit comes upon them. Um, I just think that I thought that was an interesting. Sometimes it's hard in an ancient text to pull out something that is directly relevant to the way that we practice our faith and particularly church life today, but to me, this yeah, this kind of hits the target.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah, and I think, I mean, this this is I think what we're after in our Summer of Fire series um in worship this summer. Uh, and I know not everybody that listens to this podcast is able to come to worship with us, but like we, you know, in verse seven or verse six, when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. At one level, the what's important about that verse is they're doing something that's obviously not them, right? There's like a uh a power that has been added that's more than that. And then you see the same thing in uh verses nine through the rest of this passage, the the the handkerchiefs and the aprons, the extraordinary miracles, and then when you're not properly in authority. And I think what what this what Acts 19 shows in a dramatic way, and I think one of the big questions that I would assume a lot of people have is basically like, is this normal Christianity or was this a one-off kind of unique period? Um, and I think that there's uh when you read one of my favorite things about the book of Acts that I hope people will think about when they finish it later this week is like it doesn't really end. Like it doesn't have like a satisfying conclusion, and that's intentional because it's designed to make you think like there was uh famously for a while an Acts 29 network. And the point of that is it's drawing you in to say the Acts, the story of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, continues. Like we're a part of the Acts of the Apostles, uh, and we're continuing to advance the mission of the kingdom of God today. Um, and and what it's supposed to look like in the church is spirit-empowered ministry, you know, by people who have received the Holy Spirit, who know there's a Holy Spirit and know they've received him and are walking in faith in Christ.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Amen. Yeah, I was um I was texting with someone this week, and he listens to this. So, buddy, if you're listening, this is about you, but it's not about you. This just made me think of of this. We were texting and he and he'd asked me some questions, and he said, I want to learn as much as I can, or something like that. I want to grow in my faith. Um, what I wanted to point out using my friend's text as a springboard is that we are reading through the entire scriptures, um, meditating on his law day and night is um is a requirement to grow in the Lord because this is how he has primarily spoken to us is through his word. But just obtaining knowledge is not a guarantee that your faith will increase. Um walking in the spirit and being obey obedient to the Lord's voice is is also required for growing in your faith. So um what we're not doing is a one-year-long Bible study where the more Bible facts we learn, the better Christians we become. Yeah. But you also do need to learn God's word to become a more faithful believer in the Christ. But I guess I'm just offering. We actually said before we started this we were not gonna make this episode too pastoral, but I can't help it. Um I will say that like a lot of folks in the American church are probably um, this is gonna sound crazy, like over-Bible studied. When they feel like they want to get closer to the Lord, they sign up for a new Bible study. Yep. Sometimes we can be distracted by um obtaining more knowledge, more facts about the Bible, which are great. It's a wonderful problem to have wanting too much of the scriptures. You can't have too much of the scriptures, but um, you can you you can lull yourself to sleep thinking if you just learn a few more Bible facts that you're doing what God is asking you to do, but he might actually be asking you to get to those relationships that need to be mended, yeah, or um that prayer list that needs to be revisited, yeah, or that friend that needs to be visited in the hospital, or you know, so on and so forth. And so, what my hope is for our for our congregation is that not only are we growing in our knowledge of the scriptures and when we're seeing the word of God, it's providing revelation and illuminating God's character to us, but so that God's character can can live through us um for the sake of the world. That's that's kind of my hope.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Yeah, and it I mean, it's as you're saying that, I mean, look at how what we read ends. So the sons of Skeva have been have been beat up. And then verse 18, many of those who are now believers came confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who'd practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and they counted the value of them and found it came to 50,000 pieces of silver. That's a lot of money. Um, I I wanted to say this is a tangent to what the main point I want to make, but we shouldn't read this passage and not say to people, like, don't play around with magic, don't mess around with dark arts stuff. Don't if you have a Ouija board, you should burn it, get rid of it. Like, don't play with that kind of stuff. It's real. There's like it, it's exposing yourself to things that are dangerous, and um, people should take that stuff uh seriously. But then, so they so they do these things that are kind of concrete acts of repentance, there's tangible obedience, and then look at verse 20. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. So there's actually exactly what you're talking about. There's like concrete actions of obedience, and then the word of the Lord is prevailing mightily. So it totally is a reinforcing thing that is uh it's not just your pastoral heart, it's in the text.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Totally. So if you're um if you're looking to get closer to the Lord, obedience will create space for the word of God to take deeper root, yeah, right? Like that's right, like not merely just reading a bunch of text, although you should definitely read a bunch of text. You should read the Bible every day, that's a big deal for our church. But obedience to the word of God will also make it possible or make it more likely that the word of God will take deeper root, which is exciting. It's pretty cool stuff. Um, okay, I think that's good for today. I feel like we covered a lot. And um, again, this is just a very strange uh part of the book of Acts. I think about it all the time whenever Acts comes up because it's just so weird. Um, and I'm glad, I'm glad I wasn't there just because it's so weird. Um, but I like reading about it. So we'll talk about Acts again next week. I'm not totally sure what we're gonna do. Maybe we'll talk about Paul himself just to kind of catalog some things that that are going on with Paul and where he's been, and that might even help us, might set up some of the letters that we're gonna read in the fall just to kind of know a little bit more about Paul. Um as always, you can go to yearthheble.com and ask questions. Now, if you have been sitting on a question and you've just been too hesitant to write in, now's the time because we didn't have that many questions this last week. And so the market uh is ripe for you and your weird questions. Um, you can write in. There's a good chance that we'll try to answer it on the podcast. And if we don't, one of our pastors will get to it. But as always, I'm Rodney Adams with Kevin today, and uh, we'll see you next time.