Chat First Naked & Afraid Later

Jesus I know, Paul I know, but who are you?

This account is from Acts 19:11-17 where Jewish exorcists tried to cast out an evil spirit and the above was the evil spirit’s response before it overcame the Jewish exorcists, beat them up to the point of stripped their clothing and sent the men running out of the house naked and afraid. 

Knowing about God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit doesn’t carry the same weight as knowing them personally. We can name drop but it doesn’t mean anything if we don’t bother to have the relatioship.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friends, happy Monday evening or Tuesday morning, depending on where you're listening from. But regardless, thanks for tuning in to Unfiltered with Jesse B. Before we get started, I want to take a few minutes and talk to you guys about some direction that I'm gonna go with this podcast. I'm gonna go back to doing probably one episode a week of full-length episodes. I'll go ahead and keep doing the shorts, but I do want to get back to full-length episodes and talk more in depth about some subjects that's gonna require more than five to ten minutes of talk time. So I'll be killing some sacred cows, and the sacred cows, as you know, are the things that we might have always heard out of tradition, but may not necessarily have a biblical foundation, or at the very least, some of these things might have been taken out of context. So uh kind of an example, I guess, would be of the drinking and gambling episode I did back on June 3rd, which did get some good feedback, but some other topics that I'm going to be exploring is cremation versus traditional burial and how some Christians are dead set against cremation, no pen intended. Um but the reasoning that they often cite is cremation is a pagan practice, or uh how could God resurrect ashes, that it has to be the full body. I've heard that argument as well. But we're going to be exploring that topic. Another one will be on tithing, what the Old Testament says versus what the New Testament says. Another subject that is very dear to me, which is mental health and the reasons that the church of all places should be a place where people should be able to address these issues and get support and get help, yet so many are suffering because they may be too ashamed that they're depressed or too ashamed that they suffer with anxiety. And they might have been melt met by some well-meaning but ignorant views from other people on those issues. So we're going to explore that. I'll also be talking about women in ministry, how traditional views actually differ from biblical history, and some of this may shock you. For example, I will probably be doing a study on Mary Magdalene, who traditionally was speculated to be a prostitute, but there's not really any scriptural basis that exists. Uh, so we're gonna look at where that idea might have uh came from. And also the traditional view on women has it been plagued due to Eve and the fall in the garden. We're gonna be looking at that. As for the Garden of Eden, specifically Adam and Eve's fall, I will be doing a deep dive on that as well with some things that have been held as traditional beliefs, yet the biblical account conflicts with those. So, needless to say, there's gonna be deep subjects that's gonna require a lot of study and prep on my part, and I've got my work cut out for me because I will be held accountable, I am held accountable to whatever I put on this podcast, and I do take it seriously, so I don't want to be misleading in any way, as I've said from the beginning, and will continue to say I am not a pastor or a theologian, nor is this podcast to take the place of church or your pastor. I'm not here to be agreed or disagreed with, nor am I here to be liked or disliked. But I do hope to shed some light on real life issues and maybe questions that we've always had that we may encounter directly or indirectly, and if that encourages dusting off your Bibles, uh committing more to prayer, getting closer to the Lord, then we're in this together because I want that for myself as well. So, long intro, but I just wanted to communicate with you as to what you can expect to hear in the future on this podcast. So, getting right into it, Acts 19, 11 through 17, and God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so 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. 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 Skeva 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 of the Lord Jesus was extolled. The focus for this verse or for this passage is verse 15, where an evil spirit said, Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you? As I was sharing a lesson with the teen class in church yesterday, knowing our identity in Christ is important. In fact, I will say it is detrimental to your confidence as a Christian if you don't know your identity as a believer and follower of Jesus. We can look at a lot or maybe all societal issues today, and in my opinion, these issues can all be traced back to people not knowing their true identity as someone God created. Which it stands to reason if a person doesn't know God, they don't know themselves either. And just like the evil spirit said, it knew Jesus. In fact, it even recognized Paul, but didn't know the exorcists who invoked the name of Jesus, and they were powerless, beaten up by the evil spirit, and ran from the house naked and wounded. We can attend every church service, know all the hymns and be up to date on the latest music, join all the Bible studies, and devotional apps and podcasts time will allow for, and we can read the Bible through in a year, which all of these are good things, don't get me wrong, but if we are not growing closer to the Lord, and what I mean by that is if we only know about the Lord, but we don't know him, in other words, we don't have a relationship with him, we too will end up like these itinerant Jewish exorcists, ineffective, and running from what the enemy throws at us naked, beaten up, little Christianets, in other words, victims, not conquerors. Now, what was meant by itinerant Jewish exorcists? These people were traveling healers and spiritual practitioners common in the first century who used rituals, incantations, and sacred names to expel demons. In this account in Acts, they were attempting to use the name of Jesus as a magic formula of sorts, and by their own words they told on themselves by saying, I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims, and we see that the rest is history. Sometimes we need the reminder that knowing about someone is different than actually knowing someone. For example, I had the privilege of meeting some of my favorite musicians that I grew up listening to, and I will never forget meeting Mick Fleetwood and Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac. I can tell you anything you ever wanted to know about Fleetwood Mac, I can tell you anything about their members, even from when they started out as a blues band in England years before they came to the U.S. and picked up Bob Welch, and then after that, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. But back to meeting Mick Fleetwood and Lindsay Buckingham. I've shaken hands with them, I've had conversations with both of them, posed for a picture with Mick Fleetwood with my arm around his waist, and which I mentioned that because his waist is about chin level to me, or so it seemed anyway, because the guy is just super tall. He's a gentle giant, smells great, and to this day I'd kind of like to know what cologne he wore, or maybe he still wears, just to, you know, spray it in a room or something. But as for Lindsay, I know he can be pretty spiteful, especially if Stevie Nicks is trying to talk to the audience. And in fact, Stevie had to pause her talk to ask for our attention because Lindsay kept sitting down at the edge of the stage to talk to those who were in close process proximity to him, which I was included in that little audience there. So Stevie was trying to explain how she came to write one of the songs, and we kind of got in a little bit of trouble for it, but it was kind of fun. But I say all that to say this. While I know a lot about them, I do not know any of them personally. Therefore, they don't know me at all, so to name drop wouldn't do me any good. And essentially that's what these Jewish exorcists were doing. They were name dropping, but none of them knew Jesus personally. Jesus warned about the danger of intellectual knowledge without relationship. Matthew seven, twenty-one through twenty-three, Jesus said that on the day of judgment there will be many who will perform miracles and uh say that they called on the name of the Lord, yet they are the ones that's going to be turned away because he will declare that they that he never knew them. In fact, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Another passage in Luke thirteen, twenty-six through twenty-seven, people say that they ate and drank in his presence, and that he taught them in their streets, but again, Jesus emphasized that proximity with him is not the same as knowing him. And I've heard it said that if we're studying the Bible for some sort of formula that might look or sound something like, okay, Lord, I did A, B, and C, and now you do X, Y, and Z, we're wasting our time. I think I said it in not so many words on a recent podcast that if we're studying scriptures or trying to learn all about God for a formula, then we're subscribing to religion and not really cultivating a relationship, and I do agree with that statement. We study scriptures, go to church, pray, fellowship with other believers for the purpose of knowing God's character. We can look at all the heroes of the faith from the Old and New Testament, even more modern-day heroes like Smith Wicklesworth, Billy Graham, Corey Tin Boom, Watchman Knee, and others, they sought more than an intellectual knowledge. They sought a relationship with their Lord and Savior. And this should serve as an example that every one of us should do the same. Thanks for listening. I appreciate you guys. Love you. Good night.