SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Sermons from the Way Church KC, a community of listening saints in Kansas City, following the way of Jesus and pushing back darkness together.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the way.
SPEAKER_00: Would you all stand with me as we read the Word of God?
SPEAKER_00: Today we're in Acts 19, 11 through 41.
SPEAKER_00: Buckle up.
SPEAKER_00: And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul.
SPEAKER_00: So that even the 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Skeva were doing this.
SPEAKER_00: But the evil spirit answered them, Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?
SPEAKER_00: 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 that house naked and wounded.
SPEAKER_00: And this became known to all of the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, and fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.
SPEAKER_00: Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices, and a number of those who came had practiced magic arts, brought their books together, and burned them in the sight of all.
SPEAKER_00: And they counted the value of them and it and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_00: So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
SPEAKER_00: Now after these events, Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia, and to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.
SPEAKER_00: About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the way.
SPEAKER_00: For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsman.
SPEAKER_00: These he gathered together with the workmen in similar trades, and said, Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.
SPEAKER_00: And you see and hear, not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.
SPEAKER_00: And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be disposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia the world worship, and the world worship.
SPEAKER_00: When they heard this, they were enraged and were crying out, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: So the city was filled with confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius, Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's companions in travel.
SPEAKER_00: But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples would not let him.
SPEAKER_00: And even some of the Asiarchs, who were friends of his, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater.
SPEAKER_00: Now some of them cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the crowd prompted Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward.
SPEAKER_00: And Alexander, motioning with his hand, wanted to make a defense to the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: But when they recognized that he was a Jew, for about two hours they all cried out with one voice, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, Men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and the sacred stone that fell from the sky?
SPEAKER_00: Seeing then that these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash.
SPEAKER_00: For you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess.
SPEAKER_00: If therefore Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls, let them bring charges against one another.
SPEAKER_00: But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in our regular assembly.
SPEAKER_00: For we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.
SPEAKER_00: And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_02: If we haven't gotten the privilege of meeting yet, my name is Zach.
SPEAKER_02: I'm the lead pastor here.
SPEAKER_02: Um and to our guests, first-time visitors, welcome.
SPEAKER_02: We're glad you are here.
SPEAKER_02: Um we'd love for you to be a part of our Way family and to join us in the mission that God has us on to follow the way of Jesus and push back darkness together.
SPEAKER_02: Um we are a two and a half-year-old church plant, and we're still figuring it out.
SPEAKER_02: You know, we're putting one foot in front of the other and going on the craziest faith journey that we could possibly go on.
SPEAKER_02: And it's a fun journey, and you should join us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh so we have uh, as Glenn read, we have a lot of ground to cover today.
SPEAKER_02: We have about 30 verses that we're gonna look at.
SPEAKER_02: We are in Acts 19, 11 through 41.
SPEAKER_02: Um, but before we get there, I want to start us this morning with a word you have probably heard before, you may have heard it a lot over the past handful of years.
SPEAKER_02: Um, it's this word that is used in the culture known as manifest.
SPEAKER_02: You know, maybe you've heard just manifest it, just speak it into existence, put it out into the universe, say the affirmation.
SPEAKER_02: Light the candle, repeat the mantra, maybe it's even like keep the right crystal in your pockets.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it's like, hey, follow this morning routine exactly right, and then the universe will hand you exactly what you want.
SPEAKER_02: And I think as we look out into the world, this sort of belief is seemingly everywhere in our culture now.
SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's on our feeds on social media, it's sprinkled into our playlists on uh Apple Music or Spotify if you're Micaiah and Roman.
SPEAKER_02: It's printed on coffee mugs, even, you know?
SPEAKER_02: And we can kind of laugh at it, right?
SPEAKER_02: Laugh about it.
SPEAKER_02: But the thing is, a whole lot of people in our world, in our culture, in this city are quietly living out that sort of belief system.
SPEAKER_02: And underneath it all is one very old idea.
SPEAKER_02: That if you can just find the right technique, or just use the right words, or utilize the right formula, or live out the right routine, that you can then get power on your own terms without ever having to surrender anything to anybody.
SPEAKER_02: And so here's what we need to know this morning before we dig in.
SPEAKER_02: This, that sort of belief system, is not anything new.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a TikTok invention, it's not a social media trend.
SPEAKER_02: No, it is an old religion of this earth.
SPEAKER_02: And this morning, what we're going to see in Acts chapter 19 is that this is something that the church at Ephesus was living in the midst of.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to see Paul walking into a city that had turned this exact sort of idea, this exact sort of belief system into an entire economy.
SPEAKER_02: And what we're going to see, we're going to meet some people who tried to treat the name of Jesus the same way.
SPEAKER_02: Like a formula, like a manifestation, like a lucky charm that you keep in your back pocket.
SPEAKER_02: And what we'll see is that it did not go well for them.
SPEAKER_02: So if you've got your Bible, you can go ahead and open it to Acts chapter 19.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't have a Bible, uh, you are welcome to one for free.
SPEAKER_02: We have Bibles for you to take, for you to keep, for you to mark up, underline, highlight, do all the things with.
SPEAKER_02: Take home, using your quiet time.
SPEAKER_02: It's yours.
SPEAKER_02: It's our gift to you.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't want to grab one now, you can grab one on your way out.
SPEAKER_02: They're right outside of the sanctuary doors.
SPEAKER_02: Um, but this morning, what we're doing is we're continuing in our Acts series entitled Living by the Spirit and Following the Way.
SPEAKER_02: We've been walking verse by verse through the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_02: And what we've been seeing, we've been watching the gospel move out from Jerusalem into the whole world.
SPEAKER_02: Remember, remember, our thematic verse for this series is Acts 1.8, which says, And you will receive power when the Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in all of Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: So we've been watching the gospel expand and go out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: And we're continuing to see that here today.
SPEAKER_02: Right now, the gospel has landed in a city known as Ephesus.
SPEAKER_02: This is the city where Paul wrote the letter of Ephesians.
SPEAKER_02: It's to the church at Ephesus.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's important that we understand the context of Ephesus in order to understand this chapter.
SPEAKER_02: And we talked about this a little bit last week, but I'll just kind of give you an overview again.
SPEAKER_02: So Ephesus was one of the great cities of the ancient world.
SPEAKER_02: It was a port city, it was about a quarter of a million people at the time.
SPEAKER_02: This was a center of trade and power.
SPEAKER_02: And when it came to the supernatural, Ephesus was like the Las Vegas of the ancient world, if you will.
SPEAKER_02: This city was famous for magic, it was famous for spells, for amulets, for incantations.
SPEAKER_02: There are these things that are known as the Ephesian letters or symbols, and what they were were magic formulas that were so well known that people all over the empire bought them, they purchased them and carried them in order to like tap into some of this ungodly supernatural power.
SPEAKER_02: And significantly, towering over the city was the temple of Artemis.
SPEAKER_02: This is the goddess that they they called great.
SPEAKER_02: And the the this temple of Artemis, it's one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
SPEAKER_02: So to put it simply for us this morning, this was a city drunk on spiritual power.
SPEAKER_02: They were obsessed with the supernatural.
SPEAKER_02: They were always hunting for the right sort of technique to get the lowercase G gods to do what they wanted.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul has been here for about two years now.
SPEAKER_02: This is where he spends probably more time than he stayed in any of the cities he has planted churches in up until this point.
SPEAKER_02: And what he's been doing, he has been reasoning.
SPEAKER_02: He's been sharing the gospel and reasoning on the validity of the gospel every single day in a rented lecture hall.
SPEAKER_02: And last week we saw how Luke tells us back in verse 10 that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: So it is into this spiritually saturated city that the message about one name walks into.
SPEAKER_02: Not the message of a formula, not the message of these Ephesian symbols, not the message of a spell, but the message of a person who has a name, and that name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And so the whole passage that is in front of us is asking us one question.
SPEAKER_02: It's asking us one question.
SPEAKER_02: Whose power is real?
SPEAKER_02: And what does that power actually do in a life and to a city?
SPEAKER_02: There's three truths that I want to impress upon us this morning as we dig in.
SPEAKER_02: First, real power cannot be faked.
SPEAKER_02: Second, real change costs you your old life.
SPEAKER_02: And third, real kingdoms collide.
SPEAKER_02: Real power, real change, real kingdoms.
SPEAKER_02: Let's pray and then let's dig in.
SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, we love you, we praise you, we thank you for bringing us here today to worship together, to laugh together, to lean on one another, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: I pray that today as I preach your word, that you would move me out of the way and that you would let your words be made clear.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, we want to make much of your son Jesus in this house.
SPEAKER_02: So let that be the case today.
SPEAKER_02: God, I pray for everyone who is traveling.
SPEAKER_02: Would you grant them travel mercies as they take vacations and visit loved ones and attend funerals, whatever the case may be, would you grant them travel mercies and would you bring them back to this house safely?
SPEAKER_02: We love you.
SPEAKER_02: We praise you.
SPEAKER_02: It's in the mighty name of Jesus I pray.
SPEAKER_02: And all God's people said, Amen, amen.
SPEAKER_02: So point number one this morning is that real power cannot be faked.
SPEAKER_02: Real power cannot be faked.
SPEAKER_02: Acts chapter 19, verses 11 through 16 read.
SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_02: And their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them.
SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 14 Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Skeva were doing this.
SPEAKER_02: But the evil spirit answered them, Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?
SPEAKER_02: 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 that house naked and wounded.
SPEAKER_02: Crazy story right here in Acts 19.
SPEAKER_02: So, catch the very first words of verse 11, because I think that it carries the whole point.
SPEAKER_02: We see and God.
SPEAKER_02: And God was doing extraordinary miracles.
SPEAKER_02: God was doing it.
SPEAKER_02: It's not Paul that is doing the miracles.
SPEAKER_02: No, Paul is just the hands and feet.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is just the vessel.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is the tool.
SPEAKER_02: God is the power.
SPEAKER_02: And that word, extraordinary, what it means is not the ordinary.
SPEAKER_02: It means exactly what it says.
SPEAKER_02: It means extraordinary, beyond the ordinary.
SPEAKER_02: So these were not your everyday miracles.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: God is stooping down into a magic-obsessed city, and he is meeting people right where they are.
SPEAKER_02: He's working through sweat rags and work aprons because that's a language that the Ephesians could hear.
SPEAKER_02: That's the language that these magic-obsessed individuals in Ephesus could understand.
SPEAKER_02: That is the gospel being contextualized.
SPEAKER_02: But don't miss this.
SPEAKER_02: If we're not careful, we can think that the power is in Paul or that the power is in the cloth.
SPEAKER_02: But that is simply not the case.
SPEAKER_02: The power was in God, and the power today still is God.
SPEAKER_02: And that's to put it plainly, like that's we believe that that's still true today.
SPEAKER_02: And so we're not to explain these miracles away.
SPEAKER_02: No, we we preach them faithfully as they come up in the text, and we we seek to live them out and pray for them in order to build up the church that is Christ's body.
SPEAKER_02: So what we should see right here in this first section of text is that the same God who healed through Paul's apron and through a handkerchief is alive and moving in this room and moving in your life if you are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And then we get to verse 13, and it's almost comical.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 13 reads, 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.
SPEAKER_02: So these are these, there are these traveling Jewish exorcists, and they watch Paul getting results, fruit being born, miracles being performed in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And they think to themselves that, oh, there's a new word, there's a new thing that we can use to self-manufacture some power.
SPEAKER_02: There's a new formula.
SPEAKER_02: Let's add it to the kit that we use.
SPEAKER_02: So that what they do is they walk up to a demon-possessed man and they say, I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.
SPEAKER_02: And notice they can't even proclaim this Jesus for themselves.
SPEAKER_02: They say the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.
SPEAKER_02: This is a secondhand proclamation.
SPEAKER_02: This is a borrowed proclamation.
SPEAKER_02: And it's seven sons of a man named Skeva who are doing this.
SPEAKER_02: And then in verse 15, the evil spirit talks back.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?
SPEAKER_02: Who are you?
SPEAKER_02: And then, crazily, the man whom they were trying to exercise jumps on all seven of them and whoops them up.
SPEAKER_02: Beats them so badly that they run out of that house naked and bleeding.
SPEAKER_02: That is crazy.
SPEAKER_02: That is a good old-fashioned whooping.
SPEAKER_02: So, church, what we should see, hell knows the difference between people who name Jesus and people who follow the way of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The demon even knew Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The demon even knew Paul.
SPEAKER_02: But these guys, these seven sons, the demon says, Who are you?
SPEAKER_02: Who are you?
SPEAKER_02: So they had the word without surrender.
SPEAKER_02: They had the name without the relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: They were trying to use Jesus as a technique.
SPEAKER_02: And can I just tell you this morning that Jesus is not a technique?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is not a technique.
SPEAKER_02: He is a person whom you belong to.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot wield him like a tool.
SPEAKER_02: I think of as I said, tool, I went to the hardware store last week and I got a like a little uh like sledgehammer for the fence that we put up for the soccer clinic, and it's this bright orange mallet.
SPEAKER_02: It's this bright orange mallet that we use to knock the posts into the ground.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is not that.
SPEAKER_02: He's not this mallet that we use to hammer things into our own will and into our own likeness.
SPEAKER_02: You can't even borrow him secondhand off someone else's faith, right?
SPEAKER_02: And I think we should just pause here this morning and ask ourselves, honestly, in our heart of hearts, is that you?
SPEAKER_02: Is that you?
SPEAKER_02: Have you been trying to use Jesus to say the right words, to run the right routine, to keep him around in your back pocket like a good luck charm for when things fall apart?
SPEAKER_02: Are you simply using Jesus as a get out of hell free card?
SPEAKER_02: But you've never actually surrendered.
SPEAKER_02: And I think this should be sobering for us because like you can grow up in the church.
SPEAKER_02: You can know all the songs, you can know the right words to say, you can you can talk that church lingo, you can talk the talk, you can walk the walk, and still have a demon look at you and say, Who are you?
SPEAKER_02: Who are you?
SPEAKER_02: Real power, it cannot be faked.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't come through performance.
SPEAKER_02: It comes through surrender.
SPEAKER_02: The power of the risen Christ comes through surrender and the indwelling Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: So real power, it can't be faked.
SPEAKER_02: But point number two, real change, it costs something.
SPEAKER_02: Real change, it costs you your old life.
SPEAKER_02: Verses 17 through 20 of Acts chapter 19 read, 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.
SPEAKER_02: Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices, and the 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.
SPEAKER_02: So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
SPEAKER_02: Like even that thing that's like, hey, this is the I'll share 99% of things, but I'm gonna keep this 1% for myself.
SPEAKER_02: They're taking everything into the light.
SPEAKER_02: And then verse 19, this is like one of my favorite verses in this chapter, in this third missionary journey of Paul.
SPEAKER_02: It reads, and a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all.
SPEAKER_02: And they counted the value of them and found it came to 50,000 pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_02: So let me tell you, anybody know what that number, 50,000 pieces of silver, means?
SPEAKER_02: Well, let me tell you.
SPEAKER_02: So a piece of silver or a drachma was about a day's wage.
SPEAKER_02: So 50,000 pieces of silver is about 50,000 days of work.
SPEAKER_02: So do the math real quick.
SPEAKER_02: That's a pile of money that it would take a working person a lifetime and a half to earn.
SPEAKER_02: And here's what really gets me.
SPEAKER_02: They didn't sell the books.
SPEAKER_02: Think about that.
SPEAKER_02: It could have been an easy payday to sell all these books.
SPEAKER_02: They could have recouped every dime that they had spent and that they had squandered.
SPEAKER_02: They could have even shipped their magic scrolls over to the city next door and walked away with a fortune, been set up for generations.
SPEAKER_02: Their kids and their kids' kids would have been set financially.
SPEAKER_02: But instead, what they did is build a bonfire in the middle of the city and burned it all.
SPEAKER_02: Why is that the case?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I believe it's because they loved the people around them too much to hand their old way of life, to hand their old chains over to somebody else.
SPEAKER_02: Friends, family, what that is, is repentance that is costly.
SPEAKER_02: It is repentance that costs us something.
SPEAKER_02: And the fact of the matter is, is the repentance, true, genuine, heart-level repentance, will and should always cost us something.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe not financially, but absolutely in our lives, in our day-to-day, comfortability, whatever it may be.
SPEAKER_02: What this is, friends, is repentance that gets specific, that gets public, and in their case it got expensive.
SPEAKER_02: And I want us to be honest with ourselves this morning.
SPEAKER_02: Because I think that in Western evangelicalism, in the Western church, that this is exactly where many people and a lot of us can get stuck.
SPEAKER_02: We want Jesus, but we want to keep the scrolls.
SPEAKER_02: We want to follow the way of Jesus and yet keep the door cracked just a little bit to our old life.
SPEAKER_02: And what we see in today's text is that this text just will not let us do that.
SPEAKER_02: We have to shut the door to that old way of life.
SPEAKER_02: So let me ask you plainly this morning is what are your scrolls?
SPEAKER_02: What are your scrolls?
SPEAKER_02: What is the thing that Jesus is asking you to burn?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it is literally like magic books, or maybe it's something that's more culturally palatable.
SPEAKER_02: It's more culturally accepted.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it is a certain level of comfortability.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's a substance that you're still holding on to.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's a relationship that you're leaving the door cracked open to.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's a certain identity that you're carrying.
SPEAKER_02: Whatever it is, ask yourself, what is that thing?
SPEAKER_02: What is that one thing that Jesus is asking you to burn?
SPEAKER_02: I think, like be careful asking that.
SPEAKER_02: When you ask God these big things, like you might not be comfortable with the answer, right?
SPEAKER_02: Like, like some of us, it might actually it might actually cost us.
SPEAKER_02: It might actually cost you money.
SPEAKER_02: It might actually cost you a gig or an income stream.
SPEAKER_02: It might cost you some comfortability.
SPEAKER_02: It might cost you your newfound recovery or sobriety.
SPEAKER_02: And I know what that fear feels like.
SPEAKER_02: And I know what that fear says.
SPEAKER_02: The fear says that if I burn it, I'll have nothing left.
SPEAKER_02: We're used to it.
SPEAKER_02: It's comfortable to us.
SPEAKER_02: It's normal to hold on to it, but that's simply not what we're called to do.
SPEAKER_02: So let's look at how this passage ends in verse 20.
SPEAKER_02: So the word of the Lord continues to increase and prevail mightily.
SPEAKER_02: That's the result of the magic book burning bonfire.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord grows.
SPEAKER_02: And the word of the Lord grows where the old life is put to death.
SPEAKER_02: The false narrative that we can believe is that we lose our life when we burn the scrolls.
SPEAKER_02: But that's not the case.
SPEAKER_02: You finally get a new one.
SPEAKER_02: When the Lord Jesus saved me 11 and a half years ago out of the depths of addiction, my biggest fear was like, hey, how am I going to have fun anymore?
SPEAKER_02: What am I this is this is comfortable.
SPEAKER_02: This is something I'm going to hold on to.
SPEAKER_02: But as we burned those figure, as I burned those figurative scrolls, what I found is that this new life is a life beyond my wildest imaginations, beyond my wildest dreams.
SPEAKER_02: It is a life that is lived with the joy of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's a whole way of surviving.
SPEAKER_02: And for me, everything within me was terrified to do that.
SPEAKER_02: That if I let go of it, if I surrendered, if I let go of control, that I would have nothing.
SPEAKER_02: But what I found is there was everything that was left.
SPEAKER_02: When I finally let go of control, freedom was there.
SPEAKER_02: There was a life that I couldn't have imagined.
SPEAKER_02: So just to remind you, there the word grows where the old life dies.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord grows where the old life dies.
SPEAKER_02: I'm a witness and I know there are some witnesses in this house this morning.
SPEAKER_02: But the fact of the matter is, is that when as we die to the old life, as we live a new life, what happens is that real kingdoms collide.
SPEAKER_02: There is a real kingdom of darkness, and there is a real kingdom of light.
SPEAKER_02: And when those who are lost in the darkness turn to the lights and die to the old life, that is two kingdoms colliding in a cataclysmic sort of event.
SPEAKER_02: So this is a lot of text that we're going to close with.
SPEAKER_02: Verses 21 through 41, but it's telling one kind of interconnected story, so I'll read this over you, and then we'll close with point three.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 21.
SPEAKER_02: Now after these events, and is the events with the seven sons of Skeva, Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaea, and to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.
SPEAKER_02: And having been sent into Macedonia, two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.
SPEAKER_02: About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the way.
SPEAKER_02: For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsman.
SPEAKER_02: These he gathered together with the workmen in similar trades, and said, Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.
SPEAKER_02: And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.
SPEAKER_02: And there's danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.
SPEAKER_02: When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
SPEAKER_02: So the city was filled with confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Aristarchus, Macedonians, who were Paul's companions in travel.
SPEAKER_02: But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples were not would not let him.
SPEAKER_02: And even some of the Asiarchs, who were friends of his, sent to him, and were urging him not to venture into the theater.
SPEAKER_02: Now some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together.
SPEAKER_02: Some of the crowd prompted Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward, and Alexander, motioning with his hands, wanted to make a defense to the crowd.
SPEAKER_02: But when they recognized that he was a Jew, for about two hours, that's a long time, they all cried out with one voice, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
SPEAKER_02: And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, Men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky?
SPEAKER_02: Seeing then that these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash, for you've brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess.
SPEAKER_02: If therefore Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls.
SPEAKER_02: Let them bring charges against one another.
SPEAKER_02: But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in the regular assembly.
SPEAKER_02: For we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.
SPEAKER_02: And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly.
SPEAKER_02: So pay attention to what happened next.
SPEAKER_02: Because I think it tells us the truth about what following Jesus does within a city.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 21 is the quiet hinge to this section of text.
SPEAKER_02: It says that Paul resolved in the Spirit to head toward Jerusalem, and he says, After I've been there, I must also see Rome.
SPEAKER_02: So this is showing us the direction, the trajectory that Paul is on.
SPEAKER_02: Let's all keep that in the back of our minds because we're going to really dig into that here in a few weeks.
SPEAKER_02: The whole book of Acts is about to bend toward Rome.
SPEAKER_02: But right now, before Paul can even leave Ephesus, all of the city breaks loose.
SPEAKER_02: In verse 23, about that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the way.
SPEAKER_02: The early Christians were known as followers of the way.
SPEAKER_02: That is what we base our name as a church upon.
SPEAKER_02: And like I just love that we're preaching through Acts right now.
SPEAKER_02: I think it's just such a timely book for us as a church family.
SPEAKER_02: But here's what happens next.
SPEAKER_02: There's a silversmith named Demetrius.
SPEAKER_02: Demetrius, who makes little silver shrines of Artemis, the goddess.
SPEAKER_02: These are like religious sort of souvenirs.
SPEAKER_02: And he gathers the whole like trade guild together and listens to this speech because he says the quiet part out loud.
SPEAKER_02: I think so often our culture just keeps the quiet part quiet.
SPEAKER_02: But Demetrius is saying the quiet part out loud, Crystal.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.
SPEAKER_02: So right there, there's motive number one: the money, protecting their money, protecting their wealth, protecting their income stream.
SPEAKER_02: And then in verse 27, he begins to get more spiritual about it.
SPEAKER_02: The temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing as the result of the proclamation of the way of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: There's motive number two for us.
SPEAKER_02: It's idolatry.
SPEAKER_02: It is the idol of Artemis.
SPEAKER_02: It is the pride of their city.
SPEAKER_02: And the crowd absolutely loses it.
SPEAKER_02: They spend two hours, two hours chanting.
SPEAKER_02: Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
SPEAKER_02: That's a long time to chant something.
SPEAKER_02: And so they then rush into the theater, they grab Paul's traveling companions, and the whole city is in an uproar.
SPEAKER_02: And there's a little detail tucked within verse 32 that the author Luke just can't resist to tell us.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Most of them did not know why they had come together.
SPEAKER_02: That's a mob.
SPEAKER_02: That's a riot.
SPEAKER_02: That's what darkness looks like when the light gets close.
SPEAKER_02: It looks loud, it looks furious, and confused about why it's even angry.
SPEAKER_02: Now, watch this.
SPEAKER_02: Here's what I want us to see.
SPEAKER_02: The gospel is a threat to Ephesus.
SPEAKER_02: When Jesus shows up for real in all power, he threatens false religion.
SPEAKER_02: Suddenly, when you are in front of face to face with the real power of the real Christ, this little God Artemis is nothing.
SPEAKER_02: Because the way of Jesus, he threatens this money that's built on idolatry.
SPEAKER_02: And Demetrius, he can feel his prophets slipping through his fingertips.
SPEAKER_02: And this Jesus, the way of Jesus, it threatens this whole city's identity.
SPEAKER_02: They're saying, who are we if we're not the city of Artemis?
SPEAKER_02: And so what the gospel has done in Ephesus is the gospel has touched their religion, their false religion, the gospel has touched their wallet, the gospel has touched their pride, all in one fail swoop.
SPEAKER_02: And the city riots.
SPEAKER_02: So how does that apply to us?
SPEAKER_02: Well, what happens when the gospel actually starts to move in across and through Kansas City?
SPEAKER_02: What happens when the gospel begins to touch people's money and to touch people's identity?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think, family, that we should not be shocked when there's friction, first of all.
SPEAKER_02: So that friction is not a sign that we did something wrong.
SPEAKER_02: That friction is not a sign that the followers of the way did something wrong here in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_02: No, what it is, is that it is a sign that the light is doing its job.
SPEAKER_02: John chapter 1, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
SPEAKER_02: Pushing back darkness is embedded within our mission statement.
SPEAKER_02: And pushing back darkness, it provokes backlash.
SPEAKER_02: It always has, it always will, it looks differently at times, but that's just the fact of the matter.
SPEAKER_02: But look at look with me, who ends the riot?
SPEAKER_02: It's not Paul preaching an elegant word.
SPEAKER_02: It's not even an angel with a flaming sword coming here to shut down the violence.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: It's verse 35.
SPEAKER_02: It's the town clerk.
SPEAKER_02: A pagan official stands up, calms the crowd down, tells them to take it to the courts, and dismisses the assembly.
SPEAKER_02: God used a bureaucrat.
SPEAKER_02: God used a man who was in and of the city to stop the riot.
SPEAKER_02: God reached into the government in a hostile city and he quietly protected his people and his mission.
SPEAKER_02: And the church walked out of the other side fully intact.
SPEAKER_02: That is real kingdoms colliding.
SPEAKER_02: But what we know is truth, family, is that Christ's kingdom cannot be shaken.
SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of light and the kingdom of dark can collide, but we serve the kingdom that cannot be shaken.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus Christ was in the book of Acts and still is today watching over his misfits and saints even in the middle of a riot.
SPEAKER_02: Even in the middle of the darkness of our old lives, even in the middle of our sin, we are being watched over by the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So, Ashton, you can come up and close us in song.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna bring it home and I'm gonna ask for some response this morning.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna ask us to take a step to burn the scrolls.
SPEAKER_02: Not literally, because this building's old, there's a lot of wood, it's a fire hazard, but in a real figurative sense, to take a step of burning the scrolls in our life.
SPEAKER_02: This whole chapter, it runs on one name.
SPEAKER_02: This whole chapter, it runs on the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And it shows you two completely different ways that we can relate to the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: You can try to use it for your own benefits like the sons of Skeva, like a formula that you recite for luck, and the name will do nothing for you.
SPEAKER_02: Because you cannot use Jesus, or you can belong to him.
SPEAKER_02: You can belong.
SPEAKER_02: To Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: You can surrender and burn the scrolls and follow the way of Jesus and discover that the name above every other name is strong enough to break the very thing that's been breaking you.
SPEAKER_02: So hear this.
SPEAKER_02: This is the good news of the gospel this morning.
SPEAKER_02: The same Jesus whose name filled Ephesus with holy fear is the Jesus who went to a Roman cross at the Valley of Golgotha.
SPEAKER_02: And this Jesus, he willingly went to the cross for the sons of exorcists and silversmiths and skeptics and addicts and religious people who knew all the words and none of the surrender.
SPEAKER_02: Whoever it is, whoever you are, he went to the cross for you.
SPEAKER_02: He went to the cross for you.
SPEAKER_02: You believe that?
SPEAKER_02: He died and he rose again.
SPEAKER_02: And the power that raised him from the grave is still moving by his Holy Spirit today.
SPEAKER_02: Right now.
SPEAKER_02: Real power.
SPEAKER_02: The kind that you cannot fake, the kind that cannot be manufactured, the kind that you can only open your hands, let go of what you're holding on to, and receive.
SPEAKER_02: Like I shared, guys, I was a man with some scrolls to burn.
SPEAKER_02: I was a man who had to die to the old life and live to the new.
SPEAKER_02: And I believe the same is true for us in this house.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is not asking you to use him.
SPEAKER_02: He's not to be used to attain comfortability.
SPEAKER_02: He's not to be used to attain wealth.
SPEAKER_02: None of these things.
SPEAKER_02: He's not to be used.
SPEAKER_02: He's to be followed.
SPEAKER_02: So this morning, what what I want to do, whatever formula that you've been reaching for, whatever scroll you've been holding on to, whatever magic incantation you've been trying to use.
SPEAKER_02: As we close in worship, I want to give you a moment to name it.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you don't you just shout it out loud, but what I'd ask is that you come lay it at the altar.
SPEAKER_02: Just come pray to the Lord, asking him to burn that scroll in your life.
SPEAKER_02: Whatever it is you've been holding on to, put it into the fire.
SPEAKER_02: Not because taking this actionable step earns you anything.
SPEAKER_02: It's grace alone.
SPEAKER_02: By grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
SPEAKER_02: But because grace like that, it makes you want to let go of the old life.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes taking that tangible step, it does something within us.
SPEAKER_02: How we posture ourselves and surrender before the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it just shakes something within us, within our core.
SPEAKER_02: So this morning, let the old life go, burn the scrolls, and turn to the way of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So as we close in song, the altar is open as usual.
SPEAKER_02: If you need prayer, I'll be sitting up here.
SPEAKER_02: We are here for you.
SPEAKER_02: We're here to take this journey with you.
SPEAKER_02: Let's burn the scrolls together.
SPEAKER_02: I'll pray and then let's close in worship.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Heavenly Father, we love you.
SPEAKER_02: We praise you.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you for who you are.
SPEAKER_02: That you are the God of the universe, that you are the creator of the universe.
SPEAKER_02: That you've called each of us to walk after you, to follow your way, to live lives that are surrendered to you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So this morning I ask that we would take that step to burn the scrolls, that we would take a step to leave the old life behind, that we would fully shut the door to our old way of life and walk into the newness, into the fullness of life that you have for us, Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Would you guide, guard, and direct us, Lord?
SPEAKER_02: We love you.
SPEAKER_02: We praise you.
SPEAKER_02: And it's in the mighty name of Jesus I pray.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
SPEAKER_01: Join us Sundays at 10 30 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: in the Rosedale neighborhood of Kansas City.
SPEAKER_01: Or find us anytime at the wakeac.church.