Acts chapter 19 and verse 13. Then certain of the vagabond
Jews, exorcists took upon them to call over them which had evil
spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you
by Jesus whom Paul preacheth. And there were seven sons of
one Seva, a Jew, and chief of the
priests, which did so. And the evil spirit answered
and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you? And the man in whom the evil
spirit was leapt on them and overcame them and prevailed against
them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this was known to all the
Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus. And fear fell on
them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And
many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds. Many
of them also, which used curious arts, brought their books together
and burned them before all men. And they counted the price of
them and found it 50,000 pieces of silver. So mightily grew the
word of God and prevailed. Amen. May God bless this reading
from his word. We're still in Ephesus with the
Apostle Paul as he has been making this third missionary journey. He stayed some time in Ephesus,
we are told. And here we encounter in Ephesus
a group of Jews who are called vagabond Jews. and they seem
to have been a group of religious professionals. They appear to
have been a group that travelled around a little bit like a travelling
circus perhaps, or a crusade meeting that you used to have
when the wagons would roll into town and a big tent would be
set up. And this is the kind of people
that these Jews were. They provided religious services. to the whole area and moved around
from place to place in order to perhaps exercise evil spirits
or make some incantations or tell your fortune or curse your
neighbour or heal your children. And these were religious professionals. They're called vagabond Jews,
and they would know the language of the Hebrews. They would know
the Old Testament scriptures. They would be able to call upon
God. They knew the religious language
and the religious jargon. And I thought, as I was reflecting
on it, that they may actually have been a little bit like the
TV evangelists of today. always looking for the next intriguing
thing, always looking for something else to be able to sell to their
audience. And here in Ephesus, we meet
these seven sons of Sceva. And I imagine that they put on
quite a show. I imagine that seven brothers
like this, coming from town to town, had honed their show to
such a degree that they could create quite an exhibition when
they rolled into town. And here they are in Ephesus. They saw, when they came into
town, the way in which Paul was able to effect healings and changes
in the lives of the people that he performed his miracles upon,
or the miracles of God upon. We saw in verse 11, if you remember
last week, that God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul. And I'm sure that these vagabond
Jews observed, witnessed, saw those special miracles and thought,
well, if Paul can do it, we can do it. And they decided that
they would also pull in the language of Paul, the approach of Paul,
the name of Paul and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and
they would incorporate that in their show. So much of the religious charlatan activity that we see
around about us is mere entertainment. A show put on for gullible people
who imagine that they need a religious dimension to their life and sort
it in the least offensive and troublesome way possible. And
it's no more than entertaining to the flesh. Here these seven
sons of Sheva, they try to cast out an evil spirit from a man
using the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and Paul's name. And I
imagine that they made a huge spectacle of that. We're told
that it was done in a house. We're not told how big the house
was. I suspect that there was somebody at the door of that
house taking a fee for everybody that came into the house to witness
what was going to happen. But the spirit that was in this
man didn't realized that he had to be part of the show. And what we discover is that
that evil spirit says to these sons of Sheba, as they try to
exercise the evil spirit, I know who Jesus is, and I know who
Paul is. I know who Jesus is, he is the
son of God, and I'm subject to him. I know who Paul is. He is the servant of the Son
of God, by whom Christ works. But I don't know you. I'm not
subject to you. Rather, you are subject to me. And the evil spirit bashed those
seven brothers, thumped them, and beat them all up, tore their
clothes from them, and sent them running naked out into the street. So much for the show in Ephesus
that day. You'll remember with me, perhaps,
as we've been reading through the early chapters of the book
of Mark, that the Lord Jesus Christ explicitly and purposefully
stopped evil spirits from testifying of him while he was exercising
his own ministry here upon earth. But now these evil spirits are
afraid of Christ and the fame and fear of Paul arose in Ephesus
amongst the Jews and the Greeks, who are probably people that
have converted to Judaism, although they were Gentile individuals
and probably Greek speakers. That fame and fear that rose
amongst the people did so, it seems, in equal amounts, and
God's Spirit caused many to seek out Paul, and to confess their
sins before him. They realised that there was
something very significant in this spiritual activity and they
desired to confess their sins to Paul before God, or to God
before Paul. If we lived in Ephesus, we would
call this time a spiritual awakening. And we find that a whole load
of superstitious people, because Ephesus was a superstitious town,
brought their books on magic, their charms, their charts of
the heavens and the skies and their astrology, and they burned
them before all the people in the city. so that those charms
and incantations would no longer be a snare to them in the future. There was high value in those
materials. We're told how much it was in
silver and just because that's the kind of mind that I have,
I wanted to convert that to today's dollars so that you would know
how much these books cost. Do you know it was nearly half
a million dollars was burned that day? And that's if these
were talents of silver and not gold. So much valuable Stuff
was burned in order that these people might not be tempted to
go back to it. Well, here's the lesson that
I want us to take from that little point. You know what? We need
to be careful about what we possess. And we need to be careful about
what we look at. And we need to be careful about
what we think about. And we need to be careful about
how we spend our time. Because these people had put
a lot of time and effort and resources into these pastimes. And some of them may have been
professional witches and wizards, but some of them would be doing
it just to know what their future might hold, what their astrological
signs might be saying to them. And what they did when they confessed
their sins was they got rid of all that stuff because they knew
that it would be a snare to them. That commends those people to
me. That makes me realize that they
were serious. about this testimony and profession
that they were making. And that's a good thing. It's
a good thing for people to consciously turn their backs upon the old
life that they once lived when they come to the Lord Jesus Christ. The word of God, the gospel grew
in influence. It changed the hearts of men
and women in Ephesus. and they proved by their actions
that their conversion was genuine and lasting. People can say lots
of things, people can put on a show, people can have a religious
outworking of their activities, but really in their minds and
in their hearts, There hasn't been a change. It's just suitable
for that particular time and perhaps that particular company
for them to act in a particular way. Let us not be hypocrites. Let us be men and women, boys
and girls who know the truth and who live the truth. When
a person is truly saved by the Lord Jesus Christ, change comes
into their life. People can claim to be Christians. But there has to be, I don't
know whether you have it over here or not, in the United Kingdom
sometimes they have signs that they put outside of establishments
that have changed ownership and it says, under new management. That's what a Christian is, under
new management. And when a Christian is under
new management, there is evidence in that life that the Lord Jesus
Christ is on the throne. Amen. May the Lord bless these
few thoughts to us.