So Acts chapter 19. And we're
going to read from verse one. And it came to pass that while
Apollos was at Corinth, Paul, having passed through the upper
coasts, came to Ephesus. And finding certain disciples,
he said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?
And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard, whether
there be any holy ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what
then were ye baptised? And they said, Unto John's baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptised
with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they
should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ
Jesus. When they heard this, they were
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid
his hands on them, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they spake
with tongues and prophesied. And all the men were about twelve,
and he went into the synagogue and spake boldly for the space
of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning
the kingdom of God. But when divers were hardened,
and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude,
he departed from them and separated the disciples, disputing daily
in the school of one Tyrannus. And this continued by the space
of two years, so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the
word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. And God wrought
special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body
were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed
from them, and the evil spirits went out of them. Amen. May God bless this reading
also. This passage, this chapter 19,
opens up with the apostle back in Ephesus. And I think that's
interesting because we reminded ourselves recently that the apostle
had gone to Ephesus and he had only briefly been able to stay
there because he had been eager to get to Jerusalem. And you
remember we mentioned that he had gone to Jerusalem. and from
Jerusalem he then returned to Antioch, and from Antioch, after
spending a little bit of time there, he began his third missionary
journey. Now we don't have the third missionary
journey here on this little piece of paper, but you can see it
if you've got it on this one with the single map, that here's
Antioch, in at the side, and he goes back up through Cilicia,
through Galatia, which is a little hoop there, and Phrygia, and
then he dropped down into Ephesus. So he's back on the coast. So
he traveled a huge distance again. and nothing is mentioned about
his time in those other churches that he had visited. We're suddenly
back at Ephesus. We'd really just left Ephesus,
swept quickly down through Jerusalem, gone to the feast, up to Antioch,
spent some time there, back up through what we now call Turkey,
and back round to Ephesus once again. So, likely it is, that
there are many places that the Apostle Paul had been to, stopped,
met the saints, preached the gospel that we don't even hear
about in these verses. And it's just interesting that
so often, while we are given details about one place by the
direction of the Holy Spirit and under his unction and injunction,
there are other places that we don't hear very much about, if
anything at all. And we're told that Apollos seems
to have had a useful ministry at Corinth in this time. And it may be that Luke records
that because indeed Apollos appears to have been a very powerful
preacher, a very great auditor. and a man who was empowered and
emboldened and enabled by the Lord to preach with great success
to such a degree that it even appears as if there were those
who desired that a policies ministry would eclipse that of the Apostle
Paul himself and had tried to raise Apollos up as the leader
of their group. It may well be against his will,
but then that's just people for you. And we discover that elsewhere. But certainly it appears that
in Corinth, Apollos had a successful ministry. and we find that Paul
however has come to Ephesus and here are these two churches in
two different cities that have such a big impact on our New
Testament because of the letters and epistles that were written
to them. So here's and the activity of
the Lord going on in both cities simultaneously as the gospel
is being preached and carried and going out. And it just shows
you the fact that the Lord was in this, that he was establishing
and maintaining and enlarging the ministry of the gospel in
a number of different places at the same time. We don't even
know what was happening with Silas or with Timothy. at this
particular time. Whether they were with Paul or
not, it may well be that they had been sent to other places
as Paul had previously done on the second missionary journey. Here in Ephesus, Paul meets with
12 disciples. Where have we heard of 12 disciples
before? Well, I wonder if you knew that
there were two lots of 12 disciples in the Bible, because here's
another set of 12 disciples. And these men just appear. I don't know whether they'd been
at Ephesus for a long time or they had just arrived in Ephesus
while Paul was preaching there. Paul had only been in Ephesus
for a little while on a previous occasion, so it's quite possible
that they've been there for some time and he just was never introduced
to them. But he meets them this second
visit. And this interesting little passage
that we have here concerning these men, it shows us that the
Lord's overarching providence in his purposes are beyond our
arrangement and our management. You know, we like to think that
we've got a finger in a lot of different pies, that we're juggling
things, we're managing things, we're on top of things. But this
is just a little example from the Word of God where we see
that God's purposes for the salvation of his people are beyond anything
that we could ever organize or manipulate. And it's a lovely
little set of verses that just tell us something about the Lord's
gracious providence. He is the one who takes responsibility
for teaching his people and teaching his church. And his will unfolds
more than ever we could manage or arrange. There's a verse in
Timothy which says, the Lord knoweth them that are his. And that reminds us that we are
called to be busy where we are for the sake of the gospel and
the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. But let the Lord worry about
where we're not. Let the Lord deal with his church
and his people. Because invariably if we start
to get up on our high horse and think that we can have a contribution
or a comment or an involvement in a situation, Well, the Lord
knows better what he's doing than we ever will. So here we
find that the group of men, these 12 disciples, had somehow got
to Ephesus. What they were doing there, I
don't know. Where they'd come from, I don't
know. How long they'd been there, I
don't know. But you remember that man Apollos
when he came to Corinth and started preaching? We discover that he
was a very able preacher, but he didn't know the whole gospel.
And so Aquila and Priscilla, or Priscilla and Aquila, they
took him aside and they spoke to him and they showed him, we're
told that they expounded the way of God more perfectly to
him. And that's what was happening
with these 12 disciples also. These people who met Paul, or
who Paul met, were men who needed to be taught, who needed to have
the way of God expounded to them more perfectly, that they might
better understand the way of God. I think these men were probably
believers. I think they probably had faith
in God but they hadn't heard the whole message. Now you say
well how's that possible? Doesn't a person have to hear
the whole gospel? Doesn't a person have to know?
But remember, this was a time of transition. This was a time
when, because of the age, because of the place, that there were
things happening in one part of the country or one part of
the world or one part of the region which didn't get known
about in other parts. Things were happening quite quickly.
Although, as well, sometimes they took a long time to travel
out to different places. Do you know it's about 25 years
since John the Baptist was doing his ministry? 25 years! Where could you go
in 25 years? What could you see in 25 years?
Well, these men had come all the way from where John was baptising. Remember we talk about beyond
Jordan, John baptised beyond Jordan and Jesus had come down
from Galilee to Jordan to be baptised of John. And it seems
that these men were disciples of John. They had been there
when John was preaching. They had been there when the
baptism was taking place. They'd heard about the way in
which the Lord Jesus Christ was being spoken of by John. But then John was arrested and
his movement was broken up. We know some of John's disciples
started to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Andrew was one of them.
Peter was another. John likely was another. They had been disciples of John
and they became disciples of Jesus. But others that were the
followers of John who created a big impact, they were broken
up and disappeared. And it seems as if these 12 were
perhaps of that number, of that group. Because when Paul speaks
to them about their understanding and their belief, they were only
able to say that they knew the baptism of John. They didn't
know about the coming of the Holy Spirit. I don't think that
it means that they didn't know anything about the Holy Spirit,
because remember that John's preaching was also about the
Holy Spirit. that the Lord Jesus Christ, when
he had been baptised, the Holy Spirit descended on him as a
dove. So it's unlikely that they had
never heard anything about the Holy Spirit. They just didn't
know that the Holy Spirit had come at Pentecost. They didn't
know because of the distance, because of their circle, because
of the circumstances, what had transpired subsequently. And
so we discover that the Apostle is able to lead them into a greater
knowledge of the way, just as Priscilla and Aquila had done
for Apollos. And here we see that the Apostle
lays hands upon these people. and they received gifts from
the Holy Spirit showing that they had entered fully into the
knowledge of the things that were being spoken of at this
time. Paul goes on to preach for three months in the synagogue
in Ephesus and there we discover that persecution, opposition
arose and again he had to withdraw and he spends the next couple
of years in Ephesus so again Like Corinth, he spent quite
a considerable period of time in Ephesus, and he continued
preaching there at a place which is called the School of One Tyrannus,
and there is a name to conjure with. So whatever the school
was or whatever the location was, that's where Paul made his
centre, his headquarters. And there it appears the first
church in Ephesus was formed and was established. Special
miracles are spoken of in this little passage too, which is
an interesting little phrase. And we are told that these were,
in verse 11, God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul. I don't know whether we hear
about all those special miracles here, but it's a lovely little
phrase, is it not? Special miracles. These just
weren't ordinary miracles. What's an ordinary miracle? Well,
what's a special miracle? But here we discover that God
authenticated and empowered Paul's ministry. His preaching showing
that this was truly a man anointed of God who was able to bring
a word of eternal life to those to whom he preached. And these
miracles, it gave Paul a platform They couldn't gainsay the fact
that he's just another voice, he's just another person, he's
just another teacher. We've all got our ideas, we've
all got our opinions. God said, no, no, I will tell
you who you should listen to. Here's the man whom I am pleased
to empower with the gospel. And so it was that from his body,
whether it was a handkerchief, whether it was an apron, whether
it was some sort of cloth that had touched his brow, perhaps. But when that was taken and conveyed
to those who were sick or had diseases, the Lord God marvelously
and miraculously caused healing of diseases to occur in that
place. We don't have these kind of miracles
any longer because we don't need them any longer. They were for
a particular time, in a particular place, for a particular reason.
They authenticated and they empowered the ministry of the gospel at
that time. But We have the Word of God now
in its entirety and this is our authority. The authority isn't
vested in the individual but rather it is the Word that is
preached and so we see how the unfolding of God's purpose moved
on in time. This little incident, this little
episode, shows us the way in which the gospel was being preached,
and it gives us also an insight into that divine nature of the
message and the conversions that followed as that message went
out. And here we see the beginning
of the church at Ephesus, which is, again, just a delight to
see the hand of God at work in this way, because in a little
while, In a number of years, the Apostle Paul is going to
write a letter to this church, to the friends that he has made
there, to those that he has placed in positions of leadership and
responsibility, and he's going to encourage the saints in that
place. and he is going to convey to
us a beautiful statement of God's sovereign grace and purpose and
salvation in the wonder that is the book of the Ephesians. So the Lord was arranging all
these things and it is good for us to remember that he has his
hand upon all these circumstances and eventualities and that we
are to honour and recognise him in the things that he is doing.
Amen.