AHS Football Homecoming Devo 23

Intro

Tonight, yall are getting ready for a football game. Homecoming is a week full of distractions. Floats, Parades, Homecoming Court, you name it.

So tonight, at your team meal, I’m gonna talk about Magic, Exorcisms, and Riots.

Coach Ozmint, don’t tackle me just yet, it’ll all come back around.

There are certain stories from the Bible that everyone knows right, whether they are a Christian or not. Living where we live, we’ve just heard this stuff.

But there’s also stories that aren’t as well known as others.

The book of acts shows us what it was like for the Church shortly after Jesus ascended into Heaven.

Everything was new, and to be honest they were figuring things out as they went.

In these early year, we see some pretty radical stuff happening. We see God manipulate the laws of nature when he sends the Holy Spirit down to earth, We see people healed of lifelong disabilities,

However, We also see Christians imprisoned and even stoned to death for sharing the Gospel.

You never knew what was coming for you tomorrow, or for that matter you didn’t even know what was waiting after your next step.

There were these awesome highs and debilitating lows.

We see this in the life of Paul. He had a past that wasn’t pretty, but the Lord changed him, and used him as a great man of God.

Towards the end of His life, we see Paul go through some crazy stuff. Stuff that most of us would say we wouldn’t be able to go through.

Stuff that we look at and ask, How did they do it?

The Early Christians taught us that there are two big investments that must be made to persevere in this broken world.

Investment of your Time

Acts 19:8–10 ESV

8 And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. 9 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 him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. 10 This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

Up to this point, Paul has been sharing the good news of Jesus and baptizing people in a place called Ephesus. Here, Paul did some stuff that many today would consider supernatural.

Today, we often think that if we just had more evidence or proof that it would be easier to follow Jesus.

Well here, the Bible says that Paul provided this type of proof by ministering there for 3 MONTHS!!

Verse 9 says that things got tough. People started causing drama. They started causing problems for the Christians in the area.

This is often the part where we check out, but the Bible says that Paul found a new place in town, and kept going for 2 more years!

And through His investment “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord”

We must be willing to invest our time in Jesus! Not just on Sundays, not just on Wednesdays, not just on Thursdays night meals.

Paul shows us 2 things here,

1. He shows us what he cares about.

He doesn’t waiver when things get tough.

2. He shows us what we care about.

He forces us to admit that the things that we commit most of our time too are the things that we worship.

But your time doesn’t matter, if your heart’s not right.

You must make an:

Investment of your Heart

After Paul hit all of the drama of Ephesus, there were 7 Sorcerers who figured something out the hard way.

Acts 19:13–16 ESV

13 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.” 14 Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. 15 But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” 16 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.

These guys would go around selling their services, and would often try to cast these demons out of people by just reciting the names of every God or deity that they could think of! God’s of the sun, sky, wind, the city god, any god they thought would be over this particular type of demon.

They heard about the Gospel of Jesus that Paul was preaching, and decided to add it to there “arsenal”. Then they finally encountered a real demon, and quickly realized there was more to this than they thought.

The demon was able to see what the world is not able to see. That these men were declaring Jesus only by their mouths, but not from their hearts.

The Bible says that the demons saw that they weren’t really Christians and whooped them so bad that they ran out of the place naked, wounded, and afraid.

These guys were investing their time in Jesus, but not their hearts.

There are some of us that are living that life now. The people around us sees someone declaring Jesus with our words, but we haven’t really commited to Him with our whole hearts.

It’s only When we make investments of both our Heart and then our time in following Jesus that you’ll be able to persevere even when Chaos comes.

Whether in our homes, schools, personal lives, or even in our own minds, the Chaos is coming! It came in Ephesus.

You see Paul had preached so faithfully, and so many people had turned their lives to Jesus that the tradespeople who were building the Idols of other gods to sell got mad and started a riot among the people! Stuff got bad.

The Bible said that

Acts 19:29 ESV

29 So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul’s companions in travel.

The chaos was so bad that most of the people rioting didn’t even know why.

Acts 19:32 ESV

32 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.

Closing

In this life, there is going to be Chaos, there are going to be things that distract us, and their are going to be people who aren’t who they say they are.

In order for us to persevere, we must commit to following Jesus.

Not just with empty words, we saw how that worked out for the “sorcerers”, but by Investing our Hearts in Him

then we must be willing to invest our time in Him. Because remember, where our time is shows what we truly worship.

It’s then, and only then we can be assured that there is Hope!