Paul in Ephusus

HBI - Power of the gospel takes over everything that we are and invites us to give our all to Jesus and not hold anything back.

Intro

what we are going to look at today is a behind the scene look at Paul teaching the gospel to people. and we get some people that realize sometimes things we get into are a little harder then we think.

I remember going to Bible College for the first time. Besides being scared a little, seeing as it was my first time really living away from home. But I thought it would be not bad because I grew up in a church and I knew all there was to know about the Bible.

Well I was in for a bit of an awakening. The people where nice, the teachers where great but that first week of classes made me wonder what I was doing there. We had one professor in particular who made it his job to scare the first years with the amount of work that was going to be required of them. Well He got me nice and scared.

my first essay that I had to write? I thought I learned how to write an essay in school but again I was mistaken. This was on a whole other level. We where given measurements for how wide our margins where to be in the essays, how our title page was supposed to be laid out and everything. we had one professor who was trained as an architect and when He graded papers watch out, he broke out the ruler to check the margins and all the measurements to make sure they where all to spec. lets just say I started to hate that little red marking pen. you see my printer was an old one of those track feed printers that is really hard to be accurate with.

but I kept at it, I was not necessarily the best student but I tried and passed 3 years of college somehow. I realized that what is required of me was more then where I was at now. I had been living off of milk and was now given a nice big steak to chew on. I could no longer rely on my rudimentary knowledge of the word of God but I had to change the way I thought as I realized I was wrong on some things

what I learned and what we are going to see here is the life changing power of the K of G and how it requires us not to stay where we are but to move forward in our knowledge and maturity in the gospel. We can not be satisfied with how things are now but we need to grow and learn more and make sure that there is fruit showing in our lives.

sometimes though there may be areas in our lives that we do now want to give up but rather we want to hold open to those areas and not give them up to Jesus.

18:24-19:7 - Apollos

We start out with the story of Apollos. This is a story I have been noodling over for a while to try and understand exactly what is meant by all that want on here.

Acts 18:24 (CSB)

Now a Jew named Apollos, a native Alexandrian, an eloquent man who was competent in the use of the Scriptures, arrived in Ephesus.

but there was a slight problem with APollos teaching. From what we can gather here, it seems that his teaching was lacking.

Acts 18:25 (CSB)

He had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately about Jesus, although he knew only John’s baptism.

He was competent in teaching the scriptures but his knowledge was lacking. His message was of John the baptist. The only baptism He new of was John’s baptism. The Knowledge he had of Jesus was incomplete. Likely he knew of Jesus but that seems to be all he knew.

What He was doing was preaching an incomplete gospel. It was not inaccurate, or insincere but it was incomplete. I was like this going into bible college.

I was thinking that I knew all I needed to know, just had to sharpen up a few edges. But what I found is that my knowledge was incomplete. I had more to learn. And what I found out in 3 years of college is this. The first year you realize you know nothing. by the third year you still do not know it all but now have the tools to help figure it out.

what I had to do was change my thinking and understand that I may not know it all to begin with. We need to stand firm on the gospel, but when we realize that we either have incomplete knowledge or had something wrong, then we need to be willing to change.

we all start out babies in the faith, living off of spiritual milk but we all need to grow, we can not stay on spiritual milk forever. Apollos admitted. Priscilla and Aquila saw this man teaching an incomplete gospel and so they stopped and taught Him the truth of Jesus.

He was not angry that someone dared correct Him, but saw through his amazing understanding of the scriptures that He was incomplete and He changed his ways.

We to need to be willing to change and grow whenever we realize that our knowledge is incomplete. We are never done growing but are on a journey of getting to know Jesus more.

the next part of the story of Apollos is confusing to lots of people. There has been lots of faulty theology based on scripture like this without understanding the context of where it comes from. Paul came upon some disciples that had not received yet the HS.

Acts 19:2 (CSB)

and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” “No,” they told him, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

There knowledge was like that of Steven’s. It was incomplete and like Apollos’s Knowledge. There knowledge seemed to end at John the Baptist, likely knowing of Jesus but knew nothing of the HS. You see, John the Baptist Baptism was one that looked forward to the coming messiah. It did not save people but it was a sign of the repentance. \

where they Christians? it does not really say but there knowledge was not where it was supposed to be at. But what we see is that the power of the gospel is life changing. they right away accepted the message of the messiah and was baptised as Jesus had taught.

a couple things to take from this, the first is that this is the only message of re baptism that we see in the bible. and that is mainly due to the fact that it was a different baptism. Looking back to what Jesus had done for them. And they received the HS in Pentecostal fashion. All that we see here is holdouts from the beginning of Acts. Some people that had never heard of or never recieved the HS had now received the promise of the spirit. It was correct for it’s day but this is the last time we see this happening.

The gift of tongues that we see in the bible is a gift of the Spirit, that not everyone has. It was a sign of the initial coming of the Spirit but that is where the cases ended. It changed after this. as we can see in the retorical question that was asked by Paul in

1 Corinthians 12:30 (CSB)

Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?

The main idea here though in this story follows that of Apollos. We to need to be willing to change and grow whenever we realize that our knowledge is incomplete. We are never done growing but are on a journey of getting to know Jesus more. There is life changing power in the K of G if we allow The HS to change us and mold us and make us into who God wants us to be.

19:11-20 - Seven sons of Sceva

Next we move on to a story I find oddly humerus, the seven sons of Sceva. still following Paul after His encoutner with the 12 men who did not have the HS or had even heard of the HS and now whose lives where changed and where preaching a complete gospel.

Paul had the gift of healing, I will not get into my views on that right now, maybe another day, but God was using Paul in mighty ways to heal the sick Acts 19:12

Acts 19:12 (CSB)

so that even facecloths or aprons that had touched his skin were brought to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them.

In come the seven sons of Sceva. The where Jewish priests who likely saw all that Paul was doing and the crowd he was gathering around Him. So they likely said, lets join together in this and get the crowds following us as well. They more then likely where not Christians and you may ask why we can safely make this assumption?

Well when they tried to cast out the demons in people they got quite the response. Acts 19:15

Acts 19:15 (CSB)

The evil spirit answered them, “I know Jesus, and I recognize Paul—but who are you?”

The evil spirit was like hey, I know Jesus pal and I know Paul because He has Jesus in Him but tell me who you are? I am not quite sure. If you saw your favorite celebrity on the street you would recognize them right? Maybe cross the street to get there autograph. I was certain once that I was eating lunch in a restaurant a few seats away from Pauly Shore once.

they ended up running out of the house without their clothes for the evil spirit overpowered them. what this did is cause people to fear and hold highly the name of Jesus.

what this cause people to do is two things.

The power of the K of G changing the lives of the people made them make sure they where saved and followers of Jesus and made them get rid of all things that where causing them to sin against Jesus.

A whole bunch of people got together and piled up all the books and stuff they had to do with practicing Magic and burned it. Now this was not your regular, David Copperfield type magic but actual sorcery (which comes from Satan). The amount that the 50,000 silver dollars varies depending on what denomination it was but it would have equaled to around 100, 000, 000 in today dollars or maybe even more. but whatever it was the point is that they gave up everything that was possibly keeping them from Jesus.

So the first thing, how is it that we can make sure that our lives have been changed by the power of the gospel? How do we know that we have been empowered by the HS? Read Galatians 5. We can know that we are saved because of the fruit of the spirit and because the love of Jesus coming out of us.

The power of the gospel, the life changing power of the K of G means that there will be evidence. We are not always perfect, in fact we are never perfect. The old saying practice makes perfect is wrong, sorry you have been lying to your kids all these years. Practice only makes better.

19:21-41 - lets start a riot

Lastly we have have conflict. After all this this does this mean that everything is going to go okay in our lives? we know and have been going through that this is not the case but we see it again. after all that has been going on with all that Paul was doing.

You remember that people where burning all there magic books and getting rid of all there idols and such. Millions of today dollars worth of stuff. Now the craftsmen that made these things where getting mad. Not followers of Jesusd they were annoyed that there livelihood was at risk. Acts 19:27

Acts 19:27 (CSB)

Not only do we run a risk that our business may be discredited, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be despised and her magnificence come to the verge of ruin—the very one all of Asia and the world worship.”

There was a temple to the greek god Artemis in the city. Historical books say that an meteor likely came down there and they attributed it to the greek god and began to worship it. But people where leaving and that made them mad. The Christians were not worried about the economy though, their lives had been changed!

They started a riot, which apparently was not hard to do. Half the people there did not even know why they were there, hey look a riot, lets join in the chanting. Kind of funny really, lets all start a riot. it went alright for Paul and the others as after a few hours the riot died down.

but what we learn from this is

Even though our lives are changed by the gospel does not mean that the conflict is going to end.

I learned this when I became a follower of Jesus as a teenager. My temptations did not just go away all of a sudden, but rather I was given the strength, sometimes minute by minute to go through them. And you know what, we have the great hope that no matter what happens the end has been written, God wins and we are going to be with Him.

So What?

After all of this what do we take home from this? our lives are to be changed by the gospel as we become citizens of the K of G. What we first see is that

We need to be willing to realize that we are always growing and learning what it means to be a child of God.

Not everyone is perfect, we sometimes make mistakes but we need to get to the point where we realize that we do not know everything, but learn the tools we need to to learn more about Jesus every day. when approached with the fact that we may be wrong about something go back to the word of the Lord.

If what we think is true then stand firm. Is it an essential of the faith, essential to salvation? then stand firm without wavering. If it is a non essential then proceed with love and grace and know that we may be wrong sometimes. Always be growing and learning and changing into who God wants you to be through the life changing power of the Gospel.

We can know that we are saved and empowered by the Holy Spirit by the fact that their is evidence in our lives.

I have been asked this question and faced this question on my own at a young age. How can you know for sure that your life has been changed by The Holy Spirit. There will be evidence of a changed life in your life. There will be the fruit of the Spirit coming out of you, you will see a life lived for Jesus.

But know this, Satan also like to imitate what God is doing because the unsaved in the world cant see the difference usually. Like the sons of Sceva who tired to cast out demons like Paul did but got their butts kicked. Some people can live for a little while pretending to be changed by Jesus, putting on a good show but sooner or later the facade will drop and they will be shown for who they are. You can be sure of your salvation, and you need to be using wat God has given you for His glory.

Take comfort amidst conflict, the end is written, God wins!

I am not talking about conflict in the church, as we are to work atr unity but conflict that comes from the world. Have Hope, the end is given to us and we win.

so allow your life to be changed by the power of the gospel and let it show in your life that you are a child of God.