So Paul sets this group straight and many receive the Holy Spirit and start speaking in tongues and begin prophesying.
Paul continues to stay in Ephesus for two years and while he is there he writes to the church at Corinth. When we read these letters, you’ll see what a difficult task it was to keep the quarrelling under control.
Luke also mentions the “extraordinary miracles through Paul”. The Holy Spirit had given Paul this gift to help him in his ministry.
But as usual, there are charlatans who tried to invoke the Name of Jesus, but they were met with a catastrophic outcome. As followers of Christ many have been given the Power to drive out demons. We read about it often. (Jesus sent out the 72 in Luke 10). But the problem for the seven sons of Sceva was they were not given this gift, they were faking it. They had no power over the demons because they had not been given the authority that it requires, they weren’t followers of Christ, they had no relationship with Him and the Holy Spirit was not present in their lives. There was nothing that they had that would cause a demon to obey them or even pay any attention to them.
And they were confronted by their deception. One demon decided to challenge them and as a result gave them a terrible beating.
It is important for us to recognize deception within the church. There will always be people who are trying to make a profit or make a name for themselves in the name of Christianity. But God has given us a gift of discernment to help us recognize when someone is deceiving us. This story also shows us that demons are dangerous and we want be fully aware of their power. Also, we see that the demons recognized the true authority found only in Jesus Christ (James 2:19) and to those He gave the power to (vs 15).
But here’s the good news of this story… it brought more people to Christ. Everyone in Ephesus was “seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor” (Acts 19:17). In comparing the work of Paul with that of the seven sons of Sceva, the Ephesians could readily see the difference between the power of Christ and the ineffectiveness of the pretenders. The gospel made great strides into that city (verses 20 and 26).
Once again Paul is caught up in controversy over commerce. People don’t like when someone interrupts their ability to make money. With people turning to Christ instead of the Greek goddess Artemis, this silversmith, Demetrius finds that people aren’t buying his product. So a big riot arises and two of Paul’s traveling companions are arrested and everyone shoves themselves into the “theater” (big court area). More shouting and vs tells us that, “The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there.” I love that last line… most didn’t even know why they there. – ha. How true is that, people just love to shout and yell, even about things they know nothing about. It is a dangerous habit to start getting into arguments when you don’t have all the facts. We see it happen all the time through riots in the streets, people don’t even know what they are rioting about… the media is always spouting off about something and social media runs rampant with half-truths and downright lies and the result is that the truth is never really uncovered.
Fortunately, the city clerk seems to have a grasp on the situation and is able to quiet them down.
Through our reading again today, we see the wonderful power of the Holy Spirit working, otherwise there is no way this budding Church would survive. We’ll read later some letters that Paul writes to the church at Ephesus and know that struggles continue, but their hearts are in the right place.
I hope your heart is in the right place.
Peace and joy
Pastor Kathy