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Pastor Mike will be speaking on The Power of God’s Word Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 19:8-20
I want you to be careful, Church, that you just don’t jump in emotionally and find yourself led astray, fully humiliated, all the way exposed as a part of a ministry that is not authentic before God.
Hello this is Pastor Mike Sanders. Well this is Hope Worth Having and I’m grateful and looking forward to sharing the hope that is only found in Jesus Christ on this program. Today we’re going to be back into the Word of God and we are going to be in Acts chapter 19 verses 8 through 20, continuing our study of the power of God’s Word.
And so I want you to grab your Bible, maybe get a pencil and a paper and let’s just start studying together. Do not hearten your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of trial, in the wilderness. All of us have the responsibility that we do not become so apathetic in our faith, so anemic in our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ that we allow our hearts to become hard to His Word, hard to His moving in our lives,
hard towards His Spirit drawing us to Him. We are called to have sensitive hearts to the Lord. As witnesses, we are sensitive to God and we don’t define our success by the response of others. Whether there’s five people here this morning or there are three or four hundred people here this morning, it just doesn’t matter.
What matters to God is that we are faithful and we are obedient to God. It is the world that defines everything by God. by a response, it is the world that defines everything relating to something that is big and large and we’re not against anything big or large, we’re just trying to help you as a believer to see the power of God’s word in the proclamation and that you are, as you are obedient, God will bless.
Oftentimes, we are opposed, it can cause us to be fearful. It can cause us to be paralyzed in proclaiming God’s truth but we must remember that our commitment is to always tell others about Jesus. Many missionaries throughout history have gone to countries and people groups that have never heard the gospel and it took years upon years before they ever saw a response to the gospel.
Were they unsuccessful? No, they were faithful. And we see many times that even today that there are large groups of people who have come to Christ because of those early pioneers who took the gospel to many places.
So what does the apostle do? Well, we’re back in verse nine of chapter 19 and the Bible says that he withdrew the disciples, those that did believe, those who were willing, those who were responsive, and where does he go?
Well, the Bible says he’s reasoning daily in the school of Tyranus. Tyranus was most likely some rabbi or some great teacher. He could have been living or maybe it was an honor that this building was named after him.
In whatever the case, they always met early in the morning. They did their training and their teaching. So the apostle found out that the building was open and there were seats available. So he invited the disciples to come and we’re going to get together in the afternoon every day and he would disciple them.
Who knows how many came? Maybe five came, maybe 20 came, maybe 100 came. We do not know, but that’s not the issue. The issue is daily, he was discipling these new believers. Daily, he was reasoning with them.
Daily, he was sharing God’s truth and he took advantage of this open facility. He took the opportunity to meet together as a body of believers. Remember what Paul taught us in 2 Corinthians. In chapter two, verse 16, in referring to the gospel of Jesus Christ, he said to the one, we are the aroma of death, leading to death.
And to the other, we are the aroma of life, leading to life. Who is sufficient for these things? The apostle even questioned his own capabilities of being able to share these wonderful truths of the gospel.
But he says, look, for some, when we share the gospel, it’s an aroma of death. They cannot even stand the smell of the gospel. It is a stench in their nostrils and it is something that causes them to repel against the truth of God.
But to others, the apostle says, it is the aroma of life. There are many who look forward and they love the opportunity to hear the gospel talk to them, to hear the word of God talk to them. So much these folks loved it that they met every day.
How about that church? We might have a heart attack if the pastor asked us to come every day, huh? But you know what? It’s the aroma of life to you. And it leads to more life to you. that as you hear God’s word taught to you, as you’re in your Bible study groups, as you’re in your small groups, and you are ministering to one another, and you are sharing the word of God in your classes, it is the aroma of life to you.
It is invigorating, it is stimulating, it is empowering to your heart. That’s what I want you to see. How powerful is God’s word? That when it is presented to those who have responded to him and received him as their Lord and Savior, it is a very powerful influence that has a great impact upon our life.
The Bible says that the apostle, he taught for two years. And of course we know that he was three years in Ephesus. We know later, we’ll learn in chapter 20 that Paul would talk about not only that he met in this hall, this teaching hall, but he would go house to house.
Now some have interpreted that, that he just randomly went out there and banged on doors and kicked doors down and told people they need to turn or burn. But that’s not what house to house means. Paul went over here to this family that loves the Lord and taught them the word of God.
And in this family over here in this house, he went over there and he taught them the word of God. And then this house down the street, he went over their house and he taught them the word of God. He did not care where, he did not care what the facilities were, he just wanted to share God’s word.
Why? Because it was the aroma of life. It was giving life and leading to life to those who love Jesus Christ. You don’t have to be ashamed of the gospel. You don’t have to be ashamed of God’s word because the best defense for the gospel is the gospel.
And you may say, well, there are those who critique it and those who find fault with it. It’s gonna always be true. There’s always gonna be those who are upset with the gospel, but church we are called to be faithful and to plant those seeds and to keep moving on with the gospel and proclaiming the gospel.
Listen to the words of the Apostle in Colossians 1, 28. He said him, meaning Christ, we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present every one mature in Christ.
No one’s gonna get saved without the proclamation of the gospel. Whether that’s one-on-one or whether that is in a small group or in a large group. Because the Bible says faith comes by what? Hearing the what?
The Word of God. Now again church I always tell you the Bible is either true or not. God is either being straight with you and honest or he’s lying to you. And so we come to Christ by hearing the word.
Some of you are discouraged about your family, maybe some children. You know what the most powerful thing you can do? Is take every opportunity to interject the word of God to them. Not to preach to them, not to beat them over the head with the Bible, but find opportunities to share God’s word and God will do his work through proclaiming.
But also in relating to helping believers grow. You wanna grow in faith? You wanna be presented mature before Christ? You want to be that person that God has called you to be in your faith? It is requirement that you are consistently and constantly under the word of God.
Do not ever devalue the proclamation of God’s word. Now I know what some people say. They say, well, Pastor, I can’t remember. You know, when our children were young, we’d sit at the table and I’d say, well, what did you learn in Sunday school?
They’re like, ah, Jesus. That was always the go-to answer, amen. The go-to answer was Jesus. You could never be wrong with Jesus, amen. You may not remember everything that Pastor Mike teaches, but you don’t remember what you had for dinner last week either.
But I tell you, when you ate it, it was so good. And let me tell you what the power of that food did, is it nourished you and it continued to strengthen you. And I wanted you to know that when you hear the word of God taught in your heart, you may not remember Pastor Mike’s outline, you may not remember the title, and maybe sometimes even forget the exact passage that he was in.
I know it’s in the book of Acts. Somewhere in there, but I’m telling you, as you hear God’s word taught in your classes, your Bible studies, even one of them, one-on-one discipleship, mentoring. As you hear it in the worship service, it is so good.
It is so good that we are hearing the word of God proclaim, and here’s what God is doing. He’s shaping you, He’s refining you, He is maturing you, and He is making you stronger for your journey of faith, and He is establishing and rooting you in the faith of Jesus Christ.
Now, let’s look at number two, the confirmation of the word. That’s what most of you wanna hear about. You wanna hear about verse 11 through 16. You wanna hear, what does Pastor Mike got to say about this?
Well, let’s start off with that theme that Luke gives us in verse 11, and that is now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul. These were not even normal miracles, but they were unusual. miracles.
Remember, church, that I have taught you that as we attract through the book of Acts, that Luke’s desire is not that you and I would somehow always repeat everything that happened in the book of Acts, but that you would see this as a transitional book from the old covenant to the new covenant, that you would see how God is confirming His word, His message, His messengers in the establishment of the church.
For you and I, we’re on the back end. We’re living and loving the church. We’re enjoying the work of the church in our hearts. We’re enjoying the family of God and the blessings of being with God’s people and fellowshiping and ministering to one another and supporting one another.
We’re catching the wave, but in the beginning days, that’s not how it was. There was skepticism relating to the Jewish people on whether this Jesus was truly the Savior. This message of Christ being the Messiah and dying on a cross for our sins, this message of His life, for our life, was really odd to the Jewish people.
And to the Greeks, it was foolishness. It seemed strange and unclear that somehow someone would give their life for the salvation of others. So what does God do in the book of Acts so that the messenger, hear me, and the message would be confirmed?
He allows the apostles to do unusual miracles. That’s what you’re seeing unfolded. Remember, when the Corinthians questioned the credibility of the apostle Paul, he said to them in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 12, he said, truly the signs of an apostle were accomplished among with all perseverance in signs and wonders and mighty deeds.
I taught you a few weeks ago church, which we’ve taught many times in different scenarios and circumstances to the family of God, that there are three types of gifts that are in the church that God has blessed us with.
We have the sign gifts, we have the speaking gifts and the serving gifts. It is my persuasion, and I wanna be very honest with you. Not everybody agrees with Pastor Mike, but I tell them it’s America and you have the freedom to be wrong.
Stay focused, Pastor likes to have fun, it’s okay, all right? A little laughter helps you make it through this sermon, Amen? I’m of the persuasion, the sign gifts were designed for the Jewish people, for unbelievers to help understand the validity of the message as we walked you through, and I’m not gonna do it again because it would take too much time, but the sign gifts would cease, they would come to a conclusion,
and we believe upon the completion of the New Testament that we have now the complete revelation of God’s word and all that he wants to say to us, and we have the credibility of the apostles, we have the credibility of God’s word that has been presented to us.
When you see these unusual gifts that are mentioned in this passage, they were to identify to everyone that the apostle Paul was an authentic, true spokesman for God. They validated the message that he proclaimed, and you will remember that back in verse eight and nine, he was proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So that’s what we see, we come, and with that understanding, but we see in verse 12 that even handkerchiefs, or aprons, or facecloths, different translations, but bottom line is that even the very handkerchiefs, or aprons, were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went out of them.
This again, my friends, is the confirmation that is taking place, and it’s very unusual, and I know it’s your desire, and many of our brothers and sisters in Christ, they are so passionate that they want to see this repeated, and so they send you a cloth, and they send you some kind of apron, or who knows, hopefully they don’t send you shirts and different things like that, but point being is they send you something,
and they believe it has some kind of power. They believe that somehow it can do something special, why do they have this desire? Because this is what took place in the Apostle Paul’s ministry. Remember what the Hebrew writer taught us in understanding how God speaks to us and how He works in chapter two, verse three and four.
And I want you to hang on to this, write it down, study it later on your own, but just want you to hear what the Bible says. How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? What a wonderful question to consider.
But he tells us that this salvation, this great message of the gospel was at first spoken through the Lord. It came to us first through Jesus. It was confirmed. How did we know that what was true, it was true.
It was confirmed to us by those who heard, who were those that walked with Him. Those apostles. those early disciples, those that were on the missionary teams, it was confirmed to us they heard this message.
Remember that in 1 John we are told that the apostles said that they heard him, they saw him, they touched him. They witness God also testifying with them both by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.
Those signs accompanied the early church because the early church did not have the complete revealed Word of God. They had the Old Testament but they did not have the completion of the New Testament so as long as God was still revealing his Word and he was bringing his Word to the people he gave his messengers various miracles or unusual miracles to help them to know this was truly from God.
One commentator said when revelation stopped the sign gifts stopped. B.B. Warfield who was a great Bible scholar in the early days of American history said these miraculous gifts were part of the credentials of the apostles as authoritative agents of God in founding the church.
Their function confined them distinctly to the apostolic church and they necessarily passed away with it. Now it’s not a dividing point. You may still believe in the sign gifts and all that and I’m fine with that.
I just would like you to go down to the hospital and I’d like you to get up to Hershey and I’d like you to get these kids on the seventh floor healed. I need to to get this done, because if you truly have compassion and feel led of God, that you are given these unusual signed gifts that were for the early church, please get to the hospitals and save some lives, amen?
That’s all I’m asking. If you believe in the signed gifts, then I ask you to follow the rules that are given in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. Now we come down to verse 13. You’ve already been learning about the authentic ministry of the Apostle Paul.
It’s been confirmed by unusual miracles. We get down to verse 13. Now you’re gonna see people who like to imitate. Here’s what I want you to know, church. I want you to know, and I got a fast track here, is this, that whenever God does something and He works, the devil always tries to imitate.
The devil always tries to deceive. It isn’t an accident that Luke not only records the unusual miracles of the apostle, but that he also records the charlatans. Because he wants the believer to see the contrast.
Verse 13, then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits saying, we exercise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.
They thought that the name of Jesus was like a magical name, and that if you just flung out the name of Jesus, that all of a sudden they would be able to perform some of these unusual miracles, and that they would be able to use it to take advantage of the people.
They use these worked up exorcisms to gather crowds and to take money from them. And that’s what you see taking place. They say, hey, let’s just add another name. Let’s just add another God to our pool of different names that we use to call out the demons in people’s lives.
Well, then Luke records for us that there were seven, seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest who did so, and here’s what they found out. Look at verse 15, how do you know that they’re fake, Mike?
How do you know that they’re not real? Look at verse 15, an evil spirit answered and said, Jesus, I know. Well, Paul, I know, but who are you? Who are you? What a great question. That the demons would know the ministry of Christ.
They knew the ministries of the apostles, specifically Paul, but these exorcists, who are they? They’re just charlatans, they’re just fake out there. They’re just taking advantage of those who are hurting and in desperate need, and therefore taking their money.
what I want you to know here is the demons recognized the charlatan exorcists had no authority over them and their ministry was illegitimate before God Almighty. How illegitimate was it? The demons subdued them or mastered them as some translations put it and attacked them.
The demons wounded them and they were left naked and they left. They were humiliated. They were embarrassed. The fraudulent claims left them exposed before all that they were not true ministries of God.
God’s Word is unchanging. It is unwavering church. It is true. It is God’s word that’ll help you to discern what is a real ministry, what is a fake ministry. I’ve told you this before church, I gotta tell you again.
Everything that glitters and glows is not gold. And everything that has the name of Jesus on it did not come from heaven. I don’t wanna turn you into a negative, critical person. That’s not my goal. I just want you to test the spirits.
I want you to examine all things. I want you to be careful, church, that you just don’t jump in emotionally and find yourself led astray, fully humiliated, all the way exposed as a part of a ministry that is not authentic before God.
I’m not claiming the open door church is the only true ministry. There are many wonderful churches, many wonderful ministries in our community, in our nation, and yes, our world. But I want you to align your hearts with those authentic ministries and not be deceived.
Finally, we see the domination of the word. Now in verses 17 through 20, the Bible says, look at this, this is so wonderful. This became no. You see, the Jews and the Greeks that lived in Ephesus, they realized, hey, there’s a difference between Paul’s ministry and these Jewish Exorcists.
And what did it lead to? People exalting God, exalting Christ. There was fear that fell on them, and the name of the Lord was magnified. They were touched in their hearts. They were moved by God. And look at verse 18, many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds, the evidence of a true revival coming into the hearts, the domination of God’s word in the lives of individuals.
individuals was that they began to exalt Christ and they began to confess sin, not only to God, but perhaps to others as they recognized that some of the things they were involved in was only corrupting their spirit and their souls.
So much so in verse 19, the Bible says they brought all of their pagan magic and they brought all of their pagan books and they gathered them together and they just burned them all up and said we want to publicly declare our loyalty to Jesus Christ and not to these false gods and not to these false ministries that are out there.
They were experiencing the conviction of God. Don’t think that they were just burning books of particular authors. No, these were books that had secret rights in them. These were books about pagan magic and false gods.
These were not a good, healthy book. that we all enjoy reading. These were books that were involved in corrupting the soul. The Bible says they were worth over 50,000 silver coins. To help you understand it, it would be equated today in 135 years of your wage.
And most of us aren’t gonna live to be 135, there may be a few, there’s some of you trying. But think about that, you take your salary each year, times it by 135, that was how profound the impact of God’s word.
And what is the summation of all that the apostle has to say in this passage? Look at verse 20 again. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. Church, you don’t have to be ashamed of God’s word, it is sufficient to do its work in our hearts.
It is sufficient to bring others to Christ, it is sufficient to sanctify or grow us more like Christ, it is sufficient to equip us to serve effectively for Christ. God’s word is more than enough, you don’t have to go out there and get the razzle dazzle, and you don’t have to be enamored by unusual miracles, and you don’t have to be drawn into ministries that are only imitating the truth.
But let God’s word richly dwell in your heart. Well, Paul’s ministry consisted of persuading people of the gospel, in other words, he was doing evangelism, persuasion. And you see that consistently, we watch him minister from Acts chapter nine all the way to where we’re at today.
in Acts chapter 19, and one person after another, he is persuading them to believe in Christ. Not everybody responds positively. Some even oppose the gospel. Wherever the apostle went, it was either a riot or a revival.
And so that’s what you’re going to see as you share the word of God. That it many times softens the heart, but there are many times that people respond by hardening their hearts towards God, and they become very stubborn and refuse to believe.
But that does not negate the power of God’s word, and it calls us to be faithful to the word of God, faithful to proclaim it, faithful to share it with others, and remember that God’s word will do its work in our hearts.
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This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.