8 Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. 9 But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. 10 This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
13 Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” 14 Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” 16 Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
17 When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. 18 Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. 19 A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.[c] 20 In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
21 After all this had happened, Paul decided[d] to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” 22 He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer.
Dig Deeper
There was an old professional wrestler who became somewhat famous due, in part, to a line of his that he repeated often. He would regularly remind his opponents that in to “be the man” they had to “beat the man.” His point, of course, was that you only take the place of preeminence by knocking off the one who currently holds that position. What is true of athletics is, I suppose, also true of our hearts. Whatever holds the position of highest importance in our hearts can be considered our god. It is certainly the thing to which we are most beholden. For the Greeks in Ephesus, the thing that had most captured their heart, imagination, and allegiance was magic. They believed in magic and its power so much that in the ancient world and spell or formula was often referred to as an “Ephesian writing.” The city itself had a reputation as a center of learning and the practice of magical arts, and they were deeply committed in their devotion to these magical powers.
To understand all of that is virtually necessary to understand what Luke wants us to see in this section. Without understanding the hold that their belief in magic and dark powers had on the Ephesians, this passage will seem strange, superstitious, and almost at odds with what we believe to know about the gospel and how it should be spread. This encounter at Ephesus was all about power and challenging what people held most dear in their hearts.
It might help to think of ancient Egypt for just a moment. During the time of Moses, Egypt was beholden to their belief in their gods and so, apparently, were the Israelites who had lived in that land for over 400 years. When Moses came to free the children of Abraham and serve notice on the Egyptians, there was a mighty power struggle that had to be won but it was not between Moses and Pharaoh. It was between Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the gods of Egypt. That is why each plague that Yahweh wrought on Egypt was a direct attack on the major gods of their religious beliefs. (For instance the water into blood was an assault on Hapi the god of the Nile; the boils were a direct affront to Imhotep, the physician god, and Thoth, the god of magic and healing; the hail was a conquering of Nut the sky goddess; the locusts were directed at Seth the god of crops; the dark was a clear defeat of Re, the mighty sun god and so on). God was clearly defeating these gods so that he could replace their positions of preeminence within the hearts of his people.
This is precisely what was going on in Ephesus. These seemingly strange accounts of miracles that almost seem to delve into the magical realm are not mere accounts of legend and myth that has seeped into Luke’s account. Nor are they a demonstration that the gospel was (and perhaps still should be, some might claim) accompanied by magic-type miracles. This was clearly a special situation. It was a defeat of the thing that the Ephesians held most dear so that they could see the truth and true power of the gospel. The power wasn’t in magic or spells or even Paul. The true power was the power of God. To use that famous wrestlers phrase, God was about to step up and beat the man at his own game.
Paul began his ministry in Ephesus, which lasted an uncharacteristically long period for him of two to three years, with a three month stint of preaching and teaching in the synagogue. He apparently had some initial success before being beset with the same sort of opposition from Jewish leadership that he had faced many times before. Rather than incurring further opposition, Paul moved his teaching sessions to a hall where either Tyrranus was the primary lecturer or was owned by Tyrannus. This must have been a fairly successful endeavor because Paul continued there as his main evangelistic outlet for over two years. It seems that during this time some of Paul’s co-workers such as Epaphras (Col. 1:7) were busy evangelizing the rest of the province of Asia, including planting churches in Colosse; Laodicea; Hieropolis, and quite possibly all seven of the churches mentioned by John in his Revelation.
While teaching was the heart and soul of Paul’s ministry, as the preaching of the word of God always will be, God used Paul in other ways as well. While working in the morning before he went off to the lecture hall for the afternoon, people were taking Paul’s work aprons and handkerchiefs to the sick who were being healed and freed from demonic possession. Luke is clear to point out that this was not magic. It was not the result of a spell. It was not even Paul who was capable of such amazing feats. It was the power of the one true God demonstrating the fraud and impotency of demonic magic when compared to the true power of God.
Luke also made clear that this was not a repeatable event to be mimicked for personal use or gain as verses 13-16 make clear. They serve as a stern warning for hucksters who would try to claim the ability to harness non-normative and non-repeating events like those that took place in Ephesus for their own gain or “ministry” claims (although I recently saw a so-called preacher hawking his own green healing cloths on television while using verses 11-12 as a justification for this).
The miracles that were done through Paul were God’s way of showing the Ephesians true power and divesting them from their belief in magic so that they could hear the true message of the gospel, the truth that the power of God’s new creation was breaking into the present realm and brining its holistic restoration to bear. The miracles were a small demonstration of the new creation, nothing more and nothing less. But Luke knew that many would try to co-opt that power and use it as nothing more than another talisman or spell next to all of their other options. All things Jewish were particularly attractive as Jewish magic was considered to be highly effective. Thus, it should be of little surprise that seven men were disciples of Sceva. It is quite possible that Sceva was a magician (possibly even Jewish himself) who called himself a chief priest to gain the reputation of the Jewish connection and impress others (not unlike magicians today who call themselves the “great” or “amazing” something or the other).
But these seven men were attempting to fool with the real deal and not just dabble in magic. They sought to use the name of Jesus to cast out demons. They had obviously been deeply impressed with the works that had been done by Paul through the power of God and thought that they too could invoke the name of Jesus. But they were not part of God’s family and were seeking to use God’s power for their own gain. And like someone using a weapon that they don’t know how to handle only to have it blow up in their face, they had stepped into the realm of the big boys and were about to face the real power. But don’t be fooled into thinking that the real power was the demon that declared that he knew and presumably respected Paul and Jesus and then proceeded to beat them to a pulp, leaving them scrambling, naked, and bleeding. The real power lay in the name of Jesus, something that could not be appropriated for their own use. The family of God wasn’t built on magic but on the power of God and that power had been shown as the real thing while their beloved magic was nothing more than a pretender. And a severe warning had been laid down. One had better think twice before trying to manipulate the power of God for their own gain.
These displays of the power of the kingdom of God were enough to convince many that they needed to divest in their idolatry and adherence to magic and seek the kingdom of God. But as always, to do so involved repentance from the gods that bound them. In this case, they brought their magic scrolls of spells and enchantments which would have taken lifetimes to accrue and pass down. The total value amounted to a day’s wage for 50,000 workers, an amount that has been estimated in today’s terms to be as high as several million dollars. And they weren’t just denouncing or selling these books and scrolls, they were destroying them and they were revealing the spells publicly which, it was believed, robbed the spell of its power. The power of God had made itself manifest and the counterfeit power of magic had lost in an expensive way which is perhaps the quickest way to gain opposition as the following passage will make clear. The Ephesians who believed, however, had learned rightly to trust in the power of God rather than magic. Just as God had defeated the Egyptian gods head to head and run roughshod over the prophets of Ba’al on Mt. Carmel, God had taken on the power of magic and defeated by exposing it’s lack of power and demonstrating that the true power was in God alone.
Although the point for many had been made, they would continue to need to be taught on the topic of spiritual power and the true power of the family of God. This is possibly reason that Paul’s most thorough explanation of spiritual powers and the spiritual battle that Christians face come in Paul’s letter called Ephesians (which he either wrote to the Ephesians or while imprisoned in Ephesus). They would continue to have to be educated on the subject, but the initial battle had been won in the hearts of many. The true power of God had been shown.
Devotional Thought
Take at look at those around you in your life. What are their gods that they believe and trust in? How can you allow the Spirit to work through you to demonstrate to them the emptiness and lack of true power in those things? How can you show them that true power to change lives and bring eternal peace comes from God alone.
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