Sunday, January 26, 2025

Christ Magnified in Acts 19

Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the day that You have made. We give You praise, for You are our Creator. You have made us in Your image for Your glory. You've breathed the breath of life into us, that we may sound forth Your praises.

You have given us Your Son, Jesus Christ, that we may be redeemed and remade, given new life, hope everlasting. You have sent forth Your Spirit to indwell Your saints and to bring a resonating grace in our lives, that we would be the amen on earth of Your will from heaven.

We give You praise. You have provided it all. You have done it all. So, Heavenly Father, You know our needs before we even ask. You give us our daily bread. You make the sun to rise and to set. You give us sleep in the night and breath in the day to see Your glory.

Help us to respond this morning as we read Your Word together, as we consider Your truth. I pray that You would lead us by Your grace and in Your Spirit to commune with Your Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

It's in His name that we pray.

Amen.

I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts 19. Acts 19, we'll be reading verses 8 through 20 this morning. Acts 19, verses 8 through 20. It is good for us to appreciate how much Jesus Christ is magnified, made much of in the book.

Of Acts.

We find His humility, His humble condescension in Luke, and that is paired with His glorious exaltation in Acts. And these are truly the acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles amongst His saints.

As we read the book of Acts, we are reading the beginning of the incarnate Christ's reign, and it proves to be a very big deal in the lives of everyone, whether they like it or.

Not.

It is too small a thing to say that Christ is a really big deal. It's just not enough. The second Adam heads a new humanity. The promised seed crushes the head of the serpent. Shiloh brings the rest of the new creation.

As the crucified and risen Son, the servant, the sovereign, the Savior, Jesus reigns forever. He is the logic of history. He is the master of today, and He owns the entirety of our horizon. It only makes sense that the more we come into the light of His glory, the more we commune with Him, the more things change in our lives, the more magnified, the more He is made much of in our lives.

I invite you to stand with me as we read God's holy word, Acts 19, beginning in verse 8. Consider the word of the Lord. And He went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God.

But when some were hardened and did not believe but spoke evil of the way before the multitude, He departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. And this continued for two years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even the handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went out of them.

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 exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches. Also there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest who did so.

And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you? Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leapt upon them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus, and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds.

Also many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and they counted up the value of them, and it totaled 50 ,000 pieces.

Of silver.

So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Christ is magnified in these three related stories. Magnifying Christ in this world includes both separation from the world on the one hand, and the act of labor to bring it under submission to Christ on the other hand.

There is a sense of separation and a sense of engagement both together to magnify Christ. And as we gather this morning for communion, to recognize our Savior, to confess our faith in Jesus Christ, His body, His blood, our union together with one another in Him, our union with the triune God because of Christ incarnate and His finished work, communion, is that what the world really needs right now?

That Christians would gather together, separating themselves away from the needy, the lost, the diseased, the demon-possessed, the depressed, and we would gather together, separating ourselves together in order to commune with their Lord.

Is that really what the world needs today, that Christians would commune with Christ? Does it fittingly address the real issues of the day, that in our zealous Christians, we would make separations, that we would even bring critiques against false religion, that we would even, as we saw in the text, how shall we put it, in today's sensitivities, encourage the destruction of certain cultural artifacts?

Is that what really is needed in our world today? Many may have an ardent concern for how to present Jesus to the watching world, but there may be far too much concern about cultural appeasement, wanting to make sure that folks are happy and pleased with us.

We need to recognize that Jesus really does turn the world upside down, as it says in Acts 17. For those who bless Him, for those who bow the knee and kiss His ring, we find Him to be a King that saves and that salvation really does turn our world upside down.

It is transformational. And also, for those, like those in Psalm 2, for those who band together in foolish rebellion against His reign, have you noticed that every ripple of the influence of Christ upon the water of society makes them instantly seasick?

You can't even have a professing Christian as Secretary of Defense without causing all manner of vile reaction, can you? Jesus really does turn the world upside down, and there is no pleasing fools. So we should concern ourselves with communing with our Lord.

With Christ as our wisdom, there are necessary stands that we may take, sacrifices that we may make in order to magnify Christ. Fully intending the pun, here are three takeaways which honor Jesus. We see three stories here where something is taken away, something is denied, something is exposed, something is lost, and in every case, the subtraction is only magnification to the glory of Jesus Christ.

The first is clear. There's a separation from evil echo chambers in verses 8 -10. We're going to look at that one this morning. And then, as the Lord wills, the next two. That the shame of witchcraft should be highlighted, pointed out, made a story to share, but also there should be a forsaking of wicked investments.

In all three of these stories that are related to each other of the gospel progress there in the city of Ephesus and in the region of Asia, we find that things are taken away and yet Christ's name is magnified, that Jesus is honored.

So let's think about this first takeaway, this separation from an evil echo chamber in verses 8 -10. So Paul, Paul goes into the synagogue and he spoke boldly for three months. Notice that he was reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God.

But when some were hardened and did not believe but spoke evil of the way before the multitude,.

What did Paul do?

He departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. And this continued for two years so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

Now, Paul has returned to Ephesus. When he was there last time, he was reasoning and persuading and speaking boldly in the synagogue. And in fact, he was so well received that the Jews there tried to persuade him to stay on and not go away.

But he said he had to go and keep his vow and go to the feast in Jerusalem. When he left, Apollos came. And having been more instructed by Aquila and Priscilla, he was able to preach mightily the gospel there in this very same synagogue in Ephesus.

And then Apollos was sent out to Corinth. Paul has now returned to Ephesus to this very same synagogue where he had had a warm reception and he preaches yet again as long as he can until he can't anymore.

Notice his liberty in Christ as he speaks. Notice that Paul is speaking boldly and reasoning and persuading, but then there's a reaction against him as some of the folks were hardened, and then we read they did not believe, and then we read that they spoke evil against him.

So Luke is telling the story and he presents to us, first of all, a kind of three-on-three verbal contest. Here's what Paul is doing. Here's what some who rejected the message were doing, and we see how they match up.

First of all, Paul was speaking boldly. This meant that he was speaking freely. He wasn't watching his words and being oh-so-careful not to overstep or overemphasize. He wasn't trying to put a governor on the engine of the gospel, so to speak.

He was unconstrained. He was confident. He was frank with his speech. He had full assurance, and he was reasoning with them, and that means that he was laying thought alongside thought and showing the connection between them, and he's doing this from the Scriptures.

Now, perhaps he's taking a thought that they had and taking a thought from the Scripture and laying them side by side to understand where they need to change their understanding of Messiah, where they need to come to Christ by faith.

Perhaps he's laying alongside his own thoughts, more thoughts, and building the picture of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, the risen Christ, the Son of the living God, the fulfillment of all the promises of the old covenant, but he is reasoning with them.

He is showing them the logical progression of thought that God is a coherent thinker. In fact, he's the definition of truth. He's the definition of what makes sense, and Paul is sharing the good news of the Word of God with these Jews.

He's also persuading them. He's not only speaking boldly and reasoning, he's also persuading, and this means that Paul is, in a very winsome way, bringing everybody listening to him, he's trying to bring them all together to have the same kind of confidence that he does.

He's saying, I want you to have the same joy that I do.

I want you to have the same confidence that I do.

I want you to be able to read the passages of Moses and the prophets with as much excitement as I do, and he is persuading those who are listening to him concerning the gospel. However, despite all of this, there were some, there were some who were hardened.

They were hardened. This is an ongoing type of verb, and it is a passive verb, meaning they were being hardened. This was as the more that Paul spoke, the longer that he spoke, the more that they were being hardened against the message.

Now this was not at all Paul's intention. He was not trying to harden their hearts. In Romans 10 verse 1, he expresses his desire for his fellow Jews. He says, brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.

So it's that passion and that desire that is present in Paul as he is preaching the gospel, speaking boldly, and reasoning, and persuading. That's his motive. But what was happening? They were being hardened.

The continued preaching of the gospel made them more stubborn. They became more obstinate so that they did not believe. They were being hardened, and they did not believe. Now this is an active verb, an ongoing active verb.

So they are being hardened. They were being hardened, and they were intentionally not believing. What does that mean? It means that they actively refused to be persuaded. They didn't like the way that Paul was being winsome and trying to encourage them to have joy.

They took it as an insult. They purposefully withheld belief despite being confronted with sound reasoning. They were confronted with logic. They were confronted with truth. The clarity of the Scriptures was laid before them.

Sound biblical reasoning was given to them, and they intentionally, unreasonably, obstinately refused to believe. I believe the Old Testament word is stiff-necked, stiff-necked. They were not going to budge one inch.

And so we find here that the passive, they were being hardened, and the active, they were not believing perfect agreement. This is a sad situation. This is not what Paul desired of his Jewish audience.

They were hardened of heart, and they hardened their hearts. Kind of reminds us a little bit about Pharaoh in the book of Exodus, doesn't it? So what was it? Was it God hardening their hearts as a fitting judgment as He did with Pharaoh?

Exodus 4 verse 21, the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you do all these wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in your hand. These were impressive wonders, to turn the staff into a snake, to put one's hand into one's bosom and bring it out leprous and then put it back and it come out whole.

Signs that Yahweh is the one true God, the real God, and that all the gods of Egypt are false. To bring a real evidence to the skeptic Pharaoh, to the leader of Egypt, let my people go, says the Lord, and here's the proof that you should pay attention to what God says.

And yet, having given the signs and wonders to Moses, to bring that persuasive evidence to Pharaoh, God also says in the very same verse, I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.

That's got to be a little discouraging to Moses, right? Where He says to Moses, now you're going to go down to Egypt to Pharaoh, who is the most powerful king on planet Earth, and you are going to declare to him that he has to let his slave laborers go.

And I'm giving you powerful signs to convince him to do it, and I'm also going to make sure that he doesn't do it. Now, that's a tough job, and Moses tried to wiggle out of it, but God made him do it and brought Aaron alongside to help him with it.

Now, that's God's prerogative. When God hardens a heart, it's out of judgment, and the person always, always deserves it. But perhaps it wasn't so much God as it was the message itself, and this reminds us of the prophet Isaiah.

God sent Isaiah out with a message, Isaiah 6, verses 9 and 10. God said to Isaiah, go, tell this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, their ears heavy, shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and return and be healed.

And so in this, Isaiah had a tough mission just like Moses. God says to Isaiah, you're going to go preach my word to them, and this word is going to make them hard of hearing. They are going to get so tired of what you have to say, and they're going to shut their eyes and shut their ears.

The message itself is going to do that. The message itself is going to shut down their receptivity. That's rough. And perhaps, as we see in the text, we should understand that these hearers in the synagogue, that they're the ones who harden their own hearts against the gospel and would not believe.

Like those whom Stephen preached to, the members of the Sanhedrin to whom Stephen preached in Acts chapter 7, that when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart and they gnashed at him with their teeth.

And in verse 57 of Acts 7, they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord, and of course we know they killed him.

So what was it?

Did God harden the heart? Did the message harden the heart? Did the hearer harden his own heart? Biblically, we may and should affirm all three. Notice that they countered Paul as they spoke evil concerning the way.

Do you see that? They reviled the way. They spoke evil about the way. Meaning what? Paul is declaring the blessings of Jesus, and then they turn them into curses. Paul is talking about the precious name of Jesus Christ, and they abuse that name.

And they tell lies, and they mock Christ, and they defame the gospel all before the multitude, it says, all before the multitude. And this is a really tough situation for Paul. He wants to continue. He has a passion and a desire to see his fellow countrymen, fellow Israelites to be saved, but they held the mic, so to speak.

They ran the sound system. They had the deed to the building, and there was just nothing more that he could do there. So Paul departed and withdrew the multitude of the disciples with him away and out of the synagogue.

So we hear how Paul went into the synagogue. He went in there with bold preaching and reasoning and persuasion, and we hear why he departed from the synagogue, because they were hardened, they did not believe, and they reviled the way before the multitude.

He went into the synagogue to magnify Christ, and he departed from the synagogue to magnify Christ. That was his goal, that was his objective, that's his priority, and thus he did two different actions that looked totally opposite, but they were absolutely consistent, because he was there to magnify Christ, and if he couldn't do it in that evil echo chamber that refused to listen, then he would leave and continue to magnify Christ.

Now consider his preaching of the gospel. What was he saying about Jesus? As we look at the content of his message, not just how he was preaching, we see that this was concerning the things of the kingdom of God in verse 8.

He was speaking boldly, reasoning and persuading, notice, concerning the things of the kingdom of God. Now, as he's explaining the kingdom of God to them, what was the response? They spoke evil of the way before the multitude.

So you see how Luke is connecting the kingdom of God, the things of the kingdom of God with.

The way.

The Spirit instructs us of how to read our Bibles accordingly. Think about the kingdom of God, the large picture of the kingdom of God, and then think about this expression of the way, the earliest description of the Christian faith.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one can come to the Father except by me. Thus, the Christians, before they were known as Christians, were known as followers of.

The way.

The Christian faith was described as the way. So what is Luke saying here? What is the Spirit communicating to us here? That the things concerning the kingdom of God are wrapped up in the way. By this, we understand that the landscape of the kingdom of God is contained in the portrait of the way.

We can say it another way. The what of the kingdom is found in the who of the king. And this was Christ's own message in Mark 1. How did He put it? Mark 1, verse 14, now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. The time is fulfilled. What time was that? John's in prison. Gospel preaching needs to be had. The kingdom of God is at hand. It's within arm's reach.

Why?

Because Jesus just showed up. So the king arrives, therefore the kingdom of God is in arm's reach. It's time to repent and believe in the gospel. What gospel is that? The gospel of the kingdom of God.

What gospel is that? The gospel of Jesus Christ, His person and His work. So Jesus put these things together first. Luke's following suit. This is how Paul preached in the synagogue in Ephesus. Further, we can think of John chapter 3, wherein Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, the most educated of his peers in Judaism, about what it means to come into the kingdom of God.

He says in verse 3 of John 3,. That's news to Nicodemus, who had been in the temple. News to Nicodemus, who had been amongst the Sanhedrin. News to Nicodemus, who had lived in Jerusalem. He thought he could definitely see the kingdom of God.

Look, it's there. Look, it's right there. And Jesus says, you've never seen it until you've been born again by the Spirit. And Nicodemus can't do anything to make the Spirit birth him because, verse 8,.

So it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can see the kingdom, and this manifests in our faith in Jesus Christ, who is the Son of Man. As we read in John 3, 15 and 16, salvation is in the Son of Man.

The Son of Man from Daniel, the King of the kingdom. And so, from the pages of Daniel, from the Old Testament into the New, we see that the stone uncut by human hands that crushes the empires of men and fills the earth is the rock of ages, is the rock of offense, is the stone of stumbling.

Both the cornerstone and the capstone. He is the Messiah. He is the mountain. He is the man, Christ Jesus. We can't talk about the kingdom without talking about the King. We can't rightly talk about the kingdom without magnifying the King.

He is the way, the truth, and the life, and all who come into the kingdom enter in by Him. Enter. Entering necessitates leaving. To enter in one place is by necessity to leave somewhere else, and that is true of the covenants from the Old into the New.

Sinai must be left for Zion. Hagar must be left for Sarah. The Old must be left for the New. The shadow must be left for the substance. It is even true of creation itself. The old man is left for the new.

The first Adam is left for the last. Death is left behind for new life, both now and forever. Separation, you see, is necessary. There is a necessity to the separation for the sake of a gathering. And that's what we see in verses 9 and 10.

This kind of separation is a gathering kind of separation. Notice that when Paul departed from them and withdrew the disciples, he was reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. So this is where the church met.

They didn't have their own house, they didn't have their own building. They were meeting in the school of Tyrannus, and that is where he reasoned daily and edified the saints. Verse 10, this continued for two years.

What was the result? So that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. Now, sometimes, Paul's separation from the Jewish synagogue and the town that he went to would come early, sometimes it would come late, but every time Paul would go to a new place or perhaps a repeat place, he would go to the synagogue and he would preach the gospel until such time as there was a separation and then the church would be planted.

That happened every time. Every time a moment would come when the old wineskins would burst and the new wine flowed freely. The moment would come when the new cloth would tear away from the old and the separation would be made all the more clear every time.

And notice his separation here and the manner in which it is conducted. It is a separation from, it is a separation unto, it is a separation for, and it is a separation so that. It's a separation from the liars, from the deceivers, from the revilers, from that evil echo chamber who wouldn't give any opportunity for the preaching of the gospel anymore.

They shut it down, thus in an act of separation and wisdom, Paul and the disciples depart. Notice there's a departure, a separation unto the disciples. They didn't just leave, they left so they could gather again.

And they gathered again and again and again in the school of Tyrannus. Also notice that they departed for, there was a separation for, steady instruction. Oh, it was profitable for a time to lay a thought, a long thought, and to be persuasive and to speak boldly there in the synagogue, but at a certain point, no more teaching could be done.

It was so cantankerous. And so they separated for the sake of more edification. Lastly, they separated so that the gospel would spread broadly. So that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

Do we see how this strategic concentration of the Christians in communion with Christ resulted in the widespread magnification of the name of Christ? Magnifying the name of Christ for the salvation and sanctification of both Jews and Gentiles required what?

That there was a separation first from that evil echo chamber of this particular synagogue, though very warmly receiving for a while, had gotten to the point where they were hardened and unbelieving and reviling.

Isn't it interesting that the obvious, the obvious most productive forum to proclaim the truths of Christ over time became the least profitable place, the most detracting. And that's not unique to Paul's pattern with the synagogue.

It has also happened throughout history with forums such as the Roman Catholic Communion, the Greek Orthodox Communion, mainline Protestant denominations, various theological seminaries and so-called Christian media consortiums.

There is a need at times for the good of the saints, for the good of the saints' communion with Christ, the magnifying of His name. There is a need for reformation. There is a need for fundamentalism.

There is a need for discerning polemics. There is a need to break away for the sake of clarity and for the sake of gathering. There is no need to desperately beg for the crumbs of lesser tables when we are so warmly welcomed to the table of our Lord.

We have all the legitimacy we need in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Righteous separation from one can make the other communion all the sweeter. Now, we have trouble with this, don't we? Sometimes we are tempted by the fear of man to not separate when and where we should.

We entertain compromise or we, on the other hand, perhaps separate far too often or far too vigorously, disobeying our mandate to press the crown rights of Jesus Christ into every sphere of society. But it is only when our attention is upon Christ with whom we commune that we avoid one pitfall or the other, too much, too little.

It is when our objective is to biblically magnify Christ by either entering or departing, when that's our motive, to magnify Christ, that's when we have the Goldilocks of separation and engagement. The truths of this passage that highlight a necessary kind of separation, please understand, does not give us license for a cantankerous, prideful isolation, okay?

Jesus' instruction to His disciples to, remember, wipe the dust off their feet, why would they do that? It was for the sake of continued evangelism to the next town, right? It wasn't wipe the dust off your feet and don't go anywhere else.

Wisely refraining from casting our pearls before swine does not then entail foolishly keeping them hidden from view. We're not redeemed how I love to contain it, right? We are separated unto Christ, but we are the light of the world.

We are persecuted like the prophets before us, and yet, we are the salt of the earth. Cities sit on a hill. How does it work out in a dynamic fashion? Well, I think of the marriage relationship, which we're told in Ephesians 5 by Paul is telling us really about Christ and the church.

I came across some English vows from the 14th century. It's amazing how much has remained the same and also what has changed. But the husband, the man is addressed, and he said in the officiating minister says, do you wish to have this woman as a wife and to esteem her, to honor, hold, and protect her healthy and sick just as a husband ought to do for a wife and to forsake all other women and to cling to her so long as your life and hers will endure?

And the man is to respond, I so wish. And then the woman is addressed. Do you wish to have this man as a husband to obey him, to serve, to esteem, honor, and guard him healthy and sick just as a wife ought to do for her husband and to forsake all other men and to cling to him so long as your life and his will endure?

And the woman is to respond, I so wish. Here in that marriage relationship, Paul says it's a great mystery, but he speaks concerning Christ and the church. And what do we see in the marriage relationship but an open beauty of an exclusive love.

This is meant to be public, and it's also meant to be exclusive. And in that dynamic, I think we have exactly the church's relationship with Christ and where we stand forsaking all other lords, obeying Him, clinging to Him, and He will save us throughout all of our lives, all through eternity.

And may this be our wish. May this be our wish. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the time You've given us in Your Word. I thank You that we may think on being separated unto You in a way that magnifies You as our God.

And I thank You for a morning that we can have communion together and be reminded of this special relationship that we have, a bride with her husband, a flock of sheep with a shepherd, disciples with our teacher, subjects with our king.