Happily Giving up Things as the Word of the Lord Grows
18 Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. 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. In this way, the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
Acts 19:18–20 NIV Read More
After everyone heard about the 7 sons of Sceva getting beat up by a demon, the name of Jesus was held in high honor and people were ‘seized with fear.’ In Ephesus, like in Athens, religious faith was like a hobby or an excuse to justify what you wanted to do. Even though you could be sincere, there were so many options of gods to worship, you could ‘sincerely’ bounce around from belief to belief like a pinball.
God’s power manifested in Paul made everyone take a second look and get real. Religious faith was no longer following steps and participating in activities. There was evidence of a real spiritual entity and from what this guy Paul was saying, it was good to be on his side! People that believed confessed their sins and repented, turning away from their old lives of sin.
It’s interesting that they hadn’t done this already. Jesus’ consistent message was ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ but only when pressed with the question facing to face did He tell individual people the thing they needed to repent from. The believers in Ephesus did what a lot of believers that are free from legalism and rules do. After a period of growing in their faith, the Holy Spirit convicts them of sin in their life. Even though they have lived out their faith for a while, they enter a new stage and clean out the sin from their bookshelves and basements as well as their lives. It’s a continual process that helps us grow even if we’ve followed Jesus for 20 years.
These people that had practiced sorcery knew their lifestyle was against God and that these books were against Jesus’ ways. They also knew that to give them to someone else would be to promote sorcery in others. This is a great sacrifice they made because it was shutting the door on their past. In order to go back to sorcery, it would cost them a lot. Fifty thousand drachmas are equal to $7,500,000 today. They repented from their evil ways and gave up $7.5 million worth of sin.
After they did this (and in their doing of this) the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power. That would have been a lot of books destroyed! And to do that in Ephesus, there was probably plenty of conflict with people that wanted or valued those books that had to stand by and watch them be destroyed.
If there is anything to learn from this section of Acts, it is that the Christian life is intense. Jesus said all kinds of things about leaving things behind to follow Him. As people repented and took Jesus more seriously, entire households and cities were changed in proportion to their faith. The cost of following Jesus was considered and was always worth the sacrifice. In this way, the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
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