Living Waters of Grace 11.21.25

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

The magicians were able to replicate certain degrees of

those miracles, right? And so just because there's a

miracle that occurs doesn't mean it's the Lord.

The devil comes with lying signs and wonders.

A matter of fact, in the last days, when the Antichrist comes

on the scene and the false prophet, they'll be all kind of

miraculous that'll be occurring like we've never, ever

experienced. And there'll be a lot of people

thinking that he's the Christ, they'll be the Antichrist.

Don't be fooled by some of the supernatural things that happen.

Like in any superhero movie, there's a hero and there's a

villain. For every Batman, there's a

Joker. For every Superman, there's a

Lex Luthor. For every Spider Man, there's a

Green Goblin. Today, Pastor Clark is bringing

light to the fact that with God and the people he's using, he

grants them some supernatural abilities.

But there will also be those who are using some supernatural

powers or magic that does not come from God, but from the

devil. Now here's Pastor Clark in Acts

Acts 19 · chapter mention

chapter 19 with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

We are in the book of Acts, chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

Acts is the story of the power of the Holy Spirit and the New

Testament Church over 2000 years ago when the church was birthed.

And it continues the work of the Holy Spirit.

He, God the Holy Spirit is still at work working in the lives of

people all around the world. And now in verse 11, we're

picking up now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of

Paul so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his

body to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil

spirits went out of them. Interesting that that Laurie

would talk about holistic things.

You can't get any more holistic than a handkerchief or a a

headband that was full of sweat with the perspiration of the

apostle. Now you asked me how this kind

of stuff happens, how it works, I have no idea.

It's miraculous. And what's interesting with the

the apostles, and I'm not an apostle, there is no more

apostles in our day and age in the sense of the apostles that

Jesus ordained. But in the book of Second

2 Corinthians 12:2

Corinthians chapter 12, verse 2, it talks about the signs of

those apostles, those who were authentic apostles.

And the issue of, of Apostolic ministry is miraculous there.

There's different things that happen because of their calling

and their anointing by Jesus Christ that they're able to do.

Now you got to realize that Ephesus was a Pagan city.

It was full of sexual immorality, prostitution,

idolatry with the temple of Diana and all these different

edifices that they had in Ephesus at the time.

Ephesus would be like modern day San Francisco, sexual

immorality, whether it was fornication, adultery,

lesbianism, homosexuality, it was prevalent then.

And so sometimes the day we say boy, things are really bad.

The day they were always bad since the beginning of time in

the book of Genesis, that's when things really started going bad,

when we fell away from the Lord. So Paul's in this city that is

predominantly Pagan, there's very few Christians.

There's not even a church at this time.

So visualize yourself, your friend of Paul, he wants to have

some Bible studies. He rented a facility from a guy

that had some real estate that wasn't using it at certain hours

of the day, between 11:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon.

And he invited people like us at the time that were in the

community to come and study the Bible, study the word.

Of course, it would have been primarily the Old Testament

Scriptures, but he was writing letters.

So he was using things that the Holy Spirit had been giving him

that were eventually codified in what we call the day our Bible,

66 Books of the Bible. So as he's teaching these people

that the things of the Spirit, people like you and me, we're

sitting there and we're getting changed.

We're hearing the word. So all these things are

happening and they're learning. And so they're going out from

this Bible study every day. Can you imagine being in a

Bible? It's one thing to be in a Bible

study with me. I ain't anywhere near Paul.

OK, I'm lip synching what Paul wrote.

This is all what he, you know, Luke translated this and put it

into this book, the book of the Acts.

But these these are the this is the life of Paul, his ministry.

But to be able to sit with an apostle for six hours a day,

five days a week for over almost three years, you would be really

grounded. You'd really know what the Bible

was all about. But not only that, they were

going out and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

They were impacting the community and the provinces

around the area that Paul was ministering in at the time and

act. So the purpose of the church and

in our church to hear is to explode on the outside so that

people that don't know Jesus begin to hear about him and want

to know about him and they end up maybe coming here to hear

more about him. OK, or or another Bible church,

whatever. And so this is impacting the

whole known world. At the time the gospel was going

out in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so Paul, not any was preaching because the gospel in

and of itself is the power of God and the salvation to

everyone that believes, to the Jew 1st and also to the Greek.

So I don't need to have a miracle in front of me before

I'm a Christian to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of

the living God. The Holy Spirit does the miracle

in my heart to cause me to believe the message of the

gospel. And then when I believe that

message, then my life is dramatically transformed.

I'm saved, I become born again. I have new eyesight, I have new

vision, new passion, new desires, and my my life is, is

brand new and yours is too. When you come to faith in Christ

and that is the miracle of miracles, you know of someone

becoming born again, passing from death to light, from

darkness to light. And now our followers of God as

as opposed to followers of the devil in his lies.

And so not any though the preaching at the time time, but

Jews require a sign, it said. So signs are real important to

the Jewish people. The Greeks seeked after wisdom.

Jews seek a sign. So in order to authenticate the

message that Paul is proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah to a

predominantly Jewish population at the time these miracles

occurred. And so these handkerchiefs and

these weren't like things he was blowing his nose on.

These were sweat bands he put around his head when he was

doing his tent making. The aprons were the made out of

leather. And he used this to put his

tools in whenever he was making his living as he was preaching

the gospel and and making tents. And So what happened was I don't

know who came up with the idea. I know it wouldn't have been

Paul. He wouldn't have said we'll take

this and put it on someone sick and, and they'll be OK and

they'll be healed. No, that wasn't the way it

works. Somehow the Spirit of God, this

ended up getting some of this stuff out into these different

places. And when it touched the bodies

of some of these people, it says that they were delivered from

their sickness. Diseases left them and, and, and

not any of that evil spirits went out from them automatically

just by the touching of this point of contact of a man who is

highly anointed of God. It wasn't anything in and of

Paul. It was Christ in Paul that

enabled this to actually occur. Now, you don't really read about

this in any other part of the Bible.

You have to realize that the miracles in the Bible started

with Moses primarily, and then they were Elijah and Elijah, and

then they were Jesus and the apostles.

Those were the three stages of the ages of miracles in, in

church history and in the Bible. There's less than 100 miracles

codified or quantified in detail where we can read and study

them, tells us and John, Jesus did many other miracles that

there wouldn't have been enough books in the world to contain

everything he did. But God felt that it was

necessary to give us enough indication that he does work

within the miraculous realm. Now today I could RIP part of my

sweater off here. If you had a headache and, and

tell you to put it on your forehead, nothing's going to

happen. These charlatans on TV that sell

these things and tell you to send money in and they prayed

for them and, and they soaked their sweat in them.

If you send 50 bucks and they'll send you this cloth.

I mean, it's just nothing but con artists and RIP off.

This happened one time and you know, and other times, if you

read church history documents from way back in the early days,

there has been miracles that occurred that there was no

explanation for. People have laid hands on me and

prayed for me. And when I've been sick or

having a problem, and I've done the same thing for other people

and sometimes God shows up and brings healing and other times,

OK, you take the medicine, right?

That's just the way it is. I prefer to get the healing and

not take the medicine. But you know, if I got to take

the medicine, I take the medicine.

And you do too. But there's nothing wrong with

seeking God for a touch supernaturally.

There was a true story. And I saw the movie and I read

the history and it was authenticated that this guy,

Victarius was his name. And he was a very godly,

monastic kind of guy, praying all the time, a very holy man,

very saintly man. And Mickey Rourke, the guy

played in that movie, that boxing movie, he played the part

of this drunk coal miner that was at living at the time that

Victarius was living on this particular island.

And he somehow, I think he had a drinking problem and he fell off

a Cliff and paralyzed himself. So he's in bed and he can't

move. And Victarius is in bed with

prostate cancer. And this is what always

fascinated me. Here's Paul able to do miracles,

right? People getting healed,

delivered. Paul had a physical affliction,

the thorn in the flesh. He asked God three times to take

it from him. He didn't like RIP off his shirt

and put it on his wherever it was hurting and to say, OK, make

it happen. He had to suffer it.

And then the Lord said, hey, I'm not going to answer the prayer.

My strength is made perfect in your weakness, that the power of

Christ would rest upon you. So Paul had to deal with the

illness and the affliction that he had.

Everybody's going to die of something.

Even after Lazarus was raised from a dead miraculously, guess

what? He eventually died physically.

We all have to die physically. But so anyway, this this

nectarious guy, he's laying in bed and and Mickey Rourke, the

actor, he's laying there. Why would God allow me to have

this problem? I can't move.

What good am I going to be to my wife and my kids?

I can't make a living. He's depressed, he's complaining

and Nectarious just sort of laying there in agony and pain.

He just smiles as well. Maybe God will surprise you.

That's all he said. Well, this is wild.

So Nectarious dies. They come in, the nurses are

taking the shirt and everything off.

They throw the shirt on the bed to the guy, Mickey Rourke, the

actor laying there in the bed and within several minutes he's

completely healed and he's able to walk.

His body's restored. Now.

You can't reenact this stuff. You, you can't figure it out.

I mean, even when Jesus did healing, they were always

different. Sometimes he'd spit on the, the

dirt and get the mud and rub it in someone's eyes or some other

time a woman would touch the hem of his garment.

I, I all I know is that God is able to do the miraculous and we

can pray and ask him to do that. And sometimes we experience

that, but there's no guarantee. There's no man.

You can go to some woman that it's a holy person to ask him to

pray, and just because it's them, they're going to be able

to do something for you. It's only the Lord and he does

everything after the council of his own will, even the gifts of

the Spirit. He gives them out severally as

He wills. The idea of faith healers is not

biblical, but the the idea of the gift of healing is biblical.

But even the people that have been used by God to pray for

people and their health, and there's been evidence of maybe a

higher percentage of people being healed doesn't mean that

everybody's going to get healed. But anyway, this this instance

of this occurring in here was to get the attention of these

Jewish people. And it did in verse 13, and some

of the itinerant Jewish exorcist took it upon themselves to call

in the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits,

saying, we exercise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.

Also there were seven sons of Skiva, a Jewish sheep priest who

did so. So these Jewish people at the

time, unbelievers, had some kind of capacity because they did

believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

So there was some anointing authority in their lives and I

guess they had experiences at times where they were used and

God worked through them to deliver people from demonic

possession or oppression. But their minds are thinking and

they're not even believers yet. Well, like Paul, praise in Jesus

name and there's, there's miracles that occur.

So let's try this. Let's see if it works for us.

Well, well, first of all, it's, it's humorous here.

What's going to happen because these, these sons of the, the

Jewish chief priests thought that maybe they could make some

new kind of ministry going on here.

And and it says in verse 15, the evil spirit answered and said,

Jesus, I know, and Paul, I know, but who are you?

Boy, that's scary, huh? They're in the house with this

demonic person, the spirit. They think they're going to have

an overcoming experience here and these demon demons going to

be cast out. And this is what happens in

verse 16. Then the man in whom the evil

spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them and prevailed

against them so that they fled out of that house naked and

wounded. Wouldn't that be something?

One guy, the strength of this person possessed by the devil,

was able to whoop 7 grown healthy young men and not any

beat them up but tear their clothes off and and have them

running out humiliated by what it was they tried to do.

The devil's always trying to replicate or duplicate the

miraculous. We remember Moses with the rod

and throw it down. It turns into a snake.

Well, God allowed that to happen when the magicians were able to

replicate certain degrees of those miracles, right?

And so just because there's a miracle that occurs doesn't mean

it's the Lord. The devil comes with lying signs

and wonders, a matter of fact, in the last days when the

Antichrist comes on the scene and the false prophet, they'll

be all kind of miraculous. That will be occurring like

we've never, ever experienced. And there'll be a lot of people

thinking that he's the Christ and he'll be the Antichrist.

And so this became known in verse 17 both to all the Jews

and the Greeks dwelling in Ephesus and fear fell on all

them. So we're in Greensburg here.

It's in the newspaper. Channel 4 News is down there

interviewing. We are all aware that something

spectacular happened and scary. And so we know there's problems

in Greensburg. There's demonic activity,

there's demonic activity everywhere.

There's satanic powers. There's a oh called there's

astrology, there's false religions, there's all these

kind of things that are happening in the day and age

that we live. And these are the things that

bind people into immoral lifestyles.

Someone doesn't this one day wake up and say, well, I think

I'm going to I'm a guy. So I think I want to have some

sex with a guy. I mean, that's, that is demonic.

It's not real. It's not, I don't care what any

psychologists or what any kind of secular humanists or what

they're trying to tell us in government now and all these

things, these things are not normal.

Matter of fact, Roman Empire fell because of the this

promiscuity and this increase atmosphere of gay and lesbian

lifestyle and abortion that eventually that nation was

destroyed. And we are this close right now

with testing God with what it is we're doing as a culture and

people saying good is evil and evil is good.

And we as Christians need This is why like we need to get out

of the building, have conversations.

We don't need to condemn people. We don't hate people.

We need to love them enough to tell them, hey, what you're

doing is sin and your sin will cause you to eventually be in

hell. That's the bottom line.

Now, I hope I'm not hurting anybody's feelings here today.

But if you're living in a lifestyle that is not God's will

and, and in his word, you're going to suffer consequences.

You already are. The amount of people who are

taking their lives that have tried this transgenderism and

all this crazy stuff out there, sex changes and all this, it is

unbelievable. You got to do the research, the

statistics, and you know, and it isn't unloving.

It's loving to tell people the truth.

It's unloving to just say, well, it's OK, That's whatever you

want to do, go ahead and do it. And so Paul wasn't that kind of

guy. And nor are we these kind of

people that just ignore these issues of sin today, even in our

own time and our own culture. And So what happened was they're

they're afraid now that the beginning of wisdom is the fear

of the Lord and depart from evil.

That tells us in Proverbs you're really catching on when you

begin to fear the consequences of your sin.

Don't play around with it anymore.

You don't justify, you don't say, well, that's OK and

everybody's doing it. No big deal.

It's a big deal. It's a big, big deal.

And So what happened was these people are are are starting to

get frightened. And whenever you have an

encounter with God to such a degree over your sin, and you

know you have one or two choices to make, you either continue in

your sin and you perish, or you get right with God and you

repent and you leave your sin. And this began to cause such a a

move of God's spirit. And the city of Ephesus, it says

that fear fell on them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was

magnified. That's what we need to have

happen today. At the name of Jesus, every knee

will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord to the glory of God the Father.

There is no other name given among men under heaven by which

we can be saved or must be saved.

Jesus is the truth. He's the way, the truth the

life. No man comes to the Father but

through him. So Jesus was magnified.

He said if he be lifted up, he will draw all men to himself.

Pray for Pastor Lewis and myself that when we preach the Word,

we're preaching the Word. With the name Jesus involved in

the word, because the Bible without Jesus is just a bunch of

words, but the Bible with Jesus can turn the world upside down.

And this is what was happening here.

Now we'll read. Many are intimidated now they're

fearful. And many who had believed came

confessing and telling their deeds.

Can you imagine Calvary today? Some of you guys are getting

saved. Hey, I'm not leaving today until

I tell you what God's delivered me from before I came here

today, I was sleeping around with every, every woman I could

find or whatever. I was chasing some guy down the

street or some woman says, well, I'm sleeping with all the

different girls out there in the community, you know, and the

Lord convicted me and I couldn't live that way anymore and I

repented. And I want to tell you guys what

Jesus did for me, right? If you ever have a testimony,

let me know. Because the more we hear what

the Lord's done, the more he's glorified and the more people

hear they say, well, maybe he could do that for me.

People are trapped in sin. People don't just decide one day

that they want to be immoral. They start becoming immoral and

then they're trapped. They don't know how to stop

being immoral. And they're they're in bondage

and they're under the influence of the devil and says.

And so these people, they're 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. Now, I've been a student of all

kind of religions my whole life, and I was into Buddhism for a

while and I was into, you know, reading whatever was esoteric or

ocaldic, and I didn't even know what I was doing at the time.

It just fascinated me. What makes the world go round

and why is this happened? Why is that?

And how far is the sky going? And what's truth?

You know, until I came to know Christ, I had no idea what truth

was. So I have a bunch of books and

there are a lot of them are in my garage now in a box.

This, I don't know. What am I going to do with that?

Maybe we should have a bonfire this summer somewhere.

I'll bring my old books and you bring yours too, you know.

But anyway, this is what was happening here, right?

They were convicted about the things they were reading, the

things they were studying, and they brought their books

together and they burned them as sight of all.

So all the people in Ephesus, there's a big deal going on

here. People were magnifying the Lord.

People are confessing their sins.

They're bringing all their garbage and they're porn and

whatever it might be and they're going to burn it.

And it says they counted up the value of them and a total of

50,000 pieces of silver in today's that could be between

1:00 and $5,000,000. I read back and that day that

silver was worth about $10,000, which is a lot of money.

It was enough for 150 people to make their livelihood for a

whole year. That's how much was destroyed in

this in this fire. And as a result of that, what

happened, it says the word of the Lord grew mightily and

prevailed. So we have a calm church here

today. Usually I'm a calm pastor

because a lot of you fall asleep when I teach.

Hey, so you have a very nice voice.

You know what a day my voice is a little bit more, you know,

whatever, you know, I don't know, but you know, you're not

falling asleep today as much as you normally do.

It's not that the message is any better, but the the text is

better because we're reading about the Lord being magnified.

And, and so as a result of the word, the message in the gospel

is growing mightily. It it's prevailing in the world,

it's prevailing in the community.

Thanks for joining us on today's edition of Living Waters of

Grace, a ministry of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.

Today, Pastor Clark is teaching about the book of Acts.

And as we learn more about Acts, it becomes clear that the early

church didn't miss a single opportunity to share the gospel.

In nearly every chapter, you see apostles like Peter and Paul

stepping into conversations, crowds, and crises with

boldness, ready to proclaim the name of Jesus.

Their example challenges us to consider how we might step into

gospel moments in our own lives. What doors might God open this

week for you to speak truth, offer hope, or live out your

faith in a way that points others to Him?

The story of Acts reminds us we are part of the same mission.

Today, let's live with eyes open and hearts ready to respond.

We hope you are challenged by today's message.

If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we'd love to see you in

person this Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St., Unit

6B. For more information, visit

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