Stranger Things | Acts 19:1-20 | October 4, 2026

So good to be together again with you, and uh we're going to study through books of the Bible as we always do here at the village chapel.

We have some extra copies.

If uh somebody doesn't mind jumping up here and grabbing some and distributing those.

Anyone need a copy to follow along?

We'll take 20 verses in Acts chapter 19 this morning.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

Just raise your hand up if you would like a copy to follow along.

Follow along.

Thanks especially to the folks in the Philippines at Makulad Negros Occidental.

I'm not sure if I pronounce it right.

Forgive me if I did not, but we're so grateful that uh they were able to join us online this past week.

Folks, also in Omaha, Nebraska, South Elgin, Illinois, Grand Rapids, uh, Michigan.

So uh grateful again for our online ministry, and we hope that you'll take your every opportunity to share that ministry with your friends and family around the world and invite them to join us either in Bible study or uh for worship on Sundays as well.

So for today, what do speaking in tongues, healing handkerchiefs, botched exorcisms, and book burnings have in common?

They're all a little bit strange, no matter what your church uh background may be, but they're all right here in Acts chapter 19, verses 1 through 20.

Acts 19:1–20

Um, so open your Bible, buckle up, and let's see what we can find here.

I'm not a hundred percent certain why these passages always fall to me.

Uh there may be some conspiracy going on while I'm out of town.

The other guys on the preaching team maybe let's give that one to Jim.

I don't know, but I'm really glad for this.

I've I've marinated in this text all week long.

And uh so we're gonna call this Stranger Things uh for for what probably will be uh obvious reasons as we go along.

Let me pray for us before we start to read.

Father, because you've invited, we have gathered.

Because you've spoken, we're eager to hear.

And because you hear, we have brought you our prayers this morning.

Because you provide, we will now feast.

And Jesus, because you died, we receive your life.

Because you rose again, we have hope.

Because you save, we must sing.

Holy Spirit, because you lead and empower, give us strength to rise and follow.

Give us, we pray, a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love for us in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.

So up on the screen I'll put the map.

Um, it's estimated that Paul's first missionary journey was about 1,400 miles long, the second one about 3,200 miles long, and the third one about 3,500 miles long.

That's a total of 8,100 miles, some by sea, but most by land, over a period of about 10 years' time.

You can probably guess that that much travel would wear out a pair of sandals.

Um, indeed.

Not to mention all the religious resistance, the physical and psychological abuse that the Apostle Paul and his friends had to endure.

What kept Paul going?

How was he so tenacious and so able to hang in there in spite of all those difficulties, especially the opposition?

Um, how could he and his travel traveling companions have maintained a passion for the gospel of Christ and a love for the people, not only the ones who came to faith, but a love for the people that even opposed them.

And I think it's because their hope and joy were not tethered in the size of the crowds that heard them preach.

They weren't their hope and their joy were it wasn't tethered in the reactions or the outcomes even.

Uh they didn't look outwardly or necessarily inwardly, they looked upwardly to see what kind of impact would uh their gospel would have and how God might want to motivate them.

They had a resolute Christ confidence.

It wasn't self-confidence, it was Christ confidence.

Jesus himself, as we just sang, was their hope in life and in death.

So chapter 19, verses 1 through 20.

Um, as you will recall from last week, um, I believe Pastor Tommy led us through uh to the beginning of this third missionary journey.

I think it was Tommy, right?

Yeah.

And um, and we've met Priscilla and Aquila.

Uh we've passed into Ephesus and then moved on, just a short visit.

But now he's going to come back to Ephesus uh in this ongoing part of his third missionary journey.

It happened while Apollos was in Corinth, and you'll remember Apollos had been in Ephesus, and Priscilla and Aquila had helped to explain to him in better detail to more complete his knowledge and understanding of the gospel of Jesus.

And then he went over, he wanted to go to Achaia, that southern middle uh portion of Greece.

He wanted to go over there and sort of water where Paul had planted, which was interesting.

And so he has gone over into Corinth.

Paul then passes through the upper country and came to Ephesus, and he found some disciples.

He said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

And they said to him, No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.

So John's baptism is what they've been baptized into.

It was a baptism of water for repentance from sins.

But John the Baptist also preached and pointed to Jesus and identified Jesus as the coming Messiah, the long-promised Messiah.

Apollos, who had been in Alexandria, Egypt, may have indeed heard some of what John was preaching.

He's the one that came up to Ephesus and probably the one that told them about John's baptism.

And so Paul asks these believers, at least in the baptism of John, he says, into what then were you baptized, verse 3?

And they said, into John's baptism.

Paul then said, John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in him who was coming after him, that is Jesus.

Well, when they heard this, and that phrase right there, it kind of sounds a bit like that must be new information to them, connecting the dots between repentance from sin and water baptism as John's disciples, and becoming disciples of Jesus and being baptized into the gospel of grace with Jesus.

When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And when Paul had laid hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.

Whenever we read of that kind of thing before Acts chapter 2, of course.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Where the Spirit comes and falls on the people, and they begin speaking in languages they had not studied.

And in verse 11 of chapter 2, we're told they were speaking about the mighty deeds of God.

And so it was earthly languages, was not just ecstatic speech in chapter 2.

Is it that here?

I don't know.

It might be that, but Paul's going to write 1 Corinthians right here in Ephesus.

And in 1 Corinthians, he's going to talk about speaking in tongues as a gift of the Spirit.

And is that perhaps what's going on here?

Prophesying is certainly a gift of the Spirit.

He'll write about when he writes back to the Corinthian church from Ephesus.

We don't know.

We aren't told everything about each and every little incident that happens here in these 20 verses, but I sure love the fact that God's on the move.

And I sure love the fact that God is doing things, taking the initiative to do things.

There were in all about 12 men, and then Paul enters the synagogue, verse 8 tells us, and continued speaking out boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.

Not persuading them about wearing a tie to church, not persuading them about any of the disciplines, but persuading them about the kingdom of God.

Very clearly here, right?

This is that kingdom where God reigns.

We sang it again a minute ago.

He's our savior, he's our king.

All of those images apply to Jesus, the Son of God.

And as he's connected the dots between repentance and faith, as John's baptism in water, now he's connected the dots all the way through to Jesus and talking about how Jesus is the Redeemer, Jesus is the Savior, and they're invited to become members of the kingdom of God.

Well, when some of them were becoming hardened and disobedient, not all of them, notice that.

Some of them in the synagogue now is the setting, not just the disciples that Paul ran into outside of the synagogue, but the disciples that he um the folks that he met rather, the Jews that he met in this synagogue, some of them became hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the way.

Here is a term that we've met before in Acts.

It's used five or six times, depending on which English translation you have, but the definite article there, and the word way describes the Christian faith actually more times in the book of Acts than the word Christian is used.

The word Christian is just used three times, but the way is actually five or six times.

And the idea is to they want to convey to us, the New Testament does, that this isn't just a set of academic beliefs, but this is something we believe and we walk out, we live in.

We walk daily our daily lives in the power of the Spirit.

And so these people have rejected, they become hardened and disobedient, becoming evil, uh speaking evil of the way before the people.

He withdrew from them and took away the disciples, the ones that trusted in Jesus, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.

So he moves to a different building.

He's no longer going to be in the synagogue, he's going to move to a school.

This took place for two years, so that all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

That's a pretty big statement there, without any social media, without any online presence.

All who lived in Asia somehow or another heard the gospel.

How was it so impactful?

What was it that he talked about that made people just spread the good gossip of the gospel around all of Asia?

Well, God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went out.

So there's that healing handkerchief thing.

What's that about?

And I know this probably conjures up in some of your minds the images of the televangelists.

And I used to, many years ago, I used to be involved in uh in Christian radios, a couple different stations I worked at.

The one in Philadelphia that I worked at, um, I called it, uh, it had a lot of those kind of screaming preachers that were doing a lot to get money from people and all that sort of thing.

So I called it a dollar a holler uh radio station.

And and there was, I'm not, and I'm not exaggerating this, this actually happened.

There was one of those preachers who would get on the his radio program and he would say to people, if you're sick, if you need have some kind of need, if you need financial help or whatever, you put a hundred dollar bill in your sock and you mail it into our ministry at P.O.

Box, fill in the blank, and I will put your sock on and I will stand on my Bible and pray over you.

And then I will mail your sock back to you, parentheses without the hundred dollars in it, close parentheses, and you put that sock on, and so it's it's kind of this magic meets commerce, meets you know, uh profiteering.

The difference here though is that there's no money involved.

There's you know, they're taking handkerchiefs that belong and aprons and old rags that may have been laying around as Paul's making tents during the week, and they're taking them to their sick friends and family members, and there's no money exchange, but God's doing something, and it's strange, really strange.

Um, and so these folks are getting healed, and spirits are going out of them, verse 13, but also some of the Jewish exorcists, and there were back in those days, there were people that sort of put on their own little badge.

I am an exorcist, or they had t-shirts that just say, Satan, get out, you know, or whatever.

And they went around, again, some of them profiteering off of the name of Jesus, and this is one of those kind of cases, as best I can tell.

They went from place to place attempting to attempting to name over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, I adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preaches.

And the seven sons of one skeva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this.

And the evil spirit answered and said to them, I recognize Jesus.

I've heard of Paul, but who are you?

I like, I think that's pretty funny.

But even if you read through the Gospels, you keep reading over and over again that some of the demons have a greater, more advanced understanding of who Jesus is than some of the religious folk on the ground during Jesus' time.

They're all working at odds with Jesus.

The demons are trembling in the presence of Jesus, right?

They reckon so I recognize Jesus, the demon says, and I know about Paul, but who are you to the sons of Skeva?

Well, the man in whom was the evil spirit leapt on them, subdued all of them, overpowered them, and they fled out of the house naked and wounded.

Just running away like that, right?

And this became known to all.

How do you like that to be your resume?

Yeah.

He was one of those guys, yeah.

Uh, who lived in Ephesus.

This became known to all, both Jews and Greeks who lived in Ephesus, and fear fell upon them all.

And the name of the Lord Jesus was being magnified.

I love Luke's summary statements.

That's one of them.

We're going to read another one in verse 20 here.

The name of the Lord Jesus, that's the result, the outcome.

Not the intended outcome of the demons, not the intended outcome of those who were uh self-righteous religious people that were resisting Paul.

Um, but the outcome was God's desired outcome.

The Lord Jesus was being magnified.

Many also of those who had believed kept coming, confessing, disclosing their practices.

And many of those who practice magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone, and they counted up the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

That's no small amount of money.

So here's this closing uh verse for us today, and the summary statement by Luke.

So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing.

Oh, I love those kinds of summary statements.

Well, um, as you probably have seen up on the map there, let me put this, get our little sing along with Mitch thing here for the 50s and older.

Uh, you'll understand.

He started overland from Antioch, and he goes uh in the sort of upper sort of category of cities here, but lands here at Ephesus, and that's where we're at today.

Uh, we'll pick up the rest of this.

It looks like he goes up and back and back and forth a little bit, and indeed he does, like I said, some uh 3,400 miles, whatever it is, on this third missionary journey, quite a bit.

But overland and possibly passing through Tarsus, his own hometown, if you will, and up through this region in here to get to Ephesus.

Now, Ephesus, you should know, was an ancient Greek city on the west coast of Asia, Asia Minor, as it was called back then, Turkey is what we call it today, with a population of perhaps 250,000.

For many years, Ephesus was the second largest city in the Roman Empire.

Commercial power center, a political power center, a religious power center.

Ephesus overflowed with culture and business.

But this was a city whose pride was her magnificent temple in honor of the goddess Artemis.

And I'll show you what's left of that temple, a little bit uh right there in the photo that you can see up there.

It was destroyed by a flood, a second temple was destroyed by arson, the third and final temple, the one known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was built in 323 BC and lasted until 286 AD, when it was destroyed by the invading Goths.

So again, reminding us that Ephesus is a real place.

Our Bible speaks about real places, real people, real things, real events.

And uh uh archaeology continues to confirm Ephesus.

Here's the amphitheater.

You could see somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000, 20,000 people.

I mean, the ancient version of Red Rocks, if you will, okay?

And here we have the library of Celsus, the facade or the front of it.

And uh some say that to the left there uh are some steps that lead up to what might have been the school of uh Tyrannus that we just read about.

So here it is, Ephesus, and this is where indeed the Apostle Paul is ministering.

I want to talk for a little bit about, as he did, the kingdom of God and how we see it here, that it includes things like strange things.

We should expect strange things from a supernatural religion, don't you think?

Uh verses 1 through 20.

Again, speaking in tongues, healing handkerchiefs, botched exorcisms, and a book-burning bonfire.

Um they appear, so you know, some of that's not bad.

That first couple of things, okay, there's probably some stuff in there that we go, okay, that's right.

But it's still strange.

And then the last couple of things, we're going, nah, something ain't right there at all.

They're strange.

They are always occurring, though, wherever God's on the move.

Um, and sometimes they look like these kinds of sensational type things, but other times it's the quiet strangeness of the cold heart of a married couple all of a sudden being warmed again toward one another.

Strange things happen in the supernatural kingdom of God.

Um, just as it was with Paul and his companions, so with us, um do we think that God isn't active?

Do we think that strange things can't happen now in our own day and time?

Do we constantly try to find the scientific or philosophical reason why this thing could be explained, as opposed to just go, that's a God thing?

Uh, you know, I mean, that's exactly where we're at.

Here we read some miraculous occurrences, and they're really, really powerful prophetic utterances, uh, perhaps a uh a prayer language, or perhaps some kind of speaking in tongues that is for for the benefit of someone from another, you know, a city like Ephesus would attract people from all over the Roman Empire.

Perhaps somebody's there that speaks Phrygian, somebody's there that speaks uh one of the languages from the north coast of Africa, and they need someone to speak the gospel in their uh tongue, if you will.

Is this are these things a mandate for us, these four things?

No, not at all.

Remember, the book of Acts is much more descriptive than it is prescriptive.

There are other kinds of literature in the Bible that are more prescriptive, but we must read history as history.

And God preserves this book of Acts written by a Gentile named Luke.

Um For us, so that we can know about what happened, how things got started, how you might try to explain the rapid, uh, wildfire-like spread of the gospel around the Roman Empire without anybody on the gospel side of things drawing a sword and trying to make people repent and believe.

None of that's happening.

So I say this is descriptive, but we can have uh an opportunity to learn from it, of course.

The miracles in the New Testament always arouse curiosity about Jesus.

They always display the power of Jesus, sometimes at work through his followers, as is the case in Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

They reveal indeed the compassion of Jesus.

How compassionate was he here?

He was compassionate enough to allow people who thought a hanky that had touched the apostle could somehow or another be a mechanism for healing.

And Jesus was kind enough, compassionate enough to allow that to happen.

Does he do that all the time?

No.

And is the mandate or the sort of uh is there is there some formula for us to, oh, let's let's all make sure we have the right hanky or the right kind of oil to dab people or whatever.

No, no, no, no.

These aren't mandates, these are simply descriptions about what God did in space-time history.

And I'm so glad he did it.

We continue to see him doing things in our own day and time, but he doesn't do things just like the Jesus in the Gospels hardly ever healed somebody with the same method.

Sometimes he put mud on people's eyes, sometimes he just spoke, and somebody miles away was healed.

So his methods change.

And his methods have changed even in our own day and time, but they always reveal his compassion.

They affirm his identity as the Son of God and they inspire uh the worship of Jesus.

Stott summarizes it this way: authentic Christianity.

The Christianity of Christ and his apostles is supernatural Christianity.

It is not a tame and harmless ethic consisting of a few moral platitudes spiced with a dash of religion.

It is rather a resurrection religion.

Somebody shout amen.

Yeah, a resurrection religion, a life lived by the power of God.

And so we see that life within the kingdom of God includes strange things, but it also includes stranger things.

If I can press the point a little.

We've seen God's word prevailing in a city now, in this text, that was built on paganism and the magic arts.

That's amazing.

This tent maker shows up lumpy-headed because people have been throwing rocks at him.

He's diminutive, he's a small man.

This small Jewish man shows up and he starts talking about this man Jesus who got up from the dead.

And then people like Paul and Apollos and Priscilla and Aquila are all moved around by God in some rather amazing ways.

Look on the screen here at this, the providential chain that we read about in these two chapters, 18 and 19.

Emperor Claudius, reigned 41 to 54, expelled the Jews from Rome beginning in when?

49 AD.

Well, guess what?

That means Priscilla and Aquila, who were Jews, have to leave Rome.

They end up in Corinth.

Who do they meet there?

Because they're tent makers.

They meet Paul because he's a tent maker, and they're all hanging around the same tent-making place.

That's accident or design.

Yeah.

Paul took Aquila and Priscilla with him to Ephesus and left them there.

That's interesting.

Apollos arrives in Ephesus.

Apollos and he's trained in Ephesus, by the way, by Aquila and Priscilla.

And then he goes off to Corinth.

He wants to water where Paul has sort of planted seeds.

Paul then returns to Ephesus with a ministry of proclamation, demonstration, multiplication, and transformation.

Every time there's revival, those four things, at least, and probably some other things happen.

I might put up there on the screen imitation.

People do fake versions of the real thing, just like we read about here in Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

But proclamation of the word of God, demonstration of the power of God, multiplication in the kingdom of God, and transformation of the people of God.

And this happens in Ephesus, and I pray it happens in Nashville as well.

And then Paul writes 1 Corinthians from Ephesus, right there in this particular context.

I love Elizabeth Elliot.

She so uh was so brilliant and so quotable.

She says, God is God.

If he's God, he's worthy of my worship and my service.

I will find rest nowhere but in his will.

And that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he's up to.

Some of you know this more than the rest of us.

You've experienced it.

You look back and you go, that outcome I could never have seen.

That trial I could never have imagined.

A lot of us know that.

It's not only that the kingdom of God includes strange things and stranger things, but it also includes the strangest thing of all.

Yeah.

And a city, again, marinating in magic.

The word, verse 20, the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing.

You got that?

There's a city that we would have called Sin City.

That would have been a great sort of way to refer to Ephesus, just like we think of cities that have a whole lot of that sort of debaucherous activity going on.

And yet the word of the Lord was being proclaimed and it was growing mightily.

I love uh Griffith John, um, a 19th-century Welsh Christian missionary translator of the Bible into Chinese.

He wrote this: the secret of the success of the apostles lay not so much in what they did and said as in the presence of Christ in them and with them.

Yeah.

They saw with the eyes of Christ, they felt with his heart, they worked with his energies.

They were nothing.

Christ was everything.

Christ was living, breathing, and triumphing in their personal lives, their entire nature being replete with his life, their spirits bathed in his light, their souls kindled with the fires of his love.

They moved in the midst of men as embodiments of supernatural power.

I don't know about you, but I want some of that in my life.

That quote will be on the PDF that you can download if you would like to just marinate in that a little bit more.

There are no mere coincidences in the supernatural kingdom of God.

Therefore, we must remain alert and awake to all divine disruptions and redirections.

Along with Leslie Nibigan, the missiologist, I would say is it's a great question to ask.

Is our life and work marked by that supernatural quality for which there is no name except holiness?

No explanation except the presence of the Holy Spirit Himself?

Are we pressing forward with that goal before us to be holy as he is holy?

I was reminded also, but I don't have it on the screen, but I was reminded of the A.W.

Tozer quote about the book of Acts.

That if the Holy Spirit had withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95% of what they were doing would have stopped.

And everybody would have known the difference.

If the Holy Spirit were withdrawn, Tozer says, from the church today, 95% of what we do would just keep right on going.

And no one would know the difference.

That from uh, and he's quoted by Alan Redpath in an article or a magazine called Christian Life some number of years ago.

But it's very sobering to think of that, isn't it?

This is a supernatural kingdom that we are in as we have surrendered to Jesus, put our lives in his hands, allowed his love to begin flowing through us, to others, to the watching world, as well as completely transforming our own view of reality itself and truth, and even of our own self-image.

Because I no longer belong to me, I belong to him.

And if you're a believer, if you're a follower of Jesus, that's the same for you as well.

You don't have to discover an identity, it's a gift given to you by God and described and spelled out for you in the scriptures throughout.

Some questions I would ask, just as a pastor here, uh, one of the four pastors here at the village chapel, are we ready, willing, and available to serve in God's supernatural kingdom whenever and wherever he may lead us?

Now, that was a very scary question that was thrown at me when I was a teenager, and I always used to go, anywhere but and then there were probably a list of about 10 different things.

Raise your hand if you thought that as well.

Okay, a few of you are being honest, the rest of you still need to grow in holiness there and come along.

Come along, join us there.

But yeah, I anywhere but there, or perhaps we would say it this way.

I want to share the gospel, that's true, but with anyone but him, or with anyone but her.

They they in some way offended me.

I don't want to share the gospel with them anymore.

I don't want to see them grow and and repent and turn to the Lord.

And that's the way we get, we become like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son.

We don't want God's grace to be lavished on someone else.

For some reason, they've made us mad or offended us or hurt us in some way.

And I think that's really a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

To take what the disposition of my heart that was set against somebody, that saw that person as a repugnant other, that saw that person as having offended me or in some way, and to literally redirect my affections.

Because when I'm hating someone else, what's happening is my affections are actually turned in on me.

Um Martin Luther said sin is like is is like when we are turned in on ourselves and we're putting ourselves at the center all the time.

And if we see others with kind and gracious eyes, the same way the Lord has looked at me, the same way the Lord has looked at you, and know that He came for sinners, and you're one and I'm one, and hallelujah! His grace is rich, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, and it sets us free from the poison of looking at others askance, of having some kind of hatred toward them.

That's why the love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Romans 5 tells us.

Another question I think we could ask is how can we reshape the rhythms and disciplines of our lives to more fully embrace God's amazing grace and serve in God's supernatural kingdom.

Now, more fully embrace God's amazing grace.

A lot of us, we've heard about grace for a long time.

If you've been in the church, certainly if you've been in this church for any length of time, you hear about grace a lot.

But it's one thing to think of it as a concept.

It's another thing to say, Lord, flood me with your grace to overflowing.

Flood me to the point where I no longer wallow around in my own sin, flirting with temptation, crippled by anger and acrimony and fear.

Lord, I'm set free because your amazing grace has flowed into my heart, reminding me over and over and over and over again, because I do need to be reminded over and over and over and over again, that grace isn't something I earn, it's not something I purchased, it's not something that I deserve.

Grace is for the guilty and undeserving, and that's all of us, brothers and sisters.

And that's what makes grace amazing.

Yeah, it's amazing.

And that's why when we live in the light of his grace and walk in the light of his grace, it starts to change our relationship with others.

Even the people in our neighborhood that annoy us, even the people in our family that annoy us, even the people that voted the other way.

We can actually love them all because we've been loved.

We've been seized by the great affection of the Lord.

The passage ends with the book burning, and I have to say something about that.

I love books.

Uh I love paper books.

Do you how many of you like paper books?

And how many of you have Kindles and read on?

It's no shame.

It's all good.

I read all my spy novels on the on the digital devices, and then books that I want to mark up and make notes and highlight and all that sort of thing.

I love to have a good paper book.

I'm like that way.

This book burning, what's that all about?

And are we supposed to do that too?

Because some modern day, you know, some recent decade Christians have thought, let's have a book burning and bring your albums too, all those Beatle albums, all those other albums.

We're gonna throw them all in the bonfire and just all of a sudden instantly become holy.

And you know, it just never happened, did it?

I've gone to all the youth retreats when I was a kid, and I did, you know, um, I sang just as I am, and I came forward and I took that sort of, you know, thing, whatever it was they gave us to throw into the bonfire, representing our sin, and I threw it into the bonfire.

Yes, no more! And then the next day, right back to it.

Because when I went home from the retreat, all my old friends expected the old me.

And so the book burning here, I want us to say this.

This is, they're burning the books of magic arts.

They're burning the stuff that led them away from Christ.

The stuff that, like an idol, drew them in, thinking they could have power in the city of Ephesus with all of its political power, its social power, its religious power.

And those books, those magic art books arts books, go into the fire.

And some of us may need, perhaps not a literal bonfire, but we may need to set aside some of the people, places, and props that do that same kind of thing to us, that pull us away from the Lord.

I'm not talking about the people that you have made a commitment to, but there are a whole lot of your your friends, your family members, you know, that you may just need to have some boundaries if they take you away from Jesus in some way.

And the same with props.

And under props, I put computers and iPhones, or the other kind too.

I think there's another kind of phone out there for people, for props and for places.

How about the places that you go to that every time you go there, and it might be a business establishment, or it might be you visit a certain vacation area or something, and it draws you away from Christ, not to Christ.

And see, they're not listed here, and I'm not gonna tell you what they are for you.

I just know for me, the Lord has spoken and convicted me of some things with people's places and props that I need to put some boundaries up in my life if I'm going to thrive spiritually and continue to grow.

And that verse 20 might be true in me as well, that the word of the Lord would grow mightily and prevail.

I want that to happen here at the village chapel.

I want that to happen in Nashville as well.

Repentance is not just a turning away from those books, though, at that, at that bonfire there.

Repentance is also a turning to Christ.

Let us not forget that.

It's not just about burning your computer, it's not just about burning your map or your GPS that takes you to that place.

And it's not just about cutting off relationships completely, but it might be about managing them in a way that is wise and godly.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for this text.

It's practical, it's helpful.

Um, it's strange.

Lord, uh uh, what what would we expect from you, infinite God, almighty, all-knowing?

You work in ways that fill us with wonder, with questions, with awe, with astonishment, and may all of that drive us to Jesus.

In his name we pray.

Amen and amen.