The Living One - Week 27: Enemy Territory

Today’s teaching is on enemy territory and the reality of spiritual warfare. In a fallen world the battle is not between people - it is between the Living God and the powers of darkness, It is between the Body of Christ and those under the spell of the devil.

Ephesus was the center of worship of Artemis and also a hotbed of the occult, magic, eastern religions, drugs, alcohol and many of the same things we encounter in our world today. Ephesus is where Paul carried out some of his most important mission work and it is where God shows us some important lifetime truths through how He worked in Ephesus nearly 2000 years ago.

Where we left off last week was with Paul spending two years teaching daily in the Hall of Tyrannus. Verse 10 of Acts chapter 19 tells us that all Jews and Greeks in the area heard the word of the Lord. Paul and others were training up believers to share their faith and so the Gospel message was shared all over Asia.  

During Paul’s time in Ephesus he experienced more push back than ever before. God was doing extraordinary miracles through Paul and many were healed physically but Paul was also casting out demons and healing people from spiritual illness.

DIVINE POWER
        We need to be connected to the Living God. Our faith is not to be a little bit of head knowledge, a song and a prayer. Our faith is to be life changing, it is to be the heart of who we are.
        Because God was doing amazing miracles through Paul, news traveled that Paul was not only healing physically but also doing spiritual battle and that He was healing in the name of Jesus.
        Ephesus was a town filled with evil but the DIVINE POWER of God was so obviously being displayed in the miraculous healings done in Jesus’ name, that it caused the name of Jesus to be held in high honor and it caused a reaction of believers to openly confess what they had done as part of the evil in Ephesus.

TAKE GOD SERIOUSLY
        A massive move of God caused people to take Him very seriously.
        Our faith molds and transforms us because we are delivered from bondage to sin and death. God offers deliverance from the power of the demonic and the things that can so easily destroy our lives.

CLEANING HOUSE
        People who had practiced sorcery burned their scrolls publicly and the word of the Lord continued to spread and grow in power.
        as believers changed and non-believers become believers people grew and matured in their faith and suddenly began to realize they needed to do a house cleaning in their lives.
        God’s Holy Spirit is gracious and reveals things to us as we grow and mature in faith. We are not fully mature the moment we believe - It is a life-long process.
        God’s desire is that we clean house in our lives, in our homes, in anything that gets in the way of our love and worship of God, anything that controls us in ways that are dangerous and spiritually defiling.
        With all the awakening to the reality of the Gospel Power of Jesus and the importance of a God-pleasing life of faith, those who didn’t have that faith were began to try to stop all that was happening in Jesus’ name.

WORLD VIEWS COLLIDE
        A worker who made silver shrines to Artemus was very concerned about his economic future in light of the amazing growth of Christianity. And so he spoke out publicly, drawing a crowd and the two sides began to collide.

World views are colliding in our world today. The world view of our culture is:
        All that matters is me
        All that matters is what I want
        All that matters is that you don’t stand in my way and say anything to upset me.
The world view of the Bible is:
        All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
        God sent His one and only Son 
        The Living God took on flesh and brought life and forgiveness through His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection from the grave.
        In Jesus there is life, forgiveness and power. The power to live a new life.

And so their two world views clashed then and they are still clashing today.

We are called not to fight with human weapons, but to recognize the reality of spiritual war and to use the weapons of the Holy Spirit:
    Prayer
    Trust in God
    God’s Word
    The power of our testimonies

Today’s scripture reading ends with the whole city in an uproar - both sides shouting and many joining in the near riot.

CROWD FOLLOWERS
        It can be easy to just go along with the crowd
        Yet God warns us not to follow the crowd. Exodus 23:2 says, “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong.”
        Wise words for us today!

Scripture: Acts 19:11-41, Ephesians 6:12 and Exodus 23:2

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