All That Power!
In Acts 19, we see God doing miraculous things through Paul.
And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.
Acts 19:11-12
God’s power is so amazing that even the small fraction of it that he was working through Paul could bless cloth so that sicknesses and possessions were cured by contact with them! A person could almost be forgiven for wondering how they could tap into that power. In fact, some of those living at that time set out to try finding a way to do just that.
Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.”
Acts 19:13
Their job was to remove evil spirits, and if Jesus was giving Paul so much power in that area that even things that incidentally touched him could do it how hard could it be to tap into that themselves?!
Lord, Not Battery
However, this did not go so well for them.
But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
Acts 19:15
Why didn’t it work to invoke the name of Jesus over the spirit? Because when we read “in the name of” in scripture, it’s not a blank check signature that gives us the power to do what we want. When a person does something “in the name of” an authority what is meant is that he is operating as a servant of that authority and therefore to oppose him is to oppose the one who sent him.
These men were trying to use Jesus as a source of their power when what all men ought to be doing is submitting themselves to his will. They were harmed and humiliated trying to be in control. In seeking to use Jesus against the spirits, the spirit was used by God to teach these men humility. Jesus isn’t a power to invoke, but a Lord to serve.
This is what differentiated Paul from the sons of Sceva. He wasn’t expelling evil spirits and healing others. God was healing them through him. He was the agent of God’s will. However, these exorcists wanted the find a way to expel spirits through Jesus. They wanted it to be their own will working through his power to do what they wanted accomplished.
Wasn’t It Good?
But they wanted to remove evil spirits! Isn’t that God’s will? Apparently not, because they were not successful! A lot of times, it can be easy to assume we know God’s will because we assume God always wants what we want. People certainly don’t want to be possessed by evil spirits, so therefore God must want to remove those spirits.
The reality is, if God wanted evil spirits (or disease, poverty, etc…) to never exist, they would not. Instead, his ways our higher than our ways, and when we set about to “do the will of God” without first submitting ourselves to him we’re really just assuming we know enough to get by on our own.
Ultimately, we have been promised that creation will be completely free of suffering and the sin that causes it. There will be no evil when God makes all things new. However, until that time, we cannot know when his will is pain or healing, oppression or freedom in a given situation even as we can know that he expects us to give of ourselves for the good and resist evil.
Humble Ourselves
Instead of trying to use God to achieve what we believe is best (even what we believe is best according to our understanding of him) we should instead seek to be used by God to achieve what he believes is best.
That will often mean giving of our time, strength, and money to do good when we may never see the outcomes we hoped for for doing so. We may pour ourselves into mentoring others only to see them turn away from the faith. We may help a person financially only to see him squander the opportunity on irresponsible living.
It can be disheartening to support a cause only to see it not reach the outcome we intended. However, it was only a waste if we were doing it for our own reasons rather than Gods, because he’s working all things according to the good of those who love him.
Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.
1 Corinthians 3:12-13
With eternity in mind, those works which will stand are those which God did through us not what we tried to wield the power of God to do ourselves. Rather than seeking to harness God’s power, we must submit ourselves to his plan.
