Daily Scripture Reading Acts 19:1-22

Christians believe God is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-hearing. I think if you ask Christians if Satan and his demons have the same abilities, they would say no. However, many Christians are quick to claim they are under spiritual attack when something bad happens. When they claim Satan is attacking them, they are assuming Satan knows who they are. If you think about it, in practice, they act as if Satan is all-knowing.

Today’s passage in Acts 19 is clear evidence that demons are not all-knowing; thus, Christians should not assume a bad day is the result of spiritual warfare.

At the end of the 18th chapter of Acts, Paul was traveling through Asia while a Jew named Apollos arrived in Ephesus and spoke about Jesus. However, Apollos only knew about the baptism of John. Priscilla and Aquilla took him aside and filled in his missing knowledge about the way, and then the brothers sent Apollos to Achaia where he used the Scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament, to prove that Jesus is the Christ.

Acts 19:1 ¶ Now it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper regions and came to Ephesus and found some disciples.

Paul arrived in Ephesus after Apollos had preached.

Ephesus is in the western part of Asia, across the sea from Achaia.

Acts 19:2 And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said to him, “No, we have not even heard if the Holy Spirit is being received.”

Acts 19:3 And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” And they said, “Into John’s baptism.”

Many people today think baptism is unique to Christianity, but that was not the conventional wisdom in the 1st century AD. Baptism was used by multiple groups in that time period. Therefore, when people were baptized, it was necessary to understand what they were being baptized into. In this case, these disciples in Ephesus had been baptized into John’s baptism, not into the baptism of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Acts 19:4 Then Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”

Being baptized into John’s baptism meant you believed in something that was going to happen in the future. Being baptized into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit means you believe in something that happened in the past.

Acts 19:5 And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Acts 19:6 And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.

Acts 19:7 Now there were in all about twelve men.

Acts 19:8 ¶ And after he entered the synagogue, he continued speaking out boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.

Acts 19:9 But when some were becoming hardened and were not believing, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he left them and took away the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.

This is a pattern we saw earlier in the book of Acts. When Paul went to a new city, he began by speaking the truth to Jews in the Synagogue, but when the Jews rejected the message, he took the truth to the Gentiles.

Acts 19:10 This took place for two years, so that all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

Unlike some cities where Paul only stayed in one place for a few weeks, he stayed in Ephesus for two years. Ephesus had enough interaction with nearby areas that the word of the Lord spread all through Asia.

Asia was a large region in the area known today as the country of Turkey.

Acts 19:11 ¶ And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul,

Acts 19:12 so that cloths or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out.

Acts 19:13 But also some of the Jewish exorcists, who went from place to place, attempted to invoke over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, “I implore you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.”

Acts 19:14 Now seven sons of one named Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this.

Acts 19:15 And the evil spirit answered and said to them, “I recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?”

Note that the evil spirit knew about Jesus and Paul, but he had never heard of the seven sons of Sceva.

Christians believe God is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-hearing. I think if you ask Christians if Satan and his demons have the same abilities, they would say no. However, many Christians are quick to claim they are under spiritual attack when something bad happens. When they claim Satan is attacking them, they are assuming Satan knows who they are. Thus, in practice they assume Satan is all-knowing.

The evil spirit did not know who the seven sons of Sceva were. Thus, it is possible Satan and his demons have no idea you and I exist. Therefore, you and I, and all Christians, should be hesitant to ever claim we are under spiritual attack because Satan and his demons may not even know we exist.

Here is another way to think about it. Satan can only be one place at one time; therefore, if you ever claim Satan is attacking you, you are claiming that Satan has nothing better to do at that moment in time than attack you. In other words, you are claiming you are the biggest threat to Satan.

Acts 19:16 And the man, in whom was the evil spirit, leaped on them, subdued all of them, and utterly prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

This verse indicates the power of evil spirits compared to humans. The man who had the evil spirit overpowered seven men.

Acts 19:17 And 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.

Acts 19:18 Also, many of those who had believed kept coming, confessing and disclosing their practices.

Acts 19:19 And many of those who practiced magic brought their books together and were burning them in the sight of everyone; and they counted up the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

This tells us the magnitude of the demonic influence in Ephesus. Furthermore, we see the success of Paul’s ministry. Those who believed in Jesus repented completely. They sold their magic books, despite the amount of money they had invested in them.

One of the problems Christianity has had in recent centuries when doing missionary work around the globe has been syncretism, meaning the supposed converts didn’t really cast aside their non-Christian beliefs, they simply integrated Christian ideas into their prior belief system.

However, true conversion means repentance. Repentance means reversal. Our goal as Christians should be getting people to completely leave false gods and sinful practices and adopt Christian beliefs and morality instead.

Acts 19:20 So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing.

Acts 19:21 ¶ Now after these things were finished, Paul purposed in the Spirit to go to Jerusalem after he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.”

Paul was in Ephesus. His plan was to go to Macedonia and Achaia, regions he had visited previously. Then he wanted to go to Jerusalem before going to Rome.

That was an aggressive itinerary because Jerusalem and Rome are 1,500 miles / 2,400 km apart.

Acts 19:22 And having sent into Macedonia two of those who ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.

The seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish priest, attempted to invoke the name of Jesus over a demon-possessed man. However, the evil spirit had never heard of the seven sons; therefore, he overpower them.

Here are some questions to ponder.

Does Satan know you exist?

There are 8 billion people on earth. Satan can only be in one place at one time. Satan has a finite number of demons and they can only be in one place at one time. Are you so important that Satan and/or his demons would ever think attacking you is the best use of their time and efforts?

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“Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com.”