Leaving the Past Behind - Life of Paul Part 64

The date was May the 10th, 1933, and students under direct orders from Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, students in Hamburg, Germany, transported books from their university library into the city square and began to burn them in a huge bonfire. The citizens from all over the city of Hamburg were encouraged to bring their banned books and throw them on the fire as well. And Goebbels stated that the purpose of this book burning was to rid Germany of books that contained un-German ideas and were therefore unfit to read. Now, if you remember, our good friend Indiana Jones was there in town when this happened. You all remember that, right?

So that's the one we're talking about. Now, these books that were burned came from authors such as Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Sigmund Freud, and even Helen Keller were among the books that were banned by the Nazis. This was followed by a series of book burnings all over Germany.

Time Magazine called it a bibliocost. Newsweek called it a holocaust of books. But you know, the real issue for the Nazis was not books. The Nazis weren't trying to destroy books in Germany.

They were trying to destroy freedom of thought in Germany. One German philosopher said in words that proved to be sadly prophetic, and I quote, he said, where one burns books, one will soon burn people, end of quote. Now today, the reason I bring that up is because we're going to look at a book burning that happened here in the Bible. The apostle Paul was right smack dab in the middle of this book burning, but it was a very different sort of thing than happened in Germany in 1933. We're going to talk about the differences and then bring all that forward into the 21st century and say, well, so what difference does that make to me?

So that's our plan. Let's give you a little bit of background here to Acts chapter 19. Remember, here in Acts 19, Paul is on his third missionary journey. Acts chapter 19 verse 1, Paul took the road through the interior, that is of Asia Minor, and he arrived at Ephesus. Remember we said last week, Ephesus was such a strategic city that the apostle Paul spent three years here doing ministry. Verse 8, Paul entered the synagogue in Ephesus and spoke boldly there for a period of three months, verse 9, but when some of the Jewish people became obstinate and they began to speak evil of the faith, Paul left and began teaching the word of God daily in the school of Tyrannus. The school of Tyrannus became like Ephesus Bible College where believers and non-believers alike would show up and sit at the feet of the apostle Paul and learn the word of God. Verse 10, and this went on every day for two years from the spring of 54 A.D. until the spring of 56 A.D. so that all the Jews and Gentiles who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of God.

Now that's where we've been, so let's jump in and let's see what happens next. Verse 11, God did extraordinary miracles through Paul so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that touched him were taken to the sick and they were cured and to the people with evil spirits and the evil spirits left them. Now these handkerchiefs, literally in Greek, were sweat bands. They were no doubt rags that Paul tied around his forehead while he was making tents in the morning and they caught sweat off his forehead. And the word aprons here literally means work aprons. They were aprons that were normally worn by tanners working with all the chemicals that you work with to tan leather. And since Paul was making tents out of cloth and leather, it's entirely reasonable he'd be wearing some of these aprons. And the Bible says that these pieces of clothing which Paul had touched were taken and laid on sick people and they were healed. They were taken and laid on people who were demon possessed and the demons departed from them. Folks, this is not the first time here in the book of Acts that God has demonstrated this kind of power through the apostles. It's happened two other times. Acts chapter 5 and Acts chapter 8.

Let me show you. In Acts chapter 5 we read, the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people of Jerusalem. As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on mats so at least Peter's shadow might fall on them as he passed by. Crowds gathered from the towns all around Jerusalem bringing those who were sick and tormented by evil spirits and all of them were healed. This happened again in Acts chapter 8 when the apostle Philip for the first time took the message of Christ to Samaria.

Samaria is what we think of today as northern Israel and all of the West Bank and this was the first time the message had gone there and there was a similar outpouring of miracles. Now you say, Lon, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you really believe this happened? I mean do you really believe Peter's shadow fell on people and they were healed and they took sweat rags off of Paul and laid them on people and they got better? You really believe that? Sure.

I believe that. What's the problem? I mean if God is who He says He is in the Bible, there's no problem here. God could do this without even breaking a sweat, friends.

So I don't have a problem with this. The bigger issue, and let me just say before I go on, if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, what this demonstrates is that God's power to free us from ailments, whether they be spiritual ailments or physical ailments is enormous. And there may be some of you here today who have some spiritual ailments, addictions, things in your life that you feel have gotten their claws into you and their tentacles around you and you're never going to be free.

And I'm here to tell you that's not true. I'm here to tell you the power of Jesus Christ to liberate and free us is beyond belief, but He only does it for people who are in relationship with Jesus Christ. And that's one of the wonderful benefits we get when we come into relationship with Christ. We get freedom. We get the opportunity to be free.

And friend, if you need to be free, then I invite you to come into a relationship with Christ and let God do that for you. He will. He's willing. Now, the bigger question here is not whether God could do this. The bigger question is why? Why did God pick these three strategic points in the book of Acts, Acts 5, Acts 8 and Acts 19 to pour out miracles in this abundant fashion the way that we see?

Well, let's answer that question. In Acts chapter 5, I think the answer is obvious. Here in Acts chapter 5, the message of Jesus was in its infancy.

Here in Acts 5, Jesus has only been risen from the dead for a matter of a few weeks. And the apostles in Jerusalem, the followers of Christ in Jerusalem were struggling to gain a foothold there. They needed some credibility. They needed some proof. They needed some validation that the message they were teaching about Jesus really was true. So God unleashed this outpouring of miracles in Jerusalem to be that kind of proof, that kind of validation.

And it worked. Acts chapter 5, verse 14. As a result of these miracles, the apostles were highly regarded by the people and many men and women believed in the Lord Jesus. Acts 6. So the word of God spread and the number of disciples continued to increase in Jerusalem and a large number of priests also became obedient to the faith. Now what about Acts chapter 8? Well remember, Acts chapter 8 is the first time that Jesus Christ has been preached outside of Jerusalem. And just as the apostles needed credibility and validation for the message of Christ in Jerusalem, so Philip needed it when he took the message into Samaria. And I believe that that's exactly why God gave him the outpouring of miracles that he did.

And the same thing happened. Hundreds of people, thousands of people came to Christ. Now it's interesting to note, this is very important, that in both of these cases, once the message of Jesus Christ had become established in Jerusalem, once it had gained credibility in Samaria, it's interesting that these outpourings of miracles ceased in these two places. And the non-miraculous preaching and teaching of the word of God took over as the normal practice for the church there. So, in Acts 19 now, we have skipped 20 years ahead from Acts chapter 8. Acts chapter 8 took place in 34 A.D., Acts chapter 19 in 54 A.D. There has not been an outpouring of miracles like this in 20 years, and suddenly we have another one.

So the question is, why? What was there about Paul's ministry in Ephesus that was so unique that God felt it needed this kind of outpouring of miracles? Well, there's an answer, and the answer is that we know from archaeology and we know from history that at the time of Paul, the city of Ephesus was the center, the world center, for magical arts, for sorcery, and for witchcraft. Witches, sorcerers, mediums, soothsayers, exorcists, they all congregated in Ephesus. They all practiced the occult in this city. Ephesus was the voodoo capital of the Roman Empire.

What Haiti is to the 21st century, Ephesus was to the 1st century. Now, in order to saturate this city with the message of Christ the way Paul wanted to, in order to make the impact on this city that Paul dreamed about making, folks, he had to take on this occult subculture and he had to beat it. You couldn't go around it.

It was way too large and way too important, way too noticeable in the city. He couldn't pretend like all these witches and soothsayers and sorcerers weren't in town. He had to prove that Jesus was stronger than Satan. He had to prove that the message of Jesus Christ was more powerful than any message they were giving out. He had to prove that what he was offering people was true and what they were offering people was false. He had to confront them, as one commentator said, in addition to Paul's evangelistic ministry, he also had a ministry in Ephesus that can be classed as a power encounter with the demonic forces that bound the people of that town. The miracles that took place in Ephesus were needed to demonstrate God's power as being superior to these evil forces. And you know, if you know your Bible well, you will know, you will remember, that Paul's most comprehensive treatment of how we deal with demonic forces, we call it the whole armor of God in Ephesians chapter 6, you'll remember that that's written in the letter to the church of Ephesus.

You say, well why is it? Well friends, listen, when Paul wrote letters to these churches, he wrote to them about the problems and the issues they were dealing with in that church. He didn't just sit around and say, oh let me see, I need to write something about the spiritual armor of God here. Let's spin a bottle and see what church it points to and I'll write it to them.

No, no, no. He wrote this to the church of Ephesus because this was such an issue in this town and that's why it's contained in the letter to the Ephesians. Well, what happened? Paul's confronting and beating these demonic forces. Verse 13, some Jewish exorcists who went from place to place driving out demons, tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon possessed saying, in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out. We know in the days of Paul there were a number of itinerant exorcists and itinerant sorcerers going around casting demons out of people. There were a lot of Jewish people doing this and they decided to add, when they saw the power of Jesus in Ephesus, they decided to add the name of Jesus to their repertoire.

They decided to add him as another incantation that they used and a guy named Sceva, a Jewish man, who had seven sons, his seven sons decided they were going to try this. So look what happened. And the demon answered and said to them, Jesus, I know, and Paul, I know, but who are you? Now I think that's hysterical. Don't you think that's hysterical? You know, well, that's because this is Bible humor and you don't get it.

But this is hysterical. They go up to this demon possessed guy and they go, in the name of Jesus that Paul preaches, we command you to come out. And the demon says, I know Paul and I know Jesus. I never heard of you guys.

Who are you guys? And then the Bible says that the man who had the demon jumped on these seven guys, overpowered them, beat all seven of them up to such a degree that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding. That's what you call a bad day. Now, this happened and look, verse 17 says, This event became known to all those who lived in Ephesus, Jews and Gentiles alike, and fear seized them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high esteem. Wait a minute.

Take a break for a second. Wasn't that the purpose? Isn't that what God was trying to do? Wasn't God by pouring out all these miracles trying to take the name of Jesus and exalt that name above the name of all these sorcerers and witches and all the incantations they had?

Well, the point is, it worked. And many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their magical practices. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their books and began burning them publicly.

Here's our book burning. They brought them all down to the square in Ephesus and they started burning these books. And when they calculated the value of the books, the total came to 50,000 drachmas.

In today's money, that's about $20 million that these books were worth. In this way, the word of the Lord was spreading widely and prevailing. Now, these people who came to Christ because of the superiority of the message of Jesus that these miracles had displayed, many of them were these sorcerers and witches and exorcists and the Bible says not only did they embrace Jesus as their Lord and Savior, not only did they openly confess their occult practices and repent, but more than that, they brought their occult books with all their spells and their potions and their formulas and right down in the middle of the city, they had a huge book burning. And you know, we're sure that these books existed. Some of them have survived to this day having the magic spells and everything in them.

In fact, if you go to the library at Princeton University, one of these ancient books is actually on display there containing magical potions and all kinds of witchcraft formulas that has survived to this day. We know these books existed and they went right out in the square and had this huge book burning in downtown Ephesus and the result is that the message of Jesus Christ made a huge impact on the city of Ephesus and the province of Asia. And I also add that just like in Jerusalem and just like in Samaria, the Bible is clear that once the message of Jesus Christ became established here in the town of Ephesus, guess what happened? The miracles disappeared.

There was no more outpouring of miracles like this after that, but the regular preaching and teaching of the Word of God then took over. Now that's as far as we want to go in the passage because we've got a question to ask and you all know our question and all you guys in overflow, don't you punk out on me now. I want to hear it, all right? Here we go.

You ready? One, two, three. So what? Right. Say, Lon, so what?

Say, all right. So they had a book burning in Ephesus like they had in Germany. Big whoop. What difference does that make to me? Wait a minute now.

Wait a minute. The book burning that they had in Germany in 1933 is not at all the same kind of book burning that they had in Ephesus in 54 A.D. Let me tell you why. The Nazis burned their books as a way of snuffing out all freedom of thought. Friends, these new believers in Ephesus, they burned their books as a way of breaking from their sinful past and beginning a new life in Jesus Christ.

Do you understand these weren't the same events at all? And this whole principle that there's a need to break from our sinful past and there's a need to begin a whole new life in Christ, this is a very biblical principle. Look, Jesus said, Matthew 6, No person can serve two masters.

Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and the things of this world. What was Jesus really saying here? He's saying if you really want to follow me, you've got to leave the past behind.

There are some things you've got to break with. Hey, Paul said, Romans 13, verse 12, Let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day. Let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for gratifying the desires of our sinful nature. What's Paul saying? He's saying that in order to honor God in our life, there are some things in our life we've got to leave behind.

There are some things in life you've got to break from. And finally, Hebrews 12, Therefore, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sins that so easily entangle us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. What is the writer of Hebrews saying? He's saying if we're going to run the race well and successfully that Jesus has called us to run, there are some things we've got to lay off of us. There are some things that we've got to leave behind and separate from. This is what these new believers in Ephesus were doing. They were leaving the past behind. They were jettisoning the things that had spiritually encumbered them. They were cutting their ties to the sins of the past so that they could really run the race and run it well.

And that's what that book Burning was all about. You know, I'm going to show you a picture of a little animal here. I don't know if you know what this is. But you say, Lon, I don't know what that is.

And honestly, whatever it is, I don't want one of them. Well, let me tell you what it is. What you're looking at is a barnacle. This is the living animal. It's a little saltwater animal. But a barnacle builds a house for itself out of calcium. And they're famous for building these houses on the underside of seagoing vessels. Now, when barnacles accumulate on a ship, they create drag. They slow the ship down.

They impede its forward progress, so much so that either the ship moves slower through the water or if it wants to keep its feet up, it's got to burn more fuel. As a matter of fact, I read in an article that even a six-month growth of barnacles on a ship will cause a ship to burn 40 to 50 percent more fuel just to stay at speed. Now, there's only one way to fix the problem of barnacles, and that is you put the ship in dry dock and you scrape the barnacles off. You don't negotiate with barnacles. You don't compromise with barnacles. You don't stand there and say, well, I don't really think that they're harming us in any way so it doesn't make any difference.

No, no, no. There's only one thing to do with barnacles. You scrape them off. That's how you deal with them. Friends, you know, I believe the Bible is telling us in these verses that there are some things in life that are like spiritual barnacles. They slow down our progress. They impede our forward motion. They get in the way of us running the race like we ought to run the race.

You say, well, like what? Well, I think there's two categories of spiritual barnacles. Category number one are those things that are just plain ungodly. They are just plain sinful things. These are things that are inappropriate and damaging to any follower of Christ at any time in any place under any circumstances. You say, examples, pornography, sexual activity outside of marriage, cheating, lying, stealing, allowing bitterness to control your life.

Man, you talk about slowing down your progress in your walk for Christ. These things are barnacles that'll do it. And the second category of spiritual barnacles are things that, in and of themselves, they're not sinful. For different people, they can really be an encumbrance. They can really be a millstone.

They can really be an impediment in our life. And this can be different. What may be a barnacle for you may not be a barnacle for me.

You say, examples, Lon. Well, an old boyfriend or an old girlfriend. Hey, I dated some huge barnacles before I came to Jesus Christ.

I mean it. You talk about slowing down your spiritual progress. Hey, here's another one, some kind of music that you listened to before you came to Christ.

But when you listen to it now, it affects your spiritual life. Old friends that you had before you came to Christ or even after you came to Christ, who take you to the wrong places and encourage you to do the wrong things that don't help your spiritual life, that hinder your walk with God. Foul language that you used before you were a follower of Christ. Certain addictions, like to television, like to some hobby that controls your life, like to some leisure activity like golf or tennis or sailing. It could be cards. It can be gambling. It could be going to the racetrack. It can be alcohol abuse. It can be overeating.

Any of these things have the potential to be barnacles in our life and slow down our spiritual progress. It can even be dancing. You say, dancing?

Yep. I had a lady came to this church, true story, true story, who was addicted to square dancing. She was. She went square dancing six nights a week.

This is true. And she began to neglect her family. She began to not show up at work the next day because she's out all night square dancing. It began to ruin her life and she finally came to me and she said, you know what, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ and square dancing is ruining my walk with God.

I said, there's a simple solution. Scrape it off. Scrape it off. And she did. And I was proud of her for doing that.

It was hard. She stopped going. She stopped talking to the friends.

She knew down at the square dancing place. But this was a barnacle in her life. Now, will these things cause us to lose our salvation of things that I just named? No, no. But they'll slow us down. It'll impede our race for Christ. It's like a marathon runner wearing a backpack full of bricks, friends. You can finish the race but it's ugly.

And that's what this is like. And God calls us in the Bible to scrape these things off our life. He calls us in the Bible to empty out our backpacks so that we can run the race and run it well. You know, a great example of this in the Bible was a guy named Elisha, the great prophet. Elisha wasn't born a prophet.

He wasn't trained as a prophet. He was a farmer. And one day he was out in his fields farming. He had his plow in front of him and two oxen pulling it. And Elijah, the prophet, came up, aged prophet, threw his robe around Elisha and Elisha knew what that meant.

It meant God was calling him now to be the next prophet in Israel, to face Jezebel, to face King Ahab, to go against the prophets of Baal there. And so what he did, look, 1 Kings 19, Elisha called all the people together and took the pair of oxen he'd been plowing with and he killed them. He slaughtered them. And he also burned the plowing equipment that he'd been plowing with to cook the meat and he gave it to the people to eat. You say, Lon, what kind of stupid thing was this? If he killed his oxen and he burned up his plows, he couldn't go back to farming if things got rough.

Bingo. That was the whole point. Elisha decided that if God was calling him to go be a prophet, he wasn't coming back. No matter how rough things got. If that was the will of God for his life, it was full steam ahead and no looking back. So you know what he did? He killed the oxen, he burned the plow so that in those days when it got rough and he looked back, there was nothing to go back to.

He cut his ties. You see that? That's what a person does that's serious about their walk with God. I never met a person who ever came to faith in Christ.

Listen to what I'm saying to you. Never met one who in order to run the race well that God's calling us to run, didn't have to scrape off some barnacles. Never met one.

Never met one, didn't have to burn some oxen. You know, I did. I came to Christ in 1971 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And the man who led me to Christ a couple months after I was a believer, he said to me, you know what, I'll never forget it. He said, if you're ever going to amount to anything for God, he said to me, Lon, you've got to get out of this town. He said, all your old girlfriends are here, all your old drug buddies are here, all your old drinking buddies are here. Everybody in this town is pulling you in the wrong direction. And if you ever want to amount to anything for God, you need to leave this town behind for the rest of your life.

I took him seriously. I sold everything I had, put it in a knapsack, took my dog, Noah, 85-pound German shepherd. In fact, actually only half the backpack was mine because half of it was his food, his bowl, his brush. So I only had half the knapsack. And we left Chapel Hill, North Carolina and started hitchhiking around the country in 1971.

And except for a couple of five-minute visits while passing through on the way to Florida or back, I've never been back to Chapel Hill. And you know why? Because that man was right. If I hadn't cut those ties and left those things behind and scraped those barnacles off my life, friend, they would have slowed me down the rest of my life. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Was it hard? Sure it was hard. Those were all my relationships, all my friendships. I didn't know anybody else. Yeah, it was hard. But I'm glad I did it.

It was the right decision. And you know, I'll bet you here today that a lot of you guys have some barnacles in your life. I just, I don't know you personally. I'm not nosing in your business, but I know people.

And I'm sure it's true. There are a lot of people here today who have things in our lives that are slowing down the pace of our Christian growth. They are slowing down the effectiveness of our service for Jesus Christ.

They are slowing down the rate of our spiritual transformation into new creatures in Christ. You say, like what? Hey, some of us here have got an old boyfriend that is a huge barnacle. You need to scrape that guy off your life. Some of us here have old girlfriends that are the same way.

You need to scrape that gal out of your life. Some of us here have hobbies in our life or leisure practices in our life that are slowing us down. And we need to scrape that habit off our life.

Maybe not forever, but for now. Some of us here have habits in our life that every time we do them, man, it slows us down in our walk with God. They need to be scraped off our life. Or addictions, they need to be scraped off our life. You say, Lon, I hear what you're saying, but you know what? If I scrape these things off my life, it's going to cost me some.

Well, you're right, it always does. You know, it costs me something to leave Chapel Hill. Hey, it costs these Ephesians something to burn up all their books from 50,000 drachmas.

Remember what we said. That's almost 20 million dollars that they burned up. But you know why they did it? Because they were serious about their walk with Jesus Christ. You know why they did it? Because they were determined to be everything God wanted them to be. You know why they did it? Because they were so in love with Jesus Christ that they were happy to pay any price it took if it meant that they could run the race and run it well.

That's why they did what they did. And folks, let me say in conclusion, those are the kind of people God's still looking for today. Same kind of people. People who love Him enough and are serious enough about their walk with God and are determined enough to become everything God wants them to be that they'll pay any price they need to pay to get there. Those are the people God is looking for.

And those are the people God uses. So I'll leave you with two questions today. Question number one.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, does there need to be a book burning or an oxen slaying or a barnacle scraping, pick whatever image you like best, in your life? Now only you can answer that. I can't answer that for you. But friend, I urge you, be honest with yourself. And you can't, remember what I said, you can't negotiate with barnacles. You can't compromise with barnacles.

And certainly it's not healthy to pretend like they're not slowing you down. Be honest with yourself. Alright? And if you got some of them, my second and last question is, do you love Jesus enough that you're willing to do that? You're willing to scrape them off.

That's again a question only you can answer. But friends, these are the kind of people, as I said, God's looking for and He wants you to be one of them. Let's pray together. And with our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I want to give you just a moment if you need to, to do some business with God. So if there are some things in your life that you and God need to talk about, why don't you do that right now? Lord Jesus, as you know, barnacles, well we can pick them up and not even notice we picked them up. It's easy for us to be going along and everything's fine in our spiritual life and then all of a sudden, before we know it, we're encrusted with these things.

That's just part of being human, Lord. And so my prayer today is that you would help us to really take a hard look at our lives, an honest look at our lives. And if we look like that ship that I showed a picture of earlier, just all encrusted up with stuff that's just impeding our progress spiritually, I pray today you'd give us the courage to pay whatever price we need to pay to scrape them off of our lives so we can be lean and mean in our walk with Jesus Christ. Father, I pray that you would inspire us by the example of these Ephesians who didn't just say they believed in Jesus and they didn't just confess that openly, but they took steps to get rid of the encumbrances to their spiritual walk. They made a break with the past so they could really maximize their new life in Christ. Father, may we draw encouragement from their example and may we copy it. For the people who've prayed here today and talked to you about some really tough things in their life, if they make a break from them, I pray that you would give them the courage and the strength they need to follow through on what they've talked to you about today. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. .