If you have your larger catechism, please open it before we read the text. I want to go to the second commandment. It starts with question 107. I'll read that, which is a quote of the second commandment itself, and then we'll go to 108 and 109, and lastly 110 there. So 107 says, what is the second commandment? The second commandment is, you shall not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Question 108. What are the duties required in the Second Commandment? The duties required in the Second Commandment are the receiving, observing, and keeping, pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God has instituted in His Word, particularly prayer and thanksgiving in the name of Christ, the reading, preaching, and hearing of the word, the administration and receiving of the sacraments, church, government, and discipline, the ministry and maintenance thereof, religious fasting, swearing by the name of God and vowing unto him, as also the disapproving, detesting, opposing all false worship. according to each one's place and calling removing it and all monuments of idolatry question one or nine what are the sins forbidden in the second commandment the sins forbidden in the second commandment are all devising counseling commanding using and any wise approving any religious worship not instituted by God himself the making of any representation of God of all or of any of the three persons either inwardly in our mind or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever all worshiping of it or God in it or by it the making of any representation of feigned deities and all worship of them or service belonging to them all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever, simony, sacrilege, neglect contempt hindering and opposing the worship and ordinances which God has appointed question 110 what are the reasons annexed to the second commandment the more to enforce it the reasons annexed to the second commandment the more to enforce it contained in these words for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children under the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Are, besides God's sovereignty over us and propriety in us, his fervent zeal for his own worship and his revengeful indignation against all false worship as being a spiritual whoredom accounting the breakers of this commandment, such as hate him, and threatening to punish them unto diverse generations, and esteeming the observers of it, such as love him and keep his commandments, and promising mercy to them unto many generations." It's a remarkable providence that the section in Hosea that we read, for example, covers the same thing, that we see here this blessing to the thousandth generation. the curse to the third or fourth generation, there's a great importance that's tied to the worship of God. When we look at Acts 19 today, we're going to see something that relates closely to that. We're going to deal with taking the Lord's name in vain. We're going to deal with the use of magic in Ephesus. And we're going to see the preaching of the word of God and the right worship that is put in its place. So this is this warfare with idolatry in the world. So let's look now at Acts chapter 19. Try to keep in mind, idolatry and opposition to idolatry with the right worship of God opposed to it as kind of things as we read through this. So Acts, chapter 19, starting at verse eight, So you remember we just ended with those disciples of John and Apollos and the baptism of John. And so we talked about kind of this transition into the new covenant era that needed to occur in their minds. They needed to recognize that the transition had occurred. So Acts 19 verse 8. So now we're coming into the engagement in Ephesus more broadly, moving beyond just these disciples of John who have been baptized with the baptism of John. They were baptized with Christ's baptism. They received the Holy Spirit. And now verse 8. And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. But when some were hardened, and did not believe, but spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. And this continued for two years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks." Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, We exercise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches. Also, there were seven sons of Siva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so. And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but you, who are you? Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, And the majority text here is a little bit different. It says, and they overpowered them. So you see that it looks in this critical text version, it looks like there's a, just the man overpowered them. It's saying, and they, the man and the demon overpowered them. And they overpowered them and prevailed against them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus. And fear fell on them all. And the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. and they counted up the value of them, and it totaled 50,000 pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. So what we have here are essentially magicians. We have these exorcists that are basically trying to use conjuring types of powers. There are old papyri that have been found that have kind of these Jewish magic, Gnostic magic type of incantations that are used for exorcism and other types of rites. And sometimes they will call upon the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And sometimes they will even call upon Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. They'll refer to the Father. And it's funny because you look at these and they'll, as opposed to having them in the Trinitarian order that we normally see, which is Father, Son, and Spirit, they'll have them in mixed up orders. As though they haven't really thought about their relationship. They're just kind of putting this stuff hodgepodge together. And a couple of these papyri, for example, have Jesus Crestus, which we talked before about how there's a Latin writer who'd been talking about the Jews being cast out of Rome, and they were referring to Jesus Crestus, and there's this replacing of the word, or of the letter iota, with instead an epsilon, and so there's just this misspelling coming from a slight alteration. And so it's very clear that this is a common misspelling because, again, these incantation types of papyri literally have Jesus Crestus next to the Holy Spirit and God the Father is being referenced. And so this is a common thing in terms of the opposition to Christianity somehow replacing that iota with an epsilon. So for whatever reason, that simply is a historical thing. This is happening, and I want you to relate this to idolatry. I want you to relate this sort of magic conjuring type of attitude in terms of opposition to spirits, an attempt to remove evil spirits. And I want you to relate that and the sorcery books that are going to be burned. These things are related. We have these men that are opponents, these seven sons of Siva. And they are opponents that are used representatively. And then it's followed by kind of a mass giving up of these sorcery textbooks or sorcery books. And so these things are themselves tools of idolatry. And although we think about idols in terms of the physical representations, you know, wooden or gold statues or whatever, There's also conceptual idolatry, and sorcery and witchcraft is the encouraging of a sort of conceptual idolatry. And we see this moving into Christianity when we look at false types of Christianity that are syncretistic, like Roman Catholicism, which essentially has a sorcery type of view of the sacraments, where the working of some sort of a priest has the power to turn bread into the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ and wine into the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this false view of the sacraments, and also you think about baptism and other rituals and how Rome claims to, by the working of the work itself, cause God to do these things. So they say they have direct power over these supernatural actions. And so it functions much like magic. And so that's called sacramentalism. where you believe that the use of sacraments or religious ordinances, rituals, can effectually bring these things about. And it does not matter whether the person has faith who's taking them. And so there's this kind of ability to manipulate God. In Protestant circles, more recently, there's a version of this that happens in kind of Pentecostal world. There is a name and a claimant is kind of a, A way of derisively referring to this, the idea that you can kind of make God give you something by using a form or an incantation type of prayer, where if I do this thing, it's going to be given to me. An appeal is made to the blessings that are given in Deuteronomy and so forth, which there's a legitimate use of those. an appeal made to the fact that if you ask for it in the name of Christ, it will be given. And so there's this idea that the power of the one praying can kind of bind God. Now, we know that in reality, these blessings and these askings are dependent upon it being according to the will of God. So we have to pray in accordance with the law of God. And at the same time, we need to know that the timeline is not something that we have the power to control. The timeline in which God answers these prayers And the precise manner in which he answers them is dependent upon his desire to display his own glory and for our ultimate good. And so we might want something to happen right now, and God has decreed that it will happen later, because it is better for us to happen at a different time than we would prefer for that thing to occur. And sometimes it is answered in a better way. So there are people, for example, who are lonely, and they pray that God will provide them with a spouse or with a friend. And the reality is that we have Christ as our dearest and closest friend. And so we are provided for in that way. And though we suffer now, we know that there is an ultimate provision for that longing. And so the reality that the things we desire are built into us and they can be perverted in sin, but there's an ultimate fulfillment of the desires. Our psychology, our design is such that there is a fulfillment in the possession of God as we increase in the knowledge of God, there is a way in which those desires are fulfilled. There are also ways in which the intermediary means, the things that are given to us in a lesser way that point to those things, are also used for our good to give us strength in the near term. So let's go back now, run through this text. So back at verse eight, and he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading. So this reasoning is dialoguing, it's he's debating, he's, he's engaging, it's going back and forth. And there's a causing of people to be persuaded. Notice this lasts for three months, it doesn't last for a whole lifetime. Some people stay in churches that there are problems with that they have doctrinal errors, worship errors, or government errors, and they'll stay there for years and years and years, or even their whole life saying, I'm trying to be here as a reforming presence. That is not an acceptable excuse. Paul stays there for three months. He stays there for three months. Not years. It's not a day, right? It's three months. And this three months, he does some very specific things. Let's look at what happens. He's reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. Now the things of the kingdom of God, this is talking about the reality that Christ has come. The fact that this is the new covenant era now, which means that the old ceremonies have passed away and are being replaced with the new covenant administration. and there is a power that comes, so the coming of the Holy Spirit. This reminds us of what has just been discussed about Apollos and about the disciples of John who were baptized with John, but it also is in accordance with the context of the whole book, which is about the things of the kingdom and the reality that the church is the kingdom of God and that there's this going forth of the kingdom into the world. So, we see this. Why three months? What happens? verse nine, but when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples reasoning daily in the school of tyrannous. Now there's a translation problem here that I want you to take note of. It says, but when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the way that the did not believe is a repetition of hardening. And so you kind of think, okay, so he's They're hardened. They're not believing, right? But the reality is it actually says they were hardened and disobeyed and spoke evil. So you cannot see someone's disbelief. You can see someone's disobedience, and you can hear their speaking against the way. The idea here is that the hardening of the heart is internal. The disobedience is external, and the speaking against is external. And so they're hardened and the evidence of that is the disobedience to the Word of God and the speaking evil against the way. And the way is used here to refer to Christianity. The way is going to be referenced again in our text that we continue in when we talk about the riots that are going to occur in Ephesus soon hereafter. But that's just against Christianity. So they speak against it and they're disobeying the way. And they're speaking against in a public way, they're disobeying in a public way. It's before the multitude. So this public opposition requires a public separating. And this obviously is a majority because otherwise the synagogue could simply be reformed, it could be turned. And so because the synagogue does not accept in terms of the majority and in terms of those who have the rule being those that accept Paul, Instead, Paul departs from that synagogue, separates out, so that now it's a synagogue of Satan. He's declaring opposition, and he is separating out to form a church. So he withdraws the disciples. They depart from them. and now the cycles are separated. And so this is what happens over and over again in church fights about doctrine. It's schism if you leave a church over a personality conflict. It's schism if you do so because you're wrong. It's sinful as something to do if you're just breaking commitment without any reason. But when there is false doctrine, false worship, or illegitimate action of government, separation is a duty. And that is something that if there's an unwillingness to repent after discussion, that it's the obligation of Christians to separate from false churches that manifest themselves to be false churches when these things occur. Now, that separation is something that is necessary for the sake of the survival of the church. that separation is necessary for the survival of the church. So much of the church today is captive to weak, false churches. So many believers are members of weak, false churches. And these weak, false churches will teach false doctrine, have wrong worship, and will have illegitimate government. Sometimes all of those things together or some combination of those things. And the effect of that is that these believers are supporting giving their own reputation to bad or false churches. They're giving their money and their service to bad or false churches. And so as a result, there is a consolidating of resources, power, gifting, community, all this stuff going to these bad or false churches. And it makes it difficult for people to even consider good churches. It is difficult to get a hearing for the clarity of the gospel, to get a hearing for right worship, to get a hearing for legitimate government because people think it's weird, because they are used to a consumeristic type of church that is focused upon a sort of therapeutic attitude that is not dealing with sanctification, growth in knowledge, is not dealing with right worship, but instead is looking at how can we worship God in a way that will make people comfortable? How can we deal with teaching that will help people to feel comfortable? How can we have the leadership be organized in such a way as to avoid conflict, avoid problems, and kind of just roll with it? And so that pragmatic and therapeutic approach is destructive to the ability to work together for the glory of God. It causes it to be difficult to get a hearing. So Paul, in order to preserve the right teaching, worship, and government, he pulls the believers out, he's splitting another church, and now he's going to the school of Tyrannus to use it as a place to teach. Now, the School of Tyrannus would be a public place where this can be meetings. There are extra biblical things about the School of Tyrannus, so it's not certain that we can have certainty about, but the stuff that is available basically says this is a guy who is known for being difficult, rough in his teaching. He's called Tyrannus because that literally means tyrant. And so his teaching method would have been something that was considered rough. And so there's this kind of name that he's a tyrant. And so in this school, he has a lot of space for people to come and hear. I want to point out, this suggests that there's a lot of people who are coming now to hear Paul's teaching. This is daily, and it's in a public teaching hall. Rich people could have fairly large rooms that were available for gathering. You could fit a good number of people into them. Standing to listen was not uncommon in this time. And so this means that just people's homes were not sufficient to hold people in. Paul is wanting, on a daily basis, to have a place where he can teach. So a lot of people are coming and listening to Paul. He's doing this on a daily basis. And this lasts for two years. So he is obviously having a lot of progress there. The effect of this is that it transforms the economy of Ephesus. We're going to look down the road, starting at verse 21, at the riot at Ephesus. And that comes down to, hey, people aren't buying these silver statues of Artemis anymore. It's translated Diana. It should be Artemis. They're not buying these silver statues of Artemis anymore, which suggests that there's a dramatic impact on the economy because so many people are being persuaded that they should not buy these items, right? So, idolatry is going to be dealt with very specifically there. We have the sorcery before, we have these conjurer exorcists that are there. So, think about how powerful magic was as sort of this worldview here in Ephesus. The paganism, and magic worldview that's being tied together. And so this is being thrown out. Sometimes people have complained about Protestantism, they removed the magic from Europe, that there was a life of enchantment. And the things seemed far more kind of, you know, like there was there was there was something enchanting about life. That's true. Protestantism removes the airy fairiness out of life. What it does is it gives you a clear-minded sense of what reality is. The Bible is not a book that is a fairy tale. The Bible is very clear, very concise in terms of the amount of information it contains and delivers. There's a lot of information with a few words. And so the Bible does remove this sort of delusional, enchanted view of life. And that's what's happening in Ephesus. It helps to make people into sober-minded, mature adults. So when we look at that, we're going to see what continues on here. Verse 10. And this continued for two years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Gentiles. Paul is working here. He's working hard. The effect is that this enchanted life, so to speak, is replaced with a reality life. That there's, instead of a escapism, instead of a kind of perpetual childhood, he's bringing people to maturity. And this happens because the whole of Asia, all the peoples, are hearing the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jew and Gentile, both Jew and Greek. And so he started with the Jews, Judgment comes first to the house of God. And then he goes and he's preaching the general population. Verse 11. Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of God. Sorry. Now Paul. Wow. Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul. so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick. So the unusual miracles here, the literal translation is like the never happening miracles. So these kinds of miracles are the kinds of miracles that never happen. This is extremely rare, in other words. And these handkerchiefs and aprons, sweatcloths and aprons, the apron, think about a material like a butcher. would wipe his hands on. So these are worksman's cloths and kind of a butcher's apron type of thing. These are just articles of clothing that are dirty, and they're being brought from his body to the sick. And just taking this diseases leave people. Evil spirits went out of people. So, you think about the promise that Jesus says about his disciples doing even greater miracles than he did. Well, for Jesus, it's remarkable that somebody came up and touched the hem of his garment and was healed. Here, Paul is having garments taken away from his person, and people are being healed. Verse 13, Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, we exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches. Also, there were seven sons of Siva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so." So they're taking the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they're using it in vain. They're using it like a magical incantation. What's the effect? And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know. And in the Greek, there's the emphatic, but you Who are you? So that W, I love it. It's not W the letter. It's the word you used twice. And I love it. The level of mockery that is contained in it is outstanding. And this is, when you think about the Book of Romans, it talks about a reasonable service. We shouldn't be ashamed of the gospel. We should realize that this is the only reasonable thing to believe. Everything else is irrational. Every other philosophy, everything that raises itself up against the knowledge of God is a pretension. It's a lie. It is ridiculous. It is worthy of ridicule. And so the response here of the demons are, I know Jesus. I know Paul. Are you? Who are you? The evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you? Then the man in whom the evil spirit was, in whom the evil spirit was, leaped on them, and they overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded." So naked, right? This is obviously shameful, having your nakedness uncovered. Shame. And then they're wounded. The word wounded there suggests that these are not just like tis but a flesh wound. This is a real wound. This is going to take a while to heal. We hear about other demon-possessed people, and they bite, and they're able to break chains and all that. These are the Seven Brothers. They're beat up. Their clothes get torn off, and they have wounds that take a while to heal. This brings shame on them. They go around town. They go to the marketplace. What's that bite mark on your arm? What's that from? What's that gash over here? That is, it is a shame-inducing thing that causes them to probably use the itinerant nature of their ministry a little bit faster to go to the next town. So, verse 17, this became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus. Fear fell on them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified Okay, so we have two things that are put side by side here So we have there's the context of the teaching ministry of Paul and the separation that Paul has From those who are claiming to believe in the God of Abraham, but reject the Christ, right? So they're rejecting the truth. They're rejecting where things really are in the history of redemption And so there's this separation. So you have the church being separated out against a false church. Then you have Paul and miracles that are being brought as signs of his apostolic ministry and signs of his teaching. And then you have these itinerant exorcists. And the itinerant exorcists, that is a sign of their teaching and of their religion, their Jewish exorcists. They have not accepted Jesus, but they're trying to use his name as an incantation of sorts, and they are shamed publicly so that public honor versus public shame. The separation makes it clear. Right? If you just stay in a bad church, you know what that does? It makes it so it's not clear that you're distinct. It makes your distinctive message not distinct. It ruins the distinction and makes the judgment of God difficult. Lot, staying in Sodom, delayed God's judgment on it. He had to pull him out. When he pulled him out, he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. It wasn't before. It was after he pulled him out. And so the presence, the union of believers with unbelievers has the effect of preserving those people and delaying providential judgments. And so you are giving your hedge of protection to unbelievers by being in union with them. Promiscuous relationship with unbelievers prevents the clear judgment of God and the clear blessing of God from falling on who it should fall. Because of the separation and the providential judgments, fear fell on all of them. And the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. Brothers, you do not have the power by yourself to cause fear to fall upon the people of Phoenix, Arizona. But by living in such a way that we are separate and by preaching clearly the truth, the judgments and blessings of God can more clearly fall where He intends to display those things. Now, He might choose, after you do what is right, He might choose to make it so that externally you go through hard times. And that's testing. But we know that blessing comes, whether it comes immediately or whether it comes after testing. And so we can rely upon God who is faithful to do these things. This results in the magnification of the great name of the Lord of Jesus Christ. When we talk about glorifying God, there's two ways that God is glorified. Either we grow in the knowledge of God, in which case he is made bigger in our sight. or there's a display of his greatness, that magnification of display. When we live in such a way as to show that we think God is great, it makes him look greater to other people. He isn't made greater, but he's made to look greater to other people, because what we do in times of difficulty helps us to be a powerful witness to point to what we actually believe about God. Now, verse 18, and many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. The fear results in this confession of sin. It results in repentance. They're confessing and telling their deeds. They're admitting that it's wrong and admitting that they did it. They're looking to take responsibility because they know that God is great. He knows all. He is judge. He is all-powerful. And so they who believe they confess and tell their deeds. So there is this general magnification of the name of Jesus Christ. And then there's an increasing consistency of the believers as they confess their sense as they take responsibility for what they have done. Now, verse 19, how does that how does that manifest itself? There's not only the acknowledging in the mind and then the acknowledging in the word, but then there's a following up to remove not only acts of sin, but to destroy the occasions for sin, to destroy the sources of temptation. Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. This is a public repentance. They're known, obviously, clearly known for having practiced magic. And so they're now publicly showing they're not practicing magic. And they counted up the value of them. They totaled 50,000 pieces of silver. So these pieces of silver, we're not told which pieces of silver are, if we assume that they are the smallest piece of silver, which is roughly equal to the day's wage for a laborer at this time. Okay. And we're talking 50,000 days wages. United States of America right now, the average day's wage when you take into account benefits and so forth is close to $200. And so you go 50,000 times 200, you're looking at like millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. So that reality that the equivalent today of millions of dollars of material being destroyed in response. In our own day, we think about things that we are tied to in terms of the philosophy of the world and being able to be separated out. If you were, if there's some godless form of music that you found particularly attractive, if there's something that you were tied to, if there are pieces of art that you find particularly attractive, movies, whatever, whatever these things are, if they have power over you, if there's something that you're associated with, there's a public association, or there's power over you and they just draw. you want to separate yourself from the occasions for sin. It might not be sinful in all cases to own it. You might say, well, you know, there's an academic way in which it might be useful for an apologist to own one of these magic books to be able to understand the content, be able to argue against it. Okay, sure. But if holding on to that piece of culture is for you a temptation to go back to it and to enjoy it, then brother, get rid of it. Destroy it. Give praise to God in that action of destruction. Now, there is, tied to this, a history. Back in Deuteronomy. This is not new. This is something that is commanded. scripture Deuteronomy chapter 12 the verse 4 verses of it say these are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you to possess all the days that you live on the earth you shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree and you shall destroy their altars and break their sacred pillars and burn their wooden images with fire. You shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things." We think about Zechariah and the book of Zechariah tells us that When the knowledge of the Lord is filled the earth as the waters cover the sea, we have the expectation that little trinkets, like the bells on a horse's reins, will have, holy unto the Lord written on them. We remove all this stuff that points to false gods, and we replace it with things that point to the true and living God. That's the cultural mandate, that's subduing, that's what dominion looks like. We're working to add new and we're keeping to keep away what is harmful. We're destroying, sword in one hand, trowel in the other. Making and tearing down, making and guarding. We see an application of this in 2 Kings chapter 23 with King Josiah. And it says, now the king, this is 2 Kings 23 verse one. Now the king sent them to gather all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to him. The king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah and with him all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant, which had been found in the house of the Lord. Right? In Psalm nine, we talk about all the works of God being declared here. We have, all the words of the Book of the Covenant being read with Paul. He says in Acts 20 that he preached the whole counsel of God in Ephesus. All the works of the Lord, the whole Book of the Covenant, the whole counsel of God. This is the power to tear down the idols, to tear down the high places, and to cause the knowledge of God to fill the people so that the knowledge of God is filling that place. Verse 3, Then the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people took a stand for the covenant." Here's the public repentance. This is the same as this repentance, this confessing of sins amongst the believers. Okay? They're taking a stand for the covenant. They're re-covenanting here. And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priest of the second order, and the doorkeepers to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the articles that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the hosts of heaven. And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel." Now it goes on and talks about this actions all the way until verse 20. It goes through all of the tearing down of idols. What are you doing? Got like 16 verses there of idle tearing down. And then verse 21. There's this putting off and now there's putting on. You replace it with the things that mark the knowledge of God, that are markers of the knowledge of God. Such a Passover surely had never been held since the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. But in the 18th year of King Josiah, this Passover was held before the Lord in Jerusalem. Moreover, Josiah put away those who consulted mediums and spiritists and household gods and idols. all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might perform the words of the law, which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord. Now before him, there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, nor after him did any arise like him. The end of the section we're looking at today in Acts, Acts 19, verse 20. It says this, so the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. The more literal translation I think helps to make it easier to understand actually what's being said. It says, thus toward power the word of the Lord was growing and becoming mighty. There's a manifestation of the power of God in this knowledge that is spreading. There's a growing of the knowledge of God. The Word of God is eternal. It's the mind of Christ. That cannot grow. He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. But the knowledge of it by believers grows. Individuals have a deeper knowledge, and more individuals have that knowledge. And both of those effects are occurring here. Obedience to the Lord. confession of the truth, separation when duty requires, uniting with people that you have a duty to unite with, confessing sin, repenting of sin, putting off the old man, putting on the new man. These things are powerful. They are powerful. And it brings about a manifestation of the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is transformative. We look around and we are tempted to not expect the growth of power manifested. But brothers, Ephesus was a darker place than Phoenix, Arizona. Comments, questions, objections from the voting members? Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would cause the word of the Lord to grow toward power in our lives, in our homes, in our work, that it would occur in this church, that it would occur in our city and county and state, that the whole of the union would repent, the law of the Lord Jesus Christ would be the law of the land, that our liberties would be preserved to do our duty. We ask for these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.