I told you earlier, we're going to be in second Timothy, chapter four in the New Testament, verses one through eight. And in order to do that, I need to kind of back up. I'm going to give you some background that comes from the New Testament Book of Acts, chapter 19. And I'm not going to read the whole thing. I'm just going to tell you a few things along the way.

Going to take a few minutes, and I think it's a useful background. There's this guy named Paul that was an apostle of Jesus. We've talked about him for the past few weeks. If you haven't been here for those, you can just go back and listen to our back catalog, I guess, or read the Scriptures. That'd be a good idea.

Don't act like you all do it every day. Some of you skip like six, seven or 10 days in a row. Okay. No. All right.

It's okay to laugh if I'm funny or not funny. If I tried to be funny and it wasn't funny, you can laugh at me, not at my joke. That's okay. But the Apostle Paul, what he started out doing was for a lot of time he ministered in obscurity in his kind of hometown region. And we don't know much about what he was doing then, except he was just faithfully preaching on somewhat of a small scale until there was something big that happened in the early history of the Christian church.

And that was in the town of Antioch, quite a bit north of Jerusalem, where kind of the center of Christianity had begun. And in the city of Antioch, there was something that happened where people went and preached, not just to Jewish people, that Jesus was a Messiah, but they realized, as Jesus had said, that he was the Messiah for all people. And so they started proclaiming the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ to gentiles, to non Jewish people. And those people became believers that Christ was for them, that he saved even them. And so they began saying, well, what do we do with this?

I guess we've got to go to church. So they show up at church with all these Jewish believers in Christ and these Gentile believers in Christ, and they start getting along, which is great. They hadn't been doing that so well. I mean, it's kind of one of those coexist things, but not really we're the same, you know. Now they start saying, we're unified in Christ.

We are the same in that sense. So a report of this gets down to church headquarters in Jerusalem. Now, this can go one of two ways Sometimes when church headquarters gets a hold of something, it can go terribly wrong. There's plenty of times where some people in some place of power made some decisions that affected all the way down to the local churches and were like, oh dear, now we've got to kind of do whatever they said. And then sometimes, though, they get it really right.

And in this case, they got it right. They sent a young man named Barnabas. We've talked about him recently. Barnabas was a Levite. He was from the class of kind of priests that ministered in the house of the Lord.

And so they sent him. He was given this name because he was a very encouraging young man. They called him the son of encouragement. They sent Barnabas to Antioch and they basically were like, get a hold of what's going on, figure it out for us, maybe send a report back. He went a little bit rogue, I think, I'm not sure.

But instead of sending a report back to Jerusalem, he just sees the hand of God working here. And he'd heard about this guy named at the time Saul, later known as Paul the Apostle. And he hears about, he knows about Saul and he says, well, I can hop on a boat and see Saul this afternoon, or I can take several days of walking down to Jerusalem. I'm going to go get Saul. So he goes up, he gets Saul, brings him down, says, hey, I know you've been preaching up here, but there's some work that's going on and I think you're the guy for it.

And so together they're ministering there in Antioch for like a year and a half, I think, if I remember right, and then God, they're having a prayer meeting and everything that happens in the Book of Acts, by the way, nothing major happens without the people of God praying. Until the people of God join in a time of serious and devoted prayer, nothing happens. When they join to pray, something happens. So the thing that Barnabas does, he brings Saul down. They start ministering there for a long time.

The church lays hands on them. They're having a prayer service and God says, set them apart for the work to which I've called them. So they lay hands on them and they send them out on what's known as Paul's first missionary journey. He takes four of them, as we kind of decipher it, reading through the Book of Acts. And what he does is he goes around to different towns and cities, usually goes to a synagogue first and proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah, the long awaited hope of the Jewish people.

The synagogues is where the. The Jews would congregate every. Every Saturday, every Sabbath day. And. And so he would naturally go to where his people were that had the Holy Scriptures.

They were the covenanted people of God from way back through Moses and back to Abraham and all this. And so they're saying, okay, you've been expecting the Messiah, Good news, he's showed up. His name is Jesus, and let me declare him to you, and you can put your faith in Christ. That's what Paul would do. Sometimes there would be great receptivity of this.

Sometimes he would. They would try to kill him, literally. Like, I mean, it's just I've preached some bad sermons today. Who knows? Might be one of those at the end of this, we'll see what happens.

You know, you never know. When you start out, you're like, this is gonna be great. Then you're like, oh, man, that one really flopped, you know, oh, well, who knows? But I've never preached one so bad. I think that people wanted to kill me.

I hope to keep that record through my whole time that I preach, you know, although I remember reading writings from John Wesley to talking about different places he would preach. And apparently people didn't like his message either, which was just the Gospel. And sometimes they would throw stuff at him, like clods of dirt and rocks. And he said, we were preaching. There was clods and stones all around us raining down.

But we persisted nonetheless. It's like, what? And then one time he says, you know, I was preaching. It looked like a storm was coming. I kept preaching, and then as soon as I stopped, it began.

So, you know, just like a lot of opposition to his message, but he persisted nonetheless.

Paul, he goes around sometimes, gets kicked out of a city. He keeps preaching the Gospel, and all along the way, he keeps cultivating new leaders. He had this gift as an apostle to recognize that this young man has something in him that God's going to use. And he would take that, and he would, like, bring him along with him on the journey, like, hey, you're traveling with me now, son. And he come along with him.

He'd teach him up, he'd raise him up and then send him off somewhere to minister. We spend so long in so many of our churches today, sometimes almost as much time as it takes to become a medical doctor, you know, trying to prepare people for ministry. And you know what? You know what? There's absolutely no amount of college or seminary education that fully prepares you for the intricacies of leading a congregation and all the stuff that happens.

And all the things that you end up getting into, you could have never prepared for all of that with any amount of education. You get that from that cool, that school of hard knock. You have to even learn about sound equipment and all that stuff and try to diagnose what's going wrong with it. Unless somebody here really knows a lot and you want to take over, I'm happy to turn it over to you. But anyway, I don't know what that crackle was about.

Hopefully there's no more of it. All right, so Paul is going around doing all this stuff. One of the young men we talked about him a couple weeks ago that he picks up is a young man named Timothy. I think we talked about this two weeks ago. Timothy was a.

His mother was Jewish, but his father was a Greek, so he wasn't considered by the Jewish people to really be one of them. And Paul takes him. He's like, you're with me now. He almost adopts him spiritually, although that's not fully the language. But that's the closest I can understand is like a spiritual adoption where he says, I'm now taking you under my wing, and I'm proclaiming that you are good enough, you know, you're good enough to minister in the Church of Jesus Christ.

And so he trained him for a while. Timothy was probably between 16 and 20 ish years old when Paul gets a hold of him and he starts traveling with him. And by the time he puts Timothy out kind of into doing ministry on his own, he puts him at this church in the town of Ephesus, and that's what Acts 19 has to do with. And so we'll talk about that in a second. But he puts Timothy in charge over this church.

And as a young man, that's probably 25 to maybe early 30s by our best understanding of it. And so he's still quite young. When I came to this congregation, I was in my young 30s. I had some of the older folks that I didn't know, they, you know, made pastors that young. I'm like, okay, I wanted to come back and say I didn't know God had children this old.

So I. I only said that to one person. Only to one. Only to one. She deserved it anyway. She was the same one that asked us when we were gonna have children.

And I looked at my wife and said, let's. Let's get on that, you know, and she clutched her pearls and walked off. I was like, took care of that conversation real fast. So anyway, it was a fun Time. So, Paul, you're welcome.

I'm sorry for sharing that. Not really. So Paul, he turns to. Turns Timothy loose on this town and ends up writing two letters to him that we have record of 1st and 2nd Timothy. Biblical names of the books are real creative.

You know, some of them, like, in the first few books, it's just they literally took the first word and they're like, yeah, that's the name of the book. The first word is the name of it. Okay. Anyway, so Paul takes Timothy and he puts him in charge of this. And then he has to keep writing them letters, like, all right, sorry, I put you in a really tough spot.

Here's what you need to do. And he keeps giving him this encouragement and this, like, guidelines for how to do it. So I want to tell you a little bit, because if you just read it, I promise you'll get kind of, like, bogged down in it. And so I want to summarize mostly from Acts, chapter 19, and just some of the surrounding things that tell us what was going on in the city of Ephesus. Ephesus was well known for being a place that had the temple of Artemis, the kind of this, like, crown goddess that they worshiped.

And they believed that an image of her had fallen from heaven. So they kind of set that up in the temple. They worshiped her. There were people that were making their living off of making, like, little figurines and idols of her and selling them to people. And so that comes into play, and we'll look at that in just a minute.

But the background of what had happened in Ephesus was. Paul had been there for a little bit.

He. Well, he had met this couple named Ananias. No, sorry, not Ananias. Inspire. They were.

We talked about them recently. They died. The other ones, Priscilla and Aquila. He meets Priscilla and Aquila, he shares the gospel with them. They become followers of his.

And then they meet up. They're kind of. They had, like, homes in three different cities, and they meet up with this guy named Apollos. Now, Apollos was from Egypt. He was from Alexandria.

If you know your history, you know, Alexandria was a very highly educated place. They had a library there that supposedly contained, like, all the known knowledge of the world that mysteriously burnt down. I say mysteriously because I think somebody wanted that knowledge erased. And if you're into any kind of conspiracy theories, you're like, wait a minute. They burned it.

Who? Who's they? I don't know. We never know who the they is, but they are always There, right? Am I right?

Okay. Anyway, so they burned down the library because some of this knowledge apparently needed to be hidden for some reason. But it was still a well studied, well, you know, very highly educated populace there. And this guy Apollos had come from Alexandria, but also just through some historical documents, not in the Bible itself, but from church history. We know that there were disciples of John the Baptist who, who had migrated probably after John had been beheaded by the ruler Herod.

Some of his disciples continued carrying on his message. They continued proclaiming the message that John did, namely repent for the kingdom of heaven isn't near, the Messiah is coming. So they went around and proclaimed that. And it's a good message, It's a message of hope because the Israelites have been hoping on the Messiah to show up for a long time. And this guy was proclaiming the message that he's right around the corner.

In fact, if his disciples had paid attention, he actually literally pointed him out. He's like, there, that's the guy. He takes away the sin of the world. And he like points at him as Jesus is walking across where John's baptizing. But some of these guys we know had been even a little bit jealous of Jesus because John Jesus disciples start baptizing people and they say, hey, John, his disciples are baptizing more than you are.

And John says, that's great. He must increase and I must decrease. Well, after their leader is gone, he's beheaded, he's gone. They decided to carry his message and teach it to other places. Some of them went down to Alexandria.

And so it's more than likely that some of the disciples of John the Baptist were the ones that had taught Apollos. And Apollos then goes from there and he starts traveling around. This is the Roman Empire, you can kind of go anywhere you need to. And he goes traveling around the Roman Empire and going to different places and he's proclaiming this doctrine, this teaching that the Messiah is coming. And it's a good message, it's a deficient message, it's not complete.

He's only got part of it. And so he's baptizing people into that. And they're like, okay, I'm going to repent of my sins. I'm going to be prepared for the Messiah. And then they're just kind of in a holding pattern.

They're just kind of waiting there.

Priscilla and Aquila show up and they meet him there in Ephesus and they're like, hey man, great story. Is that it? He's like, yeah, they're like, there's more. Like, Jesus actually came. Like, he lived, he died, he rose again, he ascended into heaven.

He's like, oh, really good news. Like, I can preach that part now. And so they educated him more fully, more completely about the truth of the Gospel. And. And he goes from there.

I think he's like, oh, man, I messed this up so bad in Ephesus. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to go on to the next city. He goes to Corinth. Now, the Apostle Paul had already been ministering in Corinth.

They're his, like, most problematic church. Okay. If you read the letters of Paul, Corinth was just. They were messed up. These people loved.

Like, they're like, yeah, we followed Jesus. Let's go sin. And they're like, hey, guys, you need to stop doing that. They're like, okay, we follow Jesus and like, hey, let's go do this new sin, you know, this is great. Hey, we can still kind of worship the idols, you know, because everyone else is doing it.

He's like, stop it. Just constantly he's having to tell these people to cut it out. So Apollos goes there and he ministers. Later on, Paul would say to them, some of you guys need to calm down with your allegiances. You know, some of you are like, I follow Apollos and I follow Cephas and I follow Paul and I follow Jesus.

He's like, listen, Apollos, like, I planted a seed and Apollos watered it. Or Apollos planted a seed and I watered it. You know, just like he's telling them, like, we're all working together and we're each playing the part or the role that we have. So sorry. I think he said that to the church in Ephesus later.

Paulus planted a seed and I watered it. So Paulus goes there, he has a desire to preach it. Says he was very fervently preaching in Ephesus, where he kind of gets his start, but he gets it wrong. And so when this couple shows him the truth, he takes that, moves on to another city and proclaims the truth of the gospel there. Meanwhile, Paul, he's been back kind of to home base in Antioch.

He leaves again, goes up to Ephesus. Ephesus is in, like modern day Turkey area, Asia Minor. And he goes up to Ephesus and what he finds when he gets there after Apollos has moved on from there to Corinth, Paul finds there 12 disciples of Apollos. And so these men have been Kind of continuing on the work that Apollos had started them in. And Paul says, hey, hang on a second.

Like, we're kind of on to the same thing here, but you're missing something. Tell me, what baptism were you baptized into? They said, John's baptism. He's like, oh. So he tells them the rest of the Gospel, just like Priscilla and Aquila had told Apollos.

They buy into it, they believe in it, they're baptized, and then they're filled with the Holy Spirit and begin speaking in other languages. Like, God has put his stamp of approval on this message now for them. And so they receive the Holy Spirit. Things are going great. Paul teaches there for three months in the Jewish synagogue.

He wears out his welcome because some of the men in the Jewish synagogue get a little bit upset that he is proclaiming the fulfillment of the hope that they had. And he's drawing a crowd. He's drawing a bigger crowd than they could draw. These people, like the crusty old guys, you know, have their routine, their set ways. They're like, I can't believe it.

I can't believe all these people that are coming to listen to him here. We've got to stop this. Have you ever noticed that there's some people that just can't be around when, like, fun is happening? You know, they just really want to quash any fun because, like, we have to be serious. Some of you may be in the room right now.

Okay, got it. All right. So they drive him out. They like, yeah, you can't do this here anymore. So he starts, I guess, renting or borrowing a lecture hall.

And he goes to his lecture hall every day for over two years. And it says in Acts 19 that people came that were from all of Asia. Now, not Asia, like, we think of it like that's a huge continent, but Asia Minor, like the region of Turkey, modern day Turkey, that kind of whole area. They start traveling in to hear the teaching of Paul about the Messiah. And as they're coming, the church is growing.

There's very little conflict happening for a time that's there. These people are traveling from all over so much that the scripture says that all of Asia heard the Gospel. Because of what was happening during these two years and other things were happening, though miracles are happening. So many people are being healed, delivered of demonic possession, all these different things that even they would, like, hand Paul a piece of cloth, a handkerchief, something, and have him pray over it. And they would carry it to people that couldn't travel there.

And the presence of God would be anointed on that so that those people would receive healing. Like I pray for the Spirit of God to move in such a way in our midst today. I pray that God would find us faithful enough that we would have that desire to live that out, not for our own fame, but for the healing of people. And so these miracles are happening. Doctrine is being taught.

Like, he's not just preaching the same gospel message every day. Paul is opening the Scriptures and laying out doctrine, and he's teaching them who Christ is and what Christ has for them. And I want to pause here because I didn't put this in my notes, but I want us to hear. If you hear nothing else, I want you to hear this. Jesus Christ is for you.

Jesus Christ. Like the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for every person that's in here, whether you're in this room, whether you're watching online later or anything, it doesn't matter. Jesus Christ that died for you, he didn't die for good people. You weren't good enough. He didn't die for people that had merited or earned it.

You can't. You're not going to ever be good enough to earn salvation. If you could, Jesus wouldn't have had to come. But Jesus came because we were yet sinners. The scripture tells us when we were still living in our sins, Christ came and he died for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.

He. He gives us, he imparts unto us his own righteousness. You have to receive that. You have to receive Christ. You have to accept him and recognize that, yes, you have sinned, you are a person in need of salvation, and that Christ has offered you that salvation through his own sacrifice of his own blood.

So Paul is teaching biblical doctrine. He's writing biblical doctrine at this time. Like so much of the scriptures, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, through men like Paul and, and Peter and James and Jude and John, these men, these men are writing different things that the church later recognized the Holy Spirit had set out to be holy Scripture, divinely inspired words of God. And so this is what's going on in that time. Paul spending those years there, speaking to them in one place, which wasn't his norm.

He liked to travel a lot, but here he just kind of plants down and accomplishes a lot. But then something weird happens. I love this story. One of my favorites in the New Testament. There's these guys that show up.

They're known as the seven sons of Sceva. Just sounds like a skeezy name. Sceva you know, and so he's a Jewish high priest and his sons are traveling around together and they're doing some kind of thing to drive out demons that have been indwelling in people, taking over people's lives. And they're hearing all the stuff that Paul is teaching and they're thinking, okay, we need to get in on that. There was already somebody, Peter had had an interaction with a guy when he saw that they could lay hands on people and they would receive the Holy Spirit.

He had been a magician and he said, hey, how much does it cost for me to buy that ability from you? Peter's like, die with your money. Like your money's going to be worthless and you are too. If that's the kind of life you're going to continue living, you can't buy the gift of go. And so now these guys, they kind of want in on the same thing.

They see the power of God through the ministry of Paul and others and they're like, alright, we're gonna try to use that. Apparently there's power in the name of Jesus in this region. So we're gonna drive out demons by Jesus. But they don't know Jesus. They have no relationship with Christ, they have no background with Christ, no knowledge of Christ.

So they get in this room, there's a guy that's clearly demon possessed. By the way. You've met some of these people, you might have just thought they were crazy. And some of them just truly are. There are some situations where there's unclean evil spirits, demonic spirits that are, that are dwelling within somebody.

They've clung to their life and they are animating this person. They are what drives this person. And the demons know sometimes when to calm it down. We've had them sometimes that have showed up in church. I promise you this, they'll show up in church and they know how to act calm, they know how to blend in.

But there will be times where they'll try to agitate, they'll try to turn people away from the faith. They'll try to cause chaos and disruption and disorder. And so they have identified it. These seven sons of Sceva have identified somebody, this guy's demon possessed. We're going to go try this out.

They go into a room, there are all their. It's the guy and seven of them. And they said, in the name of the Jesus whom Paul declares, I cast you out. Now the demon speaking through the man says, hey, I know Jesus, I'm scared of him. I've heard of this Paul guy.

Yeah, who are you? He beats them up. Like, one guy takes on seven dudes. This is like a movie, you know, like, it's like Kill Bill or something. One of these movies where it's like one person taking on dozens.

Well, one guy takes on seven of them, and they leave broken, bloodied and naked. And if you start a fight clothed and, you know, clean and everything, and you leave bloody and naked, you lost, okay? And they get. They lose. They lose big time.

And how embarrassing is that? Man, I tell you.

So there's this. This thing that happens at the same time is there was a lot of magic arts going on. Listen, there's a lot of people that want to dabble in this stuff today. There's a lot of people that want to say, oh, well, Wicca's white witchcraft is good witchcraft. We do good things.

Or it's just tarot cards, or it's just palm reading, or it's just horoscopes, or it's just, what, have you no such thing? Everything that you're doing with that is inviting in demonic forces to rule in your life. And you can't be in Christ and messing with the things of Satan and expect to come out clean. And so what was going on there was you've got idol worship with Artemis of the Ephesians, you've got all this other stuff, and you got the people that are selling idols, and then you've got all these people that are demon possessed. Go figure.

Like, we've invited Satan in, and no wonder that he's going to inhabit the lives of people. And so along with that, you have these magicians, and they're trying to win over people and make money off of them. Well, these magicians start seeing the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they repent of their dark arts. Not only do they stop doing it, they take all their books and they burn them. Now, the scripture tells us it was like 50,000 pieces of silver.

Like, the price of silver today fluctuates a lot. I don't know. Like, Tom, we're hoping it goes up. You know, like, that would be great. For those that already own it, it is up.

All right. I don't know what that means, but okay, yeah, it's going up. All right. Good stuff. So the thing is, it's hard to say exactly, but we think it might have been worth equivalent today of about a million dollars.

A million dollars worth of beautiful magic books that they burn. I thought of this and I couldn't find the right clip, so I didn't Want to play it? But I'll just tell you, some of you might know there's this tattoo artist named Kat Von D. And I gotta tell you, I had. The only reason I knew she even existed was because. Oh goodness, almost 20 years ago.

Yeah, about 18 years ago, I worked at a gas station overnight for just three months. I was working there for three months. It was like I was starting a new thing in a little while, but it wasn't there yet. And I just needed something at least enough to make the mortgage payment, you know. So I worked there three nights a week for three months.

Buddy of mine was the manager of this gas station. He said, yeah, I need an overnight guy for these three days. I'm like, okay, I guess I'll do that. And I'll tell you, it was a trip. We were in view of the Capitol in Nashville.

But that didn't matter. Those people had already gone home by the time I started my shift at 11pm When I started my shift, we had locked the doors and we had a pass through window because we were also two blocks from like the projects. And so my customers were either like, I had one homeless guy would get 3 forties of old English 800 every night, put them in his backpack and sip on that throughout the night. Then I also had people from the projects that would go get high and then come with their munchies and they would give me this laundry list of junk food to buy with their, you know, EBT card and then buy like more beer and stuff with their cash. And so I was like, okay, so I'm just running back and forth to the cooler all night because the door is locked.

I got to go to the window with everything they need. And then they would just, you know, pay me and take off. So that was my nights until about 3pm we can't sell beer anymore. And then it would die down. At that point I'm bored because I've already.

When there's ever a gap, I'm like, mop the floors, restock what I'm supposed to stock. I've done all my little chores and now at 3am there's nothing to do. But I still have to be awake in case somebody randomly shows up. So they had a rack of magazines they put in. One of the things they had was the newspaper.

Well, it looked like a newspaper, but it was the mug shots, you know, oh my goodness. Some of those are hilarious what people actually get arrested for. Like, you were naked there. Why? You know, anyway, whatever.

Like, okay, wouldn't have done that in public. So. So seriously, I'm not exaggerating. There's so many of those. But then there would be this magazine rack.

You know, I'd read the mug shot thing. It only came out, you know, every week or two. So, like, after you read through that, that's kind of. You're not rereading it. So there's a rack of magazines.

So I'm reading, like, of course, like, the outdoors ones, the gun ones, whatever it is. First the car ones, then it's the gossip rags, you know, and I'm reading those. Then it's like the, you know, Cosmopolitan, whatever. I'm reading all of these magazines, and then there's one that's like the tattoo industry magazine. And so I'm like, flipping through.

I'm like, I wouldn't put all that on me, but hey, like, good job. Like, I can see the skill and art that goes into it. Okay. So I remember reading this article about this tattoo artist named Kat Von D. She later was on some, like, La Ink or something. I don't know.

I don't watch reality tv, but she's on some show. And I just. Her name sticks out at me because I remember seeing some of her work. I'm like, that is really good stuff. Well, a couple years ago, Kat Von D got baptized.

She had grown up Christian, you know, kind of done whatever she was doing, and she comes back to it and she gets baptized, and there's this beautiful thing. She's actually started having all of her tattoos kind of covered up. It's all black now, and she just kind of blacked out all the stuff that she had. But the thing that sticks out at me the most, especially concerning the scripture that I'm talking about, was she had collected a lot of just, you know, magical books, a lot of different things that had dark arts in them and witchcraft in them, because she said they were just beautiful. And the bindings had all this artwork.

They were really attractive. But as she started coming back to following Christ, she realized that there was a dark power in that. That was an evil power, and she had to get it out of her life. So she burned them. She got rid of them.

She didn't sell them. She didn't say, well, I can sell them to somebody else that wants them to make money. She realized that they needed to be gone from her life. It's also very interesting. I heard her on a podcast with a guy named Theo Vaughn, some of you might know him.

And Theo's on this interesting journey where he's trying to get into genuine faith in Christ. And he's trying to get past all the hurdles and obstacles that he has in his life of that. And it's interesting to hear him somewhat, very, like, openly and candidly talking to some of his guests. And me as a pastor, I want to be like, can I help you? You know, like, some of these questions he's asking.

I'm like, I think I have the answer. But I'm loving listening to him coming up with these, you know, trying to investigate these and come up with these answers. So he has Kat Von D on his podcast, and they're talking, and she said, you know what I found as I've been going back to church? Of course, you know, you look at her, you know, the way she paints her eyes, the way she's got all these tattoos that now she's covering up. She said, I've gone to church, and a lot of times when I visit different towns, I'll go to church if I'm out of town.

And sometimes I feel like I'm being shunned, like they're acting like it's not a place for me. And she said, you know, as I read the Bible, I do not see a dress code for attending church. Now, I wanted to argue and say, well, there's a couple things where it talks about, but, okay, yeah, that was a little bit different, you know, where it addresses certain things. But I hear what she's saying. You know, people are looking at her like, why are you here?

She's here because she trusts in Christ for salvation, and this is the place for her. Amen. This is what's happening in Ephesus. People are coming to Christ. They're burning their magic books.

They're getting rid of them. They're doing all this stuff. They're adhering to the doctrine that Paul is laying out about what it means to be a Christian and a follower of Jesus Christ. And all who are genuine are welcomed in. And those who try to sneak in the back way and still kind of just like, proclaim Christ, but not really live Christ, they get beaten, not by Paul, but by somebody plagued with a demon.

And I just love that. So it's just a funny story, you know, if you. Well, don't go full visual on it, but just watch those guys, like the old school, like the Western comics, you know, where they would put a barrel when they lost their clothes in a fight, you know, or something, and they'd have to wear a barrel. I don't know where all these barrels were found. You Know, I guess from back of bars or something, but just funny.

And so that's what these guys are, you know, they're leaving that doing while the church is meeting. I don't know if it's all happening at the same time, but I'm just picturing, like, this comic of, like, them running away, the books being burned, and Paul teaching everybody from all of Asia Minor. And it's this beautiful picture and this beautiful story. And I think of Matthew, chapter 7, where Jesus talks is in verses 21 through 23, Jesus says, There will be plenty of people who came to me at the time of judgment. And they say, lord, like, did we do all these things in your name?

We preached in your name. We prophesied in your name. We drove out evil spirits in your name. He'll say, away from me for I never knew you. There's people that were trying to slip in and act like they were part of it, and they wanted to proclaim the name of Christ, but they had no personal knowledge of Jesus Christ.

We talked about this in our Bible study on Wednesday this week as we're studying in. First, John, if you don't come and you're able to, I would encourage you to show up on Wednesdays at 11. We have a good time just discussing the word of God together. And we were discussing people that have infiltrated the church. They learn how to look like they belong because they can mimic the behavior, they can mimic the actions, but they never really come to Jesus Christ on his terms, accepting him as their savior.

And so that's what these seven sons of Sceva were doing. But there's a fear of God that lands on all the people in the surrounding region, both Jews and Greeks. And so that's what was happening there. So much so that these men who make their money off of crafting idols and things, those guys start losing money. And as they start losing money, they start an uproar.

They have this riot that goes on. The silversmith shows up, starts a riot. They drag some of the believers in front of the crowd. Paul wants to go in and address them. And the other brothers in the church say, no, Paul, you stay out of this one, okay?

You're just gonna make it worse if you show up in there, okay? And so they. They chant for two hours. It's honestly like, if you turn on the news and there's some like. Like crazy.

I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, but if these crazy liberal riots that they have around the city, you know, where there's just somebody screaming. And they're so angry about whatever the sign that they were given told them to be angry about. You know, it's that kind of a riot. And finally the city leader shows up and he's like, come on, that one was funny. Anyway, guys, whatever.

The city leader shows up and. And he's like, guys, what are you doing here? These guys aren't blasphemers of the gods. They're not like, they're not saying anything. Just leave them alone, okay?

Just use your brains and chill out for a little bit and go home. Because Rome might come in here and charge us with having a riot. And so sure enough, they do. And that's the city of Ephesus. And that's where Paul decides, you know what?

This young guy Timothy needs to go there.

Can you imagine it? I have a couple thoughts on that, but I want to hear yours. I want to read the Scripture to you from second Timothy.

These eight verses, listen to what Paul says to Timothy. I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the message. Be ready, whether it is convenient or not. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and instruction. 4.

There will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves because they have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things. And they will turn away from hearing the truth. But on the other hand, they will turn aside to myths. You, however, be self controlled in all things.

Endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist and fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as an offering, and the time for me to depart is at hand. I have competed well, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith. Finally, the crown of righteousness is reserved for me. The Lord, the righteous judge, will award it to me in that day, and not to me only, but also to all who have set their affection on his appearing.

A couple of things that Paul taught Timothy a few times over was about his age and saying, don't let your young age make you timid in the face of those who are older. Because Paul had equipped him to lead these people and he wanted them to. He wanted Timothy to promote sound teaching and doctrine. And. And so many of these people were trying to make up things that brought a crowd that made people happy, that excited them, that tickled their itching ears, but that weren't the truth of the gospel.

And so he says, timothy, I put you there to set things right. He even told him, he's like, I think what's going on with Timothy is he's stressed out a little bit. He says you need to drink some wine every now and then. Timothy, I know I'm in a Nazarene church. I'm not supposed to talk about this, but it's in the Bible.

Okay? He says, timothy, you're, you're stressed out. You need to drink a little bit of wine. Oh, I know your commentary says the water wasn't good in that area. So he did it because water hurt his stomach.

No, no, he's saying you need to calm down a little bit every now and then. Timothy, like Amy's doctor told her to drink some whiskey sometimes. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're getting stressed out. Like maybe just unwind with a little bit of booze, you know, that's what Paul was saying to Timothy.

He didn't say get drunk all the time, Timothy. He just said, don't only drink water. Like, drink some wine. Like, some of you, it might be like, hey, you know, like, you know, maybe go see your doctor. Maybe they have a pill for that.

I'm not suggesting pills. I don't trust half the doctors. Three quarter, I don't know, maybe 90% of the doctors out there, all they want to do is write prescriptions every now and then, though, they get it right. And sometimes you need to take those pills, sometimes you need a second opinion. But what am I?

I'm just a pastor. I don't know anything. So, by the way, that's the opinion of most nurses, right, Jen? Like, yeah, most nurses are like, yeah, that's true. So, like, I get some of those opinions from nurses, actually.

What do they know? They're just nurses. Yeah, right. So doctors get schooled by pharmaceutical companies. Nurses learn medical health.

Okay, there we go. That's my proof. Paul's teaching Timothy, like, you need some medication for what you're going through because it's a rough life, but never turn your back on Christ. He's the one that truly fulfills you. He's the one that gives you your calling and your hope and your purpose.

So this is the part, and I'm way later than I planned on being with this point. But anyway, I guess I was too excited about that passage. This is the part where I wanted to offer you the opportunity to say, what is something in those verses either in the story of Acts 19 or those verses in 2nd Timothy that really just kind of sticks out at you, that God's speaking to you in those verses or something that you're like, I'd really like to understand what this part means. Who's ready? Go.

All right.

The drink offering. Yeah, so the translation I read just said, I'm poured out as an offering. This one, what you're reading, says, poured out as a drink offering. So a drink offering was something that was given in a religious ceremony where literally you're just. It would be like either probably like an olive oil or a wine.

You would pour it out on the ground before God in a ceremonial way. And it's something that once it's there, it can't be partaken of anymore. A lot of offerings, especially when you read in your Old Testament, they would have, like, if it was a meat or a grain offering, it would be something. You would bring it to the place of worship, offer it to God, and then you would actually take it and scrape. Celebrate it.

You would celebrate the gift of God by having a feast with you and your family and friends that had come with you to worship. So you would bring your offering to God and then receive it back to celebrate. But a drink offering, when it's poured out, it's gone. And Paul's saying, I've just about expended everything. There's one verse where Paul says, I will gladly spend and be spent for your souls.

He's saying, I'm poured out like a drink offering. Like when I'm gone, you know, when it's poured out, there's no more left. And I've given that as a sacrifice to God. What else?

Yes, That's good.

Let me repeat that if you couldn't hear.

You can't just ignore the thing that's bothering or the thing that's causing you problems. You have to burn. You have to get rid of it. You have to destroy it permanently. Yeah.

Isn't that right? So many times we want to come back to it over and over again. Oh, but I loved it when I was doing that. Oh, I enjoyed that. No, you didn't.

Like, listen, I'll say this. I've said it before. Some of you have never heard me say it. So you get to hear it this time. Sin wouldn't be nearly so popular if it wasn't enjoyable at the time.

That doesn't make it a good thing. But it wouldn't be popular if it wasn't enjoyable. People enjoy their sin until it catches up to them or until it's caused them so many issues. And so, you know, Jesus Christ has called us away from a life of sin. And he said, that's not where you truly get joy and fulfillment.

What else? Forgiveness. What else?

Well, you don't have anything else. We can talk in Sunday school. Yeah.

Yeah. I think when I look at that, I think of Revelation, where it talks about the saints and elders around the throne casting their crowns down. And Paul talked about competing in the race to win a crown. The Roman world, they would receive this little wreath crown thing, but it was not for them to wear as their own mark of glory or honor. They were actually competing on behalf of a benefactor of some kind, or perhaps for the Caesar himself.

And so they would actually bring their crown to the person for whom they competed. So in Revelation, when they say they're casting their crowns before Christ, we are running the race faithfully on this earth, competing for the crown so that when we are in heaven before Christ, we can cast our crowns at his feet and say, I won this for you. That's the image or the metaphor that's painted in the scripture. And so I think it's probably we could just simply say, after the judgment of all things, when we are at peace eternally with Christ, we get to revel in the glory that is due to his name. Not any glory we have earned on ourselves, but any glory that we receive on this earth is to be directed to the Father in heaven.

Sam.