So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. – Acts 19:20 NKJV
There’s that word. It’s kind of like therefore.
So…
If the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed then, wouldn’t it be a great idea to find out what the so was referring to. After all, when we see a church that is growing, a social media team that is killing it, a youth group that is on fire, or any other possible areas of success, we usually look at them and find out how they got there.
It would make sense, then, if we were to find the OGs of Christianity having major success, that we might look and see what they were doing to get there. After all, does the Word change? Does God change? If the Word worked then, it will work now. If what they did then led to success, it will lead to success now. That is, unless we don’t believe the Word like we say we do.
So starts verse 20. Let’s go all the way back to the beginning of the chapter and see how the so all started. Get your own Bible and read it out of there so you know that God is actually saying this, not someone from behind a screen.
Verse 1-2 says, “And it happened, while Apollos was at Corinth, that Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus. And finding some disciples he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” So they said to him, “We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.”
So…all starts with Paul asking a question of fellow believers. “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” To some of us, this may sound like a strange question. When we’re born again, of course we received the Holy Spirit. Why would Paul ask this? At this point, Paul has a conversation with the believers in Ephesus, and we see that there are actually two different times that a believer receives the Holy Spirit. There’s the first time when we are born again. Every Christian knows that.
But then there’s this debated second time that half the church believes and half the church rejects. That’s what we see in verse 6—“And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.” Go back and read all of this for yourself.
Historians agree that this event here in Ephesus was 20 years after Pentecost, so people were still first hearing about what the Bible calls “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” So now you have the Apostle Paul, who is baptized with the Holy Ghost and speaks in tongues, and you have a bunch of believers who are newly baptized in the Holy Spirit and speak in other tongues.
If you go on and read verses 8-10, you see that Paul went to the synagogue and spoke boldly for 3 months. He even reasoned and tried to persuade people. He did what a lot of Christians do on college campuses, try to reason with people through their intellect. He tried to reach people through their minds and their souls. Apparently it didn’t go so well in the synagogue because he stopped doing it and then just started teaching and reasoning at a lecture hall, what the Bible calls the school of Tyrannus.
He did that for two years. For two whole years, he taught. The Bible tells us that both Jew and Greek heard the Word of the Lord, but it doesn’t say much was done with it. It doesn’t say that there was a great revival.
Then we get to verse 11: “Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul…” Notice that it was God who was doing the miracles, not Paul. They were done through the hands of Paul, but it was God who worked the miracles. Has God changed? Isn’t He the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow? If this is true, then what is the biblical reason why we’re not seeing God do miracles today? After all, it’s not because the Apostles passed away. God did the miracles, not them.
So God was doing miracles by the hands of Paul. Apparently, this was getting him noticed. This is where we get the story of the seven sons of Sceva who tried to replicate some of the things that Paul was apparently doing. They failed.
The miracles that were happening in the ministry of Paul were so great that other non-Christians were trying to do similar things to get noticed as well. If this were happening today, I’d dare say that Paul would be making the news, and so would the seven sons. In verse 17, it says that fear fell over the Jews and Greeks in Ephesus—not because of what Paul was doing, but because of what nonbelievers were doing that didn’t amount to anything.
They saw the power that Paul had, and then they saw the lack of power that others had. It was after this that many believers came “confessing and telling their deeds (verse 18).” I know that when we hear the word confess, we think about sin. However, that’s not the only type of confession. In fact, the Bible has more to say about confessing the Word than confessing our sin. There’s more talking about confessing what the Word says about us and who God is and who He is to us, than our sins.
Of course, then there’s the part about their deeds. Were these the deeds of their past sinful lives or were these the deeds that these new believers were already doing as children of God? Honestly, the Bible doesn’t give a clear answer. The Greek doesn’t give a clear answer. We do know this though—along with verse 19, we see that there were many people who had their lives radically changed and were testifying about it. Verse 19 tells about witches and wizards (those who practiced magic) who brought their demonic books to be burned. People’s lives were radically changed.
Then we get to verse 20, So…
So what came before so? Paul came to a city and found believers who had not been baptized with the Holy Spirit, and they were baptized. The fire of God fell on them just like on the day of Pentecost and they spoke in tongues. Just like believers do all around the world today, they received the promise that Jesus gave to all believers. Then he preached the Gospel for a time period that seemed like it did nothing.
But when things seemed to change is when the miraculous started happening. Things changed when the power of God started to flow and God worked unusual miracles through the hands of Paul.
That seems to be the key for the Word of the Lord to grow mightily and prevail. Believers need to be filled with the Holy Ghost according to what Jesus promised. The Word needs to be preached. And the miraculous needs to be in operation. I’m sure there’s more to it than that. In fact, just by knowing the Word of God, we know there is more. There needs to be prayer involved. Without prayer, God can’t do anything.
After all, he said whatever we loose and bind on earth will be loose and bound in Heaven. We have to do something. We have to seek Him for the miraculous. We have to preach. We need to be filled.
If you want to see the Word grow mightily and prevail, you have to do these things. Without it, it just isn’t going to happen. If Paul had to do it, so do we.
Leave a Reply