Acts 19:8-17 - Homiletics

The spiritual, the supernatural, and the natural.

The faithful labors of Paul in the synagogue of the Jews and the room of Tyrannus, the unusually extensive employment of the miraculous, and the discomfiture of the exorcists suggest to us—

I. THAT THE SUPERNATURAL IS TO BE SUBORDINATED TO THE SPIRITUAL . ( Acts 19:8-12 .) We remember how our Lord refused to gratify the unworthy craving for signs and wonders in his day: "There shall no sign be given to this generation" ( Mark 8:12 ); repeatedly he discouraged the demand for the miraculous, because it interfered with the teaching of truth, and so with the furtherance of his spiritual work. We find Paul making comparatively little of these great "gifts;" his chronicler does not enlarge on them, but disposes of them in very few words, no doubt reproducing and reflecting thus the mind of the apostle; he himself does not make a single allusion to them in his address to the eiders at Miletus ( Acts 20:1-38 .); he disparages rather than magnifies their importance in his Epistles ( 2 Corinthians 13:1-14 ., 14.). We are led to feel that the "special miracles wrought by the hands of Paul" are of very secondary value, as compared ( Acts 19:11 ) with his diligence in persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God" ( Acts 19:8 ), and with his enterprise and zeal in so acting that "all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks" ( Acts 19:10 ). We need not sigh for departed times when the gospel had some sanctions and supports which it has not now. All that is of first importance, all that is truly redemptive and Divine, abides with the Church of Christ, and will remain for ever.

1. The knowledge of the living and saving truth.

2. The love of it, and joy in it.

3. The privilege of making it known.

4. The accessibility of those heavenly influences which make it powerful and efficacious to our own hearts and to the souls of those whom we address.

II. THAT THE NATURAL CANNOT DO THE SPECIAL WORK or THE SPIRITUAL . These exorcists ( Acts 19:13 ) had probably been so far successful that they had induced their fellow-citizens to believe that in them resided a strange power over the insane or the possessed. But when they used the name of Jesus in order to effect their object, they failed signally and disgracefully. In this respect they are types of those who attempt to do God's work without Divine weapons. Only the spiritual can do spiritual work. It is true that unspiritual men may

But it is also true that

Let us: