This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
The magicians were able to replicate certain degrees of
those miracles, right? And so just because there's a
miracle that occurs doesn't mean it's the Lord.
The devil comes with lying signs and wonders.
A matter of fact, in the last days, when the Antichrist comes
on the scene and the false prophet, they'll be all kind of
miraculous that'll be occurring like we've never, ever
experienced. And there'll be a lot of people
thinking that he's the Christ, they'll be the Antichrist.
Don't be fooled by some of the supernatural things that happen.
Like in any superhero movie, there's a hero and there's a
villain. For every Batman, there's a
Joker. For every Superman, there's a
Lex Luthor. For every Spider Man, there's a
Green Goblin. Today, Pastor Clark is bringing
light to the fact that with God and the people he's using, he
grants them some supernatural abilities.
But there will also be those who are using some supernatural
powers or magic that does not come from God, but from the
devil. Now here's Pastor Clark in Acts
chapter 19 with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
We are in the book of Acts, chapter 19.
Acts is the story of the power of the Holy Spirit and the New
Testament Church over 2000 years ago when the church was birthed.
And it continues the work of the Holy Spirit.
He, God the Holy Spirit is still at work working in the lives of
people all around the world. And now in verse 11, we're
picking up 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. Interesting that that Laurie
would talk about holistic things.
You can't get any more holistic than a handkerchief or a a
headband that was full of sweat with the perspiration of the
apostle. Now you asked me how this kind
of stuff happens, how it works, I have no idea.
It's miraculous. And what's interesting with the
the apostles, and I'm not an apostle, there is no more
apostles in our day and age in the sense of the apostles that
Jesus ordained. But in the book of Second
Corinthians chapter 12, verse 2, it talks about the signs of
those apostles, those who were authentic apostles.
And the issue of, of Apostolic ministry is miraculous there.
There's different things that happen because of their calling
and their anointing by Jesus Christ that they're able to do.
Now you got to realize that Ephesus was a Pagan city.
It was full of sexual immorality, prostitution,
idolatry with the temple of Diana and all these different
edifices that they had in Ephesus at the time.
Ephesus would be like modern day San Francisco, sexual
immorality, whether it was fornication, adultery,
lesbianism, homosexuality, it was prevalent then.
And so sometimes the day we say boy, things are really bad.
The day they were always bad since the beginning of time in
the book of Genesis, that's when things really started going bad,
when we fell away from the Lord. So Paul's in this city that is
predominantly Pagan, there's very few Christians.
There's not even a church at this time.
So visualize yourself, your friend of Paul, he wants to have
some Bible studies. He rented a facility from a guy
that had some real estate that wasn't using it at certain hours
of the day, between 11:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon.
And he invited people like us at the time that were in the
community to come and study the Bible, study the word.
Of course, it would have been primarily the Old Testament
Scriptures, but he was writing letters.
So he was using things that the Holy Spirit had been giving him
that were eventually codified in what we call the day our Bible,
66 Books of the Bible. So as he's teaching these people
that the things of the Spirit, people like you and me, we're
sitting there and we're getting changed.
We're hearing the word. So all these things are
happening and they're learning. And so they're going out from
this Bible study every day. Can you imagine being in a
Bible? It's one thing to be in a Bible
study with me. I ain't anywhere near Paul.
OK, I'm lip synching what Paul wrote.
This is all what he, you know, Luke translated this and put it
into this book, the book of the Acts.
But these these are the this is the life of Paul, his ministry.
But to be able to sit with an apostle for six hours a day,
five days a week for over almost three years, you would be really
grounded. You'd really know what the Bible
was all about. But not only that, they were
going out and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
They were impacting the community and the provinces
around the area that Paul was ministering in at the time and
act. So the purpose of the church and
in our church to hear is to explode on the outside so that
people that don't know Jesus begin to hear about him and want
to know about him and they end up maybe coming here to hear
more about him. OK, or or another Bible church,
whatever. And so this is impacting the
whole known world. At the time the gospel was going
out in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And so Paul, not any was preaching because the gospel in
and of itself is the power of God and the salvation to
everyone that believes, to the Jew 1st and also to the Greek.
So I don't need to have a miracle in front of me before
I'm a Christian to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
the living God. The Holy Spirit does the miracle
in my heart to cause me to believe the message of the
gospel. And then when I believe that
message, then my life is dramatically transformed.
I'm saved, I become born again. I have new eyesight, I have new
vision, new passion, new desires, and my my life is, is
brand new and yours is too. When you come to faith in Christ
and that is the miracle of miracles, you know of someone
becoming born again, passing from death to light, from
darkness to light. And now our followers of God as
as opposed to followers of the devil in his lies.
And so not any though the preaching at the time time, but
Jews require a sign, it said. So signs are real important to
the Jewish people. The Greeks seeked after wisdom.
Jews seek a sign. So in order to authenticate the
message that Paul is proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah to a
predominantly Jewish population at the time these miracles
occurred. And so these handkerchiefs and
these weren't like things he was blowing his nose on.
These were sweat bands he put around his head when he was
doing his tent making. The aprons were the made out of
leather. And he used this to put his
tools in whenever he was making his living as he was preaching
the gospel and and making tents. And So what happened was I don't
know who came up with the idea. I know it wouldn't have been
Paul. He wouldn't have said we'll take
this and put it on someone sick and, and they'll be OK and
they'll be healed. No, that wasn't the way it
works. Somehow the Spirit of God, this
ended up getting some of this stuff out into these different
places. And when it touched the bodies
of some of these people, it says that they were delivered from
their sickness. Diseases left them and, and, and
not any of that evil spirits went out from them automatically
just by the touching of this point of contact of a man who is
highly anointed of God. It wasn't anything in and of
Paul. It was Christ in Paul that
enabled this to actually occur. Now, you don't really read about
this in any other part of the Bible.
You have to realize that the miracles in the Bible started
with Moses primarily, and then they were Elijah and Elijah, and
then they were Jesus and the apostles.
Those were the three stages of the ages of miracles in, in
church history and in the Bible. There's less than 100 miracles
codified or quantified in detail where we can read and study
them, tells us and John, Jesus did many other miracles that
there wouldn't have been enough books in the world to contain
everything he did. But God felt that it was
necessary to give us enough indication that he does work
within the miraculous realm. Now today I could RIP part of my
sweater off here. If you had a headache and, and
tell you to put it on your forehead, nothing's going to
happen. These charlatans on TV that sell
these things and tell you to send money in and they prayed
for them and, and they soaked their sweat in them.
If you send 50 bucks and they'll send you this cloth.
I mean, it's just nothing but con artists and RIP off.
This happened one time and you know, and other times, if you
read church history documents from way back in the early days,
there has been miracles that occurred that there was no
explanation for. People have laid hands on me and
prayed for me. And when I've been sick or
having a problem, and I've done the same thing for other people
and sometimes God shows up and brings healing and other times,
OK, you take the medicine, right?
That's just the way it is. I prefer to get the healing and
not take the medicine. But you know, if I got to take
the medicine, I take the medicine.
And you do too. But there's nothing wrong with
seeking God for a touch supernaturally.
There was a true story. And I saw the movie and I read
the history and it was authenticated that this guy,
Victarius was his name. And he was a very godly,
monastic kind of guy, praying all the time, a very holy man,
very saintly man. And Mickey Rourke, the guy
played in that movie, that boxing movie, he played the part
of this drunk coal miner that was at living at the time that
Victarius was living on this particular island.
And he somehow, I think he had a drinking problem and he fell off
a Cliff and paralyzed himself. So he's in bed and he can't
move. And Victarius is in bed with
prostate cancer. And this is what always
fascinated me. Here's Paul able to do miracles,
right? People getting healed,
delivered. Paul had a physical affliction,
the thorn in the flesh. He asked God three times to take
it from him. He didn't like RIP off his shirt
and put it on his wherever it was hurting and to say, OK, make
it happen. He had to suffer it.
And then the Lord said, hey, I'm not going to answer the prayer.
My strength is made perfect in your weakness, that the power of
Christ would rest upon you. So Paul had to deal with the
illness and the affliction that he had.
Everybody's going to die of something.
Even after Lazarus was raised from a dead miraculously, guess
what? He eventually died physically.
We all have to die physically. But so anyway, this this
nectarious guy, he's laying in bed and and Mickey Rourke, the
actor, he's laying there. Why would God allow me to have
this problem? I can't move.
What good am I going to be to my wife and my kids?
I can't make a living. He's depressed, he's complaining
and Nectarious just sort of laying there in agony and pain.
He just smiles as well. Maybe God will surprise you.
That's all he said. Well, this is wild.
So Nectarious dies. They come in, the nurses are
taking the shirt and everything off.
They throw the shirt on the bed to the guy, Mickey Rourke, the
actor laying there in the bed and within several minutes he's
completely healed and he's able to walk.
His body's restored. Now.
You can't reenact this stuff. You, you can't figure it out.
I mean, even when Jesus did healing, they were always
different. Sometimes he'd spit on the, the
dirt and get the mud and rub it in someone's eyes or some other
time a woman would touch the hem of his garment.
I, I all I know is that God is able to do the miraculous and we
can pray and ask him to do that. And sometimes we experience
that, but there's no guarantee. There's no man.
You can go to some woman that it's a holy person to ask him to
pray, and just because it's them, they're going to be able
to do something for you. It's only the Lord and he does
everything after the council of his own will, even the gifts of
the Spirit. He gives them out severally as
He wills. The idea of faith healers is not
biblical, but the the idea of the gift of healing is biblical.
But even the people that have been used by God to pray for
people and their health, and there's been evidence of maybe a
higher percentage of people being healed doesn't mean that
everybody's going to get healed. But anyway, this this instance
of this occurring in here was to get the attention of these
Jewish people. And it did in verse 13, and some
of the itinerant Jewish exorcist took it upon themselves to call
in 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 Skiva, a Jewish sheep priest who
did so. So these Jewish people at the
time, unbelievers, had some kind of capacity because they did
believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
So there was some anointing authority in their lives and I
guess they had experiences at times where they were used and
God worked through them to deliver people from demonic
possession or oppression. But their minds are thinking and
they're not even believers yet. Well, like Paul, praise in Jesus
name and there's, there's miracles that occur.
So let's try this. Let's see if it works for us.
Well, well, first of all, it's, it's humorous here.
What's going to happen because these, these sons of the, the
Jewish chief priests thought that maybe they could make some
new kind of ministry going on here.
And and it says in verse 15, the evil spirit answered and said,
Jesus, I know, and Paul, I know, but who are you?
Boy, that's scary, huh? They're in the house with this
demonic person, the spirit. They think they're going to have
an overcoming experience here and these demon demons going to
be cast out. And this is what happens in
verse 16. Then the man in whom the evil
spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them and prevailed
against them so that they fled out of that house naked and
wounded. Wouldn't that be something?
One guy, the strength of this person possessed by the devil,
was able to whoop 7 grown healthy young men and not any
beat them up but tear their clothes off and and have them
running out humiliated by what it was they tried to do.
The devil's always trying to replicate or duplicate the
miraculous. We remember Moses with the rod
and throw it down. It turns into a snake.
Well, God allowed that to happen when the magicians were able to
replicate certain degrees of those miracles, right?
And so just because there's a miracle that occurs doesn't mean
it's the Lord. The devil comes with lying signs
and wonders, a matter of fact, in the last days when the
Antichrist comes on the scene and the false prophet, they'll
be all kind of miraculous. That will be occurring like
we've never, ever experienced. And there'll be a lot of people
thinking that he's the Christ and he'll be the Antichrist.
And so this became known in verse 17 both to all the Jews
and the Greeks dwelling in Ephesus and fear fell on all
them. So we're in Greensburg here.
It's in the newspaper. Channel 4 News is down there
interviewing. We are all aware that something
spectacular happened and scary. And so we know there's problems
in Greensburg. There's demonic activity,
there's demonic activity everywhere.
There's satanic powers. There's a oh called there's
astrology, there's false religions, there's all these
kind of things that are happening in the day and age
that we live. And these are the things that
bind people into immoral lifestyles.
Someone doesn't this one day wake up and say, well, I think
I'm going to I'm a guy. So I think I want to have some
sex with a guy. I mean, that's, that is demonic.
It's not real. It's not, I don't care what any
psychologists or what any kind of secular humanists or what
they're trying to tell us in government now and all these
things, these things are not normal.
Matter of fact, Roman Empire fell because of the this
promiscuity and this increase atmosphere of gay and lesbian
lifestyle and abortion that eventually that nation was
destroyed. And we are this close right now
with testing God with what it is we're doing as a culture and
people saying good is evil and evil is good.
And we as Christians need This is why like we need to get out
of the building, have conversations.
We don't need to condemn people. We don't hate people.
We need to love them enough to tell them, hey, what you're
doing is sin and your sin will cause you to eventually be in
hell. That's the bottom line.
Now, I hope I'm not hurting anybody's feelings here today.
But if you're living in a lifestyle that is not God's will
and, and in his word, you're going to suffer consequences.
You already are. The amount of people who are
taking their lives that have tried this transgenderism and
all this crazy stuff out there, sex changes and all this, it is
unbelievable. You got to do the research, the
statistics, and you know, and it isn't unloving.
It's loving to tell people the truth.
It's unloving to just say, well, it's OK, That's whatever you
want to do, go ahead and do it. And so Paul wasn't that kind of
guy. And nor are we these kind of
people that just ignore these issues of sin today, even in our
own time and our own culture. And So what happened was they're
they're afraid now that the beginning of wisdom is the fear
of the Lord and depart from evil.
That tells us in Proverbs you're really catching on when you
begin to fear the consequences of your sin.
Don't play around with it anymore.
You don't justify, you don't say, well, that's OK and
everybody's doing it. No big deal.
It's a big deal. It's a big, big deal.
And So what happened was these people are are are starting to
get frightened. And whenever you have an
encounter with God to such a degree over your sin, and you
know you have one or two choices to make, you either continue in
your sin and you perish, or you get right with God and you
repent and you leave your sin. And this began to cause such a a
move of God's spirit. And the city of Ephesus, it says
that fear fell on them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was
magnified. That's what we need to have
happen today. At the name of Jesus, every knee
will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord to the glory of God the Father.
There is no other name given among men under heaven by which
we can be saved or must be saved.
Jesus is the truth. He's the way, the truth the
life. No man comes to the Father but
through him. So Jesus was magnified.
He said if he be lifted up, he will draw all men to himself.
Pray for Pastor Lewis and myself that when we preach the Word,
we're preaching the Word. With the name Jesus involved in
the word, because the Bible without Jesus is just a bunch of
words, but the Bible with Jesus can turn the world upside down.
And this is what was happening here.
Now we'll read. Many are intimidated now they're
fearful. And many who had believed came
confessing and telling their deeds.
Can you imagine Calvary today? Some of you guys are getting
saved. Hey, I'm not leaving today until
I tell you what God's delivered me from before I came here
today, I was sleeping around with every, every woman I could
find or whatever. I was chasing some guy down the
street or some woman says, well, I'm sleeping with all the
different girls out there in the community, you know, and the
Lord convicted me and I couldn't live that way anymore and I
repented. And I want to tell you guys what
Jesus did for me, right? If you ever have a testimony,
let me know. Because the more we hear what
the Lord's done, the more he's glorified and the more people
hear they say, well, maybe he could do that for me.
People are trapped in sin. People don't just decide one day
that they want to be immoral. They start becoming immoral and
then they're trapped. They don't know how to stop
being immoral. And they're they're in bondage
and they're under the influence of the devil and says.
And so these people, they're 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. Now, I've been a student of all
kind of religions my whole life, and I was into Buddhism for a
while and I was into, you know, reading whatever was esoteric or
ocaldic, and I didn't even know what I was doing at the time.
It just fascinated me. What makes the world go round
and why is this happened? Why is that?
And how far is the sky going? And what's truth?
You know, until I came to know Christ, I had no idea what truth
was. So I have a bunch of books and
there are a lot of them are in my garage now in a box.
This, I don't know. What am I going to do with that?
Maybe we should have a bonfire this summer somewhere.
I'll bring my old books and you bring yours too, you know.
But anyway, this is what was happening here, right?
They were convicted about the things they were reading, the
things they were studying, and they brought their books
together and they burned them as sight of all.
So all the people in Ephesus, there's a big deal going on
here. People were magnifying the Lord.
People are confessing their sins.
They're bringing all their garbage and they're porn and
whatever it might be and they're going to burn it.
And it says they counted up the value of them and a total of
50,000 pieces of silver in today's that could be between
1:00 and $5,000,000. I read back and that day that
silver was worth about $10,000, which is a lot of money.
It was enough for 150 people to make their livelihood for a
whole year. That's how much was destroyed in
this in this fire. And as a result of that, what
happened, it says the word of the Lord grew mightily and
prevailed. So we have a calm church here
today. Usually I'm a calm pastor
because a lot of you fall asleep when I teach.
Hey, so you have a very nice voice.
You know what a day my voice is a little bit more, you know,
whatever, you know, I don't know, but you know, you're not
falling asleep today as much as you normally do.
It's not that the message is any better, but the the text is
better because we're reading about the Lord being magnified.
And, and so as a result of the word, the message in the gospel
is growing mightily. It it's prevailing in the world,
it's prevailing in the community.
Thanks for joining us on today's edition of Living Waters of
Grace, a ministry of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.
Today, Pastor Clark is teaching about the book of Acts.
And as we learn more about Acts, it becomes clear that the early
church didn't miss a single opportunity to share the gospel.
In nearly every chapter, you see apostles like Peter and Paul
stepping into conversations, crowds, and crises with
boldness, ready to proclaim the name of Jesus.
Their example challenges us to consider how we might step into
gospel moments in our own lives. What doors might God open this
week for you to speak truth, offer hope, or live out your
faith in a way that points others to Him?
The story of Acts reminds us we are part of the same mission.
Today, let's live with eyes open and hearts ready to respond.
We hope you are challenged by today's message.
If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we'd love to see you in
person this Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St., Unit
6B. For more information, visit
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