We’ve looked at new believers in Ephesus and the difference between the baptism of John and being baptized in the name of Jesus. The results of that baptism in the name of Jesus must have spread around the city of Ephesus – not just the Christian community but the Jewish community as well.

“God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.

Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas. In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.”

Scripture never says extraordinary things do not happen but there is never the sense that the apostles and disciples can do these things at will or that they have been given special powers over death and disease they can use however they wish. The instances of healing and raising from the dead – like Eutychus later on in this same city – are rare. But, they are also not highlighted by Luke in such a way to call particular attention to them. It’s almost incidental in a way. In verse 10 Paul is teaching for two years and then in verse 11 we are told God did extraordinary miracles through Paul. In the case of the slave girl possessed by a spirit who can tell the future it is only after several days of being followed by her that he turns around and releases her from the control of the spirit. It is not a major emphasis of his ministry. He doesn’t make much of it, in fact. It is not a full-time job or a way to attract attention to what he is doing. In that way, there are people with a particular gift from God who have distorted it and made it into something that draws attention to themselves. I don’t doubt the gift in spite of the abundance of fakers and charlatans but it was never the main thing for Paul, Jesus, Peter and John.

Too often, what crowds want is magic and not spiritual power. Spiritual power has a unique purpose. The form changes but the purpose is the same. Displays of power like this are intended not just to help one person but to spread the word of the Lord. They are not an end in themselves but accelerators of the spread of the Gospel. They are used to grow the church – just like in Acts 5:12-16: “The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.”

First, Paul understood that this was a gift and it is not possessed. It is not learned. There are no books or courses, tools or special words you can invoke. One of the requirements of magic is words have to perfectly follow a particular sequence. Magic is regimented because it is the power of control. Several places in the letter to the Ephesians Paul refers to this being God’s power and not his. Ephesians 1:19 says, “…and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead..” Ephesians 3:20 says, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…” It is always God’s power and not the possession of a person. You may have read how Luciano Pavarotti referred to his voice in the third person. He always said it was something that was independent of him. It was a gift.

Second, spiritual power is not exclusively the power to do miracles or to display it in such a way that causes people to rush around. There is another kind of spiritual power that is even more remarkable. It is power of God to enable a person to humble themselves, to put others first, to put aside pride, anger, vengeance and lust. It is the power of God to be like-minded, to be in one spirit and purpose with others. It is the power to do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but to consider others better than oneself and to look after the interests of others. It is the power to forgive and to love our enemies. In many ways, that is the more remarkable power. Those things are impossible without the power of God working in us but they do not attract attention or acclaim. But, in the end, they may be more miraculous because of that. The final chapter of George Eliot’s novel “Middlemarch” ends this way in describing the life of Dorothea Brooks. “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” I believe that type of spiritual power is, in the end, the most powerful because it affects so many more people.

Third, spiritual power comes at a price. I have spent more time in hospitals these last several years than any other time in my life. Not because of my health but friends and family are there. I’ve also been reading more books about health care and the lives of doctors. I think I’ve mentioned two of them to you – “Do No Harm” by the British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh and “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande. Both of them spend pages talking about the training of doctors to be objective and often dispassionate but there is a price to pay. They find their own humanity slipping away. Many of their patients want magic and I am sure that would be easier for the doctor as well. Magicians are artists and technicians but they stand to the side emotionally. The doctors I have seen who possess a particular kind of power have absorbed some of the pain. I think it is true for others as well. The lives of lawyers, teachers, pastors, and parents who possess spiritual power is always different from merely dispensing magic. Magic creates influence, awe, power, prestige and control. Power, spiritual power, refines a person. That is why Paul can say “Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin and I do not inwardly burn?” Yet, at the same time he can say he came with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.

There is something in us that is drawn to magic and to secret powers, isn’t there? Think of Merlin, Gandalf and Dumbledore. In fact, almost all the literature we remember as children was filled with the ideas that the world is an enchanted place and there are wizards who can do superhuman things. Where would Disney be without magic? A world without magic would be a dull place. A world without mystery would be colorless. A world without wonder would be cold and dry. C.S. Lewis who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia for children but whose audience quickly expanded to adults said about magic:

“There are 3 kinds of magic in our world. The peddling little magician magic…where people mess around with things they don’t understand. It’s movie magic. Then there is the magic of the evil side of things. The demonic forces. And that’s not really magic… it’s corruption of what really exists. And then finally there is the magic of the Holy Spirit of God which is the creation and maintenence of the universe. We don’t understand it… and we haven’t the faintest idea how He does it. But it’s real. That’s the deep magic.”

Magic in the way we encounter it in the seven sons of Sceva and Simon the Magician is real but it is false. It distracts people from the truth. This kind of magic begins with control and fear. It begins with the desire for power. That is why the word for sorcery in verse 19 is the same for obsessive control. In the attempt to control it always ends in slavery. Magic will never do once we have seen genuine spiritual power. Consider the story of Simon the Magician in Acts 8. He was a baptized believer and when he saw spiritual power he recognized something that went far beyond his magic. He lusted after it and that is what Peter recognized. He wanted it for himself and his own purposes.

We’ve all heard of the ancient alchemists who searched in vain for a way to turn lead or other common materials into gold. I didn’t realize it until this week that they were after far more than that. There were actually three things:

“Alchemy is the art of liberating parts of the Cosmos from temporal existence and achieving perfection which, for metals is gold, and for man, longevity, then immortality and, finally, redemption. Material perfection was sought through the action of a preparation (Philosopher’s Stone for metals; Elixir of Life for humans), while spiritual ennoblement resulted from some form of inner revelation or other enlightenment (Gnosis, for example, in Hellenistic and western practices)”

While we often think of them as simply desiring gold it was far deeper than that. They wanted the power to turn something common into something pure and perfect. They wanted to find ways to delay death and decay and they wanted to find spiritual redemption through special revelation and a superior knowledge. While alchemy was eventually replaced by science, there are still today people who desire the same. After all, what could be more common than silicon and still so valuable when purified? What is artificial intelligence but the desire for superior knowledge?

Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal and made a fortune when it sold to eBay. As well, he was an early investor in Facebook. He is a complicated figure and his passion is to defeat death – to find what the alchemists searched for with no success.

Disturbed by an early experience with death he never stopped being disturbed. “Even in adulthood, he hasn’t made his peace with death, or what he calls “the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.” For millions of people, Thiel believes, accepting mortality really means ignoring it—the complacency of the mob. He sees death as a problem to be solved, and the sooner the better. Given the current state of medical research, he expects to live to a hundred and twenty—a sorry compromise, given the grand possibilities of life extension.” Many of his friends have joined him. “The entrepreneurs are driven by a certitude that rebuilding, regenerating and reprogramming patients’ organs, limbs, cells and DNA will enable people to live longer and better. The work they are funding includes hunting for the secrets of living organisms with insanely long lives, engineering microscopic nanobots that can fix your body from the inside out, figuring out how to reprogram the DNA you were born with, and exploring ways to digitize your brain based on the theory that your mind could live long after your body expires.”

Kevin Kelly is the cofounder of “Wired” magazine and one of the finest writers and thinkers on the topic of artificial intelligence. In a TED presentation he talks about the evolution of technology. While most of us think about technology as something we use – a kind of magic in itself – Kelly thinks about it as having a life of its own that is evolving and re-inventing itself. “Even technology wants clean water. Is technology diametrically opposed to nature? Because technology is an extension of life, it’s in parallel and aligned with the same things that life wants. So that I think technology loves biology, if we allow it to. Great movement that is starting billions of years ago is moving through us and it continues to go, and our choice, so to speak, in technology, is really to align ourselves with this force much greater than ourselves. So, technology is more than just the stuff in your pocket. It’s more than just gadgets; it’s more than just things that people invent. It’s actually part of a very long story, a great story, that began billions of years ago. And it’s moving through us, this self-organization, and we’re extending and accelerating it, and we can be part of it by aligning the technology that we make with it.”

We are living in a new age of magic – some harmless like movie magic and some dangerous – and I am afraid the urge for control and power is still around today. There is “Christian magic” that wants to use the name of Jesus for our own purposes. We “speak Jesus” over our problems and expect them to disappear. Politicians use him for power and to dupe the voters and supporters. He is used to create financial or social success. People want personal peace and happiness, perfect children, better health and a better self-image. Christian magic is Jesus as a means to an end – even a good end. It is when we say accepting Jesus will create better morals, ethics, decency, peace, prosperity and freedom. It is, really, Christian magic when we say what this country needs is Jesus. We want magic, don’t we? What is it that makes us so enchanted by the magic of the world instead of the power of God?

Power begins in weakness and is almost never recognized by the world. That is why Paul describes Christ’s power as coming from his decision to empty himself. That is why he says while he and Apollos are servants of Christ entrusted with the secret things of God they are considered the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world. But spiritual power produces rulers in the end and magic produces fools. God’s preparation for true power is kenosis (emptying oneself) and trust – not control (sorcery), fear and special knowledge.

Walt Disney is the name most associated with magic. His interest in magic and sorcery increased as his interest in fantasy and fairy tales faded. His personality changed as well from open and inviting to authoritarian, controlling and obsessive compulsive dictator who feared death so deeply he refused to attend funerals. Magic and the desire for magic can distort the best of us.

I think the ending of the story of the seven sons is ironic. They are humiliated by the very thing they wanted to defeat. It may be the same for our new magicians and alchemists. Around 200 B.C., the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, accidentally killed himself trying to live forever; he poisoned himself by eating supposedly mortality-preventing mercury pills. Ironic, isn’t it. There is no shortcut to spiritual power. There is no defeating death. There is no knowledge or technology in the world that will bring perfection or redemption. There is only what C.S. Lewis called the Deeper Magic in “The Chronicles of Narnia.” The deeper magic of a perfect sacrifice, a redeemer who destroys death and opens the door to a life everlasting.