Evil Spirits and Authority

There is a truly bone chilling line in Acts 19 that would make for a dramatic and memorable horror movie scene! Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were going about the town of Ephesus and performing exorcisms (Acts 19:11-20). At that time, Paul was accomplishing his gospel mission in the very same area and God was doing amazing miracles through his hands.  Among those miracles was the casting out of evil spirits. The Sons of Sceva apparently noticed his extraordinary success, so they attempted to appropriate Paul’s accomplishments into their own work as exorcists. It failed miserably. When they came upon a man with an evil spirit, they tried to command the spirit using “the name of the Lord Jesus who Paul proclaims.”  You can just imagine the stoney, cold evil in the man’s deadly stare as the foul spirit moved his lips to speak – perhaps in a gutteral, whispery tone, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” The spirit, through the man, then proceeded to physically beat the seven exorcists until they fled his house bloodied and naked. Because the Jews had a disdain for nudity, this was particularly humiliating for sons of a high priest.

Notice that their command was not from the Jesus they knew themselves, but from the Jesus that Paul proclaimed. They had no relationship with the Lord of the universe, and so they failed to realize that whatever power flowed out of Paul in his work wasn’t his own. They had no authority to command a being greater than themselves. The evil spirit accurately saw them as trivial, impotent, and powerless. Interestingly, even the archangel, Michael, unlike the seven Sons of Sceva, recognized the status of other spirit beings when he was contending with the devil. In that fight, Michael did not rebuke the devil under his own authority as an archangel, but instead proclaimed, “The Lord rebuke you! (Jude 1:8-9). 

At any rate, the failure of the Sons of Sceva to subdue actual demons resulted in a spiritual fear that swept through Ephesus like a wildfire. Because of that fear, both Jews and Greeks alike began to confess their sins while magnifying and honoring the name of the Lord Jesus. So profound was this single spiritual event that those who practiced sorcery, magic, and evil arts voluntarily burned their spell books, and the monetary value of what they destroyed was worth 50,000 pieces of silver. A day’s wage at that time was one denarius – which was a silver coin. In today’s money, the total value of their voluntary loss using a modern American average day’s wage can be estimated to be roughly six million dollars! Evil spiritual practices must have been quite common in Ephesus. Amazingly, God used an evil, foul spirit to magnify the gospel among lost people engaged in demonic practices. 

Do you know Jesus? Have you been saved? If so, then Christ lives in you (Galatians 2:20). And while you may sometimes have to face evil spirits who don’t know your name, they do know the name of the one who lives in you and loves you, and they shudder (James 2:19)! They shudder, because they know their time is limited and that at some point they will be crushed beneath your feet (Romans 16:20). So only act in his authority.