Acts 19:16

THE SEVEN SINS OF SCEVA

‘They fled out of that house naked and wounded.’

Acts 19:16

There is a striking analogy between these circumstances and the failure of Gehazi to bring back life to the son of the Shunamite woman. Why did Gehazi fail whereas Elisha succeeded? Subsequent events proved that Gehazi was a man steeped in covetousness and falsehood. Such a character had no spiritual power, but just because Elisha was a pure, holy man, who lived in close spiritual communion with God, he had the power which the other lacked. So it was with the exorcists and St. Paul. They failed because they were worldly, carnal men. St. Paul possessed a power which they had not. It was gained by communion with God, Who could use him as His agent, because he was holy and pure in heart.

I. In our modern life we have daily experience of many forms of evil.—We see people in utter bondage under evil influences, the origin of which we cannot explain. The magistrates and the police can and do restrain much evil-doing, but we are not asking about evil desires and evil habits which have been bound with the chain of the law, but about such desires and habits as have been so cast out of the man that he can live again in true liberty and freedom as master of himself. That power can come only from God, but He sends it generally through the hands of some faithful and good person who works as His agent.

II. Systems of human law and secular philosophy seem to be most helpless.—Many a criminal, if he had the power, would leap on the judge and rend him, as he hears the sentence pronounced which is intended for his reformation. Often when the discipline of a prison has failed, the ‘Prison gate mission’ has succeeded, yet the latter is the work mostly of quiet, gentle, good women whose power is only this, that they are holy and pure in heart, and that their lives are reflections of the life of Christ. Philosophy has no message for the wretched.

III. The battle between Christ and the powers of darkness was fought out once for all on the cross at Calvary, and the Lord emerged from the conflict a conqueror for ever. His pleasure is to make His people who believe in Him and who obey Him partakers in His victory. His power alone gave that spiritual strength to St. Paul so that he could face evil and subdue it by a word.

IV. Ought it not to be our highest ambition to be possessed in some measure of this strength? There could be no more glorious use made of our one earthly life than to be in our own persons by the strength of our words and examples, a source of firmness to the weak, of bravery to the coward, and of hope to the despairing. And this may be our possession if we ask the Lord to give it to us out of the treasury of His eternal strength.

Dean Ovenden.

Illustration

‘I have received personal testimony from missionaries who have worked in China that they have met there cases in every way analogous to the possessions referred to in the Gospels and the Acts, which cases were entirely distinct from lunacy, mania, or epilepsy, and much more like a dual personality in one individual. At the present time the people bring these cases of possession to the Christians, who simply pray for them in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the missionaries testify that they have witnessed many cases in which the possessed persons were delivered by this means alone from the dreadful bondage which they hated, and how rejoiced and thankful they were at this deliverance, and how many were thus led to believe in the spiritual power of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have no reason to doubt the validity of this testimony, even though it is altogether outside my personal experience. No more reason have we to reject the honest record of the events which took place in the times of the Apostles, which were moreover very different from the age in which we live.’