“…[A]nd the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified” (NKJV)

It was fitting for “breaking news” on the nightly local news channel.  You know their motto: “if it bleeds, it leads.”  Here was a nasty, knockdown, drag-out brawl.  In a word, it was brutal.  One guy beating up at least 9 to 10 men.  But this was no ordinary guy.  Let’s set the scene.

Ephesus was not your typical big city.  If an entire city could be demon possessed, Ephesus was as good a candidate as any.  Home of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world — the famed Temple of Artemis (Diana) — it also was the provincial capital of Asia, the far western part of Asia Minor or modern day Turkey.  It was located on the Eastern shore of the Aegean Sea at the mouth of Cayster River, and was an important center for politics, education and commerce.  The temple was perhaps the hub of the silver business in Ephesus (Acts 19:23-28). And practicing magic was a regular pastime or profession (v. 19).

So here comes Paul sauntering into town as the ultimate good guy going into a corrupt western town littered with bad guys, just like you’d see in the movies.  He found 12 men who had heard of only “John’s [the Baptist’s] baptism” (v. 3), so Paul deputizes them by laying hands on them, baptizing them “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (v. 5), and God’s Spirit confirmed his action by coming upon them with blessing.  Having rounded up a posse, he headed over to the nearest saloon … (Well, not exactly.  I can only take the western thing so far!)  No, he went to the synagogue and challenged the locals with the truth of the kingdom of God (v. 8).  After some opposition, he and his posse changed venues and hung out at Tyrannus’ one-room schoolhouse (v. 9).  After two years of steady teaching, “all who dwelt in [the province of] Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks” (v. 10).

So now the infiltration and influence of truth and righteousness is making its mark, and tensions are ready to spill over.  Not only that, but “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” (v. 11).  Now we’re getting much closer to the power encounter level of spiritual warfare.  But before that happens, here come the clowns, deceivers really, noticeable by their own pitiful lack of power, but who recognize the real deal when they see it (vs. 13-16), including seven sons of Sceva, the Jewish high priest.  They tried to capitalize on the power of Jesus’ name by exorcizing a demon from a man.  But the demon replied, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?”  That’s when the thrashing occurred.  Overpowering them all, “he gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.”  Where are those TV cameras when you really need them?

The bottom line in all this was that “the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor” (v. 17).  Literally, it was magnified (NKJV).  The word comes from the Greek word that gives us words like megahertz and megabyte, meaning a million.  Or, really really big.  It also means expanded, as in expanding Paul’s ministry (2 Corinthians 10:15).  We see a similar result in Acts 10 after Peter visited Cornelius’ house and led his family to faith in Christ: “For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising [literally, magnifying] God” (v. 46).

A question should surface at this point in our thinking: How can anyone really magnify God when he is already greater than anything we can conceive?  He lives beyond time and space.  He is smarter and more powerful than anything we’ll ever know.  It gets a little difficult to think how we can magnify him.  But if we follow the storyline, we remember that he made us for him, and our ancestors messed things up royally in a garden long, long ago. Creation, made to honor him, became severely out of whack. Jesus came to set things — most notably, us — right, so we could have a part in bringing God’s magnificence — that’s the noun part of magnify — into our little circles of a fallen universe.  That was Paul’s motto when he said, “…Christ will be exalted [magnified] in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20).  It didn’t matter to him how it happened, it was going to happen one way or another. It happened in Ephesus.

We all live in a universe full of people who are ignorant of God’s magnificence.  Does it motivate you like it did Paul, that through life or death, you have counted the cost to lead others to magnify him?