Exorcism is False
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2023 · 24 September 2023
As we come to Acts 19, the reason we’re studying exorcism is because in the middle of this passage we find the word “exorcist” in verse 13, where it appears for the only time in the New Testament. Now, it’s also important for us to make some statements about it because today, in Christian circles, there is a lasting preoccupation with demons and “Christian exorcism.”
In Ephesians 2:2 Paul says, “You walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.” The prince of the power of the air is Satan. He is called the spirit that works in the disobedient. From the time of the fall, all men have become Satan’s tools. They’re born into the world functioning in response to satanic impulse.
Now, Satan rules men usually in two general ways. First, he rules men by virtue of their understanding. So the man without Christ, without God, is left with only the information which is available apart from God. In fact, it says in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of them that do not believe.” Satan blinds the mind. That is, he rules the understanding.
Secondly, Satan dominates in the will. Although he cannot make you do something, he can certainly draw you into that by temptation. John 8:44 says, “Jesus said to the Pharisees, “The lusts of your father, you will do.” And their father, of course, was the devil. Satan then dominates men by controlling the information that they have and by controlling the will that they exercise.
Jesus from the very beginning is set against Satan; and we can know victory over Satan only insofar as we yield to the strength that is His strength. In Ephesians 6:10, Paul says, “Be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength.” Our only strength is in Christ, and Christ came to give us victory over the enemy. Jesus began by showing His power over Satan from the very start.
Satan tried to do everything to eliminate Him at His birth and couldn’t do it. The first thing that happened to Jesus after His baptism, He was led into the wilderness. Not by Satan but by the Holy Spirit. Because at the beginning of His ministry, it was made known that He had victory over Satan. Satan tempted Him three times and lost out every time. And Jesus went through His life the same way.
When He came to the cross, it looked like Satan was the winner, but he wasn’t. He took the blow to his head at the cross. And the cross, according to Colossians 2, was that great victory whereby principalities and powers were made subject to Christ. And 1 Peter 3:18 - 22 says the same thing. He brought all fallen angels and authorities into subjection to Him at the cross.
And all through His ministry, Christ dealt with Satan in terms of authority. He cast out demons all the way along. And He even gave that power to His disciples. On occasion, they also, in His name and by His power, cast out demons. In Acts, as the early church began, we see it as we’ve studied through that, the apostles again had the power to cast out demons. They had victory over Satan.
Now, the purpose of this in the apostolic era is to confirm the Word of God. That people might know the Word of God was authentic, God attended it with the miracles such as casting out demons. Now, the power of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only thing that can overrule Satan. Satan is the prince of this world. He dominates it because he dominates men’s understanding and men’s will.
There’s no power, there’s no exorcism, there’s no ritual, and there is no formula that can overrule Satan’s power. Not even the name of Jesus used as a gimmick will work, and we’ll see that in this passage. It was simply the statement of Christ, “Out!” And the demons were gone. Now, that was authority, not ritual. Matthew 8:16, “Of Christ it was said, ‘He cast out spirits with a word.’”
The Old Testament pattern, the pattern up to the time of Christ, was that demons could be cast out by God answering the prayers of faithful saints. Well, what about other non-Christians? If they had demons, how could they get rid of demons? They could get rid of demons by believing, by coming to Jesus Christ. All unsaved people in the world are under the control of Satan.
The question of demon possession is just a technicality. Hell is going to be the same for the unregenerate person no matter what kind of relationship that person had with demons. What does the Bible say about getting rid of his demons? Nothing. But if that person comes to Jesus Christ, repents of his sin, confesses Christ as savior, Christ will clean his life out. Do you believe that?
Beloved, take care of your own life before God in the area of holiness, and demons have no way they can bother you. We don’t need to be preoccupied with all kinds of drawn-out sessions of exorcism using the name of Jesus like a formula. In 1 Corinthians 10 it says, “Examine yourself, and enact judgment in your own heart. Bring about confession and repentance, and you’re acceptable.”
John says, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” And Jesus said in Matthew 12 that He casts out demons by the Holy Spirit, and He lives in you. Ephesians 6:12 says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.”
Now, where are you going to get the victory? Verse 13, “For this reason take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand. 14 Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like armor on your chest, 15 and your feet sandaled with readiness for the gospel of peace.”
Here’s a case of Christians struggling with demons. What’s the solution? The solution isn’t your friends coming to help you. The solution is you putting on the righteousness, right? Of all of the responsibilities that we have toward one another, there is no command to go cast demons out of each other. It says love one another, teach one another, edify one another, and comfort one another.
In Acts 19, Paul is on his third missionary journey. He comes to Ephesus which is the heart of the Roman province of Asia Minor. There was the temple of Diana, where there was sorcery, exorcism, magicians and orgies. Paul comes with the greatest tool which was the Word of God. It wasn’t written down then; but God poured it through him. We discussed the Word of God and its influence on Ephesus.
Its proclamation, its confirmation, its competition, its conviction, and its domination. So Paul proclaimed God’s rule and God’s Kingdom and especially as it related to Jesus Christ. So after three months, they started blasting Christianity in front of the whole town, speaking evil of the Way, those who had been hardened. Instead of believing, the longer Paul preached, the harder they got.
And so finally, Paul departed from them and separated the disciples’ disputing daily in the school of Tyrannus.” And the result of evangelism: “All they who dwelt in Asia heard the Word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.” Along with its proclamation was its confirmation, and this is where I would begin today. Verse 11, “God was performing extraordinary miracles by Paul’s hands.”
Whenever the message was delivered, it was accredited by miracles. Now, this occurred in Hebrews 2, 3 and 4, and also in 2 Corinthians 12:12. First was the proclamation, then the confirmation. And “God brought special miracles.” Who did the miracles? God did. Now, the people would see just Paul and not really see God doing the work, especially those miracles on the surface.
And so they thought that this Paul was some kind of super character. Verse 12, “so that even facecloths or aprons that had touched his skin were brought to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them.” The people in Ephesus were very superstitious. Well, they got Paul’s sweat cloths and they figured that could work the same thing for them.
And in spite of their superstition, God did His miracles. Remember the woman in Mark 5 who said, “If I can just touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, I’ll be healed.” And she did, and she was. Why? God was going to do what He was going to do. And the same thing happened in Acts 5, where the people in Jerusalem said, “If we can just get the sick under the shadow of Peter, they’ll be well.”
And Luke makes a distinction between a disease and an evil spirit. Let’s look thirdly at the competition. Well suddenly, some local exorcists think they’ve got a new gimmick. Verse 13, “Now some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists also attempted to pronounce the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I command you by the Jesus that Paul preaches!”
Now they thought that the ‘Name of Jesus’ was a new formula. This magician Paul has done some stuff that they have never seen. Back in Acts 8, Simon saw the miracles that the apostles did and he wanted to buy it with money, right? Peter says, “Your money perish with you.” So here you have these guys, and they think, “Well, this is great. We’ll do it in the Name of Jehovah God.”
They weren’t really casting out demons. But Satan may have given them the idea that they were so they’d keep perpetuating this stupidity. And we know this is what’s going on today in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. Jesus said in Matthew 12:27, “And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons drive them out? For this reason they will be your judges.”
No apostle after the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ ever was hassled in having to exorcise demons. It was always a matter of authority. If an unbeliever comes to Jesus Christ, He alone can cleanse by faith. Verse 14-15, “Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish high priest, were doing this. 15 The evil spirit answered them, “I know Jesus, and I recognize Paul—but who are you?”
Their magical effort blew up. Interesting note here, “the evil spirit answered them.” Evil spirits can speak with a human voice. In Isaiah 8:19, it says that there are mediums and demons that chirp and mutter. They actually can speak through the human voice, and that’s common. Did demons know Jesus? Yes. Demons were all created at one time, and they were created originally as angels.
This demon felt no compulsion of power to obey. They may have used Jesus’ name, but there wasn’t any power in it. Verse 16, “Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them, overpowered them all, and prevailed against them, so that they ran out of that house naked and wounded.” And the old manuscript also includes the word “both” here, which indicates there were probably only two of the seven there.
Jesus said this in Matthew 7:22-23, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ 23 Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!” Satan brought the competition. Christ overruled him. So we see the proclamation, confirmation and competition.
Let us look at the conviction. Verse 17, “When this became known to everyone who lived in Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, they became afraid, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high esteem.” They said, “Don’t mess with the Name of the Lord Jesus. Don’t use that name in vain!” Even the unsaved people began to recognize something stupendous about the Name of Jesus.
That’s exactly what God wanted. Beloved, that is true. Every time I hear somebody take the name of Jesus in vain, I kind of cringe. Verse 18 says, “And many who had become believers came confessing and disclosing their practices.” They were giving up all their magic. The whole satanic game was over. They saw the truth of the power of Jesus; and they saw that magic didn’t work.
People believed and confessed, and their lives were transformed. And to show you the character of their transformation, it got to practical things. Verse 19, “while many of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in front of everyone. So they calculated their value and found it to be fifty thousand pieces of silver.” They had a public burning.
And the interesting thing, the word “burned” is imperfect. They kept on burning. I don’t know how long the bonfire lasted. But they kept burning. You say, “How much is 50,000 pieces of silver?” With inflation and all of that, maybe now somewhere around $50,000.00. Well, the Word was proclaimed, confirmed, competed with. It was victorious and Satan lost out. Lastly, the words “domination.”
Verse 20, “In this way the word of the Lord spread and prevailed.” Do you know that in the church, as long as the Word of God dominates, there’ll be victory? That’s the pattern. Well, I am thrilled when I see the Word of God prevail. Satan in all of his power, cannot prevail. I hope and pray that when you’re saturated by the Word, that you may know victory, the victory from God. Let us pray.