Acts 19:1-22

1 And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. 2 And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John's baptism.” 4 And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. 7 There were about twelve men in all.

8 And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. 9 But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. 10 This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

11 And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. 13 Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” 14 Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. 15 But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” 16 And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. 17 And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. 18 Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. 19 And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. 20 So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

21 Now after these events Paul resolved in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.” 22 And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.

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In this passage we see Paul in full swing of his ministry. Paul is now in his second missionary journey to Ephesus and is correcting false teachings, healing the sick and performing all deeds of extraordinary miracles in the name of Jesus. So great was the power of God through Paul that even trivial things like handkerchiefs and aprons became items of healing. Unfortunately however, there were people who couldn't see past Paul and the miracles to see the God behind it all so they tried to copy the same miracles without God which ended poorly for them. 

Every good thing out there has counterfeits, fakes and rip offs. There are opportunists out there that see a good thing and want to profit off it for their own selfish reasons. These exorcists saw the miracles and attention that Paul was getting and tried to hop on the bandwagon and claim glory for themselves, but we've all seen these counterfeits and seen that they all fall short and can be so bad, even hilariously so. Unfortunately what happened to these people trying to counterfeit the miracles of God was not so funny. In the end we see that the exorcists that tried to copy what Paul did without the power of God were overpowered by the evil spirits that they were trying to cast out. The evil spirits said to the them that they know Jesus and know Paul but did not know these people.

As Christians we can't settle for fakes or counterfeits. We can't try to find ways to self seek or make faith about us. These fakes tried to copy the glory that Paul received without realizing that the core of what gives us power of Christians is the God that allows all this to happen. As Christians we must never be like these people seeking to emulate the things of God without God, trying to find glory and attention for ourselves. We need to be careful because as we work on behalf of the Lord, there is a great potential for us to do amazing things because of the power He puts in us but we have to be extra careful to not let that attention fall on us but instead we need to constantly redirect any attention we get to God.

Sometimes we don't realize the power of God that is backing us but it's something we need to be aware of. The attention we get is also something we need to be careful of as well. Attention is not inherently bad, the attention Paul received, he was able to use to glorify God and spread the Gospel of Jesus. We need to follow his example and do the same instead of trying to copy and fake the power of God like the exorcists.