17 When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in
Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus
was held in high honor. 18 Many of those who
believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. 19 A
number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them
publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to
fifty thousand drachmas. 20 In this way the word of
the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
The people are fearful that an evil spirit declared that he
knew Jesus and about Paul and beat these Jewish sons of the priest nearly to
death. This invalidated any opposition
to Paul’s preaching. Suddenly there is a
“realness” to the name of God and the Lord Jesus whom Paul preached. People are confessing and repenting. This instance of repentance from sorcery is selected
to show the commitment. A drachma was
equivalent to a single day’s wage, so this would be equivalent to 50,000 day
wages. To compare to today, if you made
$100/day, then this is equal to $5 million dollars. Other texts indicate 50,000 pieces of silver. That would be around $12,000 today. While we may not know the exact equivalent in
today’s dollars, it’s a lot of money, yet the people are “seized with fear”
over the power of Jesus and “selling out” for the gospel.
What would need to happen today for people to realize that
Jesus was real? What would invalidate
all the opposition to God? Usually we
consider severe weather or some natural disaster is necessary. What if an evil spirit within someone was
caught on video? Maybe the supernatural healing
of someone? I can say with surety that I
really do not know.
21 After all this had happened, Paul decided to go to
Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have
been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” 22 He
sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia,
while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer.
Paul is going to go back towards Corinth and has a desire to
go to Rome. We see Timothy again and get
the idea that Timothy and Erastus have been with him as he has stayed in
Ephesus.
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