The real world has an ugly side to it. Just ask a policeman or an emergency room nurse. Beneath the surface of our society there’s a lot of suffering. People are capable of doing amazing things to themselves and others. And the same is true of the real spiritual world. It, too, has an ugly side. Many people don’t want to see that side, it frightens them. But pretending it’s not there doesn’t change reality, it just leaves us vulnerable to attack and unable to protect ourselves.

The passage we’re studying today talks about evil spirits. It shows us the power they can have over a human being, but it also shows us the power of the name of Jesus Christ. We need to be bold enough to realize that the forces we’re watching at work in ancient Ephesus are still part of our world today, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not. Somewhere over the course of history, Christianity became spiritually powerless and very “scientific.” The church in the west followed our culture into a deep skepticism about the existence of a spiritual world. Even if we held onto a generic belief in God, the idea of angels or demons, or the devil himself, became something we associated with primitive, pre-scientific superstition. We thought of ourselves as enlightened, informed, increasingly in control of our own destiny. With the emergence of modern medicine and psychology, our need for God’s help grew smaller and smaller. If He wasn’t “dead,” He was at least unnecessary.

But reality tends to be stubborn. It doesn’t cease to function just because we ignore it. Sooner or later we bump into it and are forced to acknowledge its existence. And the real world has a spiritual dimension just as certainly as it has a physical one. Not only does God exist, but so do angels and demons. They’re as real as you and I. So, today, let’s see the world the way Jesus and Paul saw it… and let’s discover the authority Jesus’ name has over that world.