Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. 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.

There is incredible evidence in Acts 19 that something real happened in Ephesus, and here's what I need you to notice... it was not measured the way we typically measure spiritual success.

Acts 19:18-19 tells us, "Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. 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."

Let that land for a moment. These were not casual decisions. In the ancient world, a single book of magical texts could represent three months of labor. When scholars calculate the number of books needed to reach fifty thousand pieces of silver, they estimate that over six hundred people in the magic trade walked away from their livelihood. Just walked away. Publicly. Burned their income in front of everyone. And the ripple effect was staggering because it did not stay inside the church. It hit the trade industry, the tourism industry, the food industry... every layer of the Ephesian economy felt the Christ followers who stopped participating in old systems.

So what I'm seeing is this. The first measurable proof that the gospel had taken hold was not how many people showed up on Sunday. It was what people were willing to give up on Monday.

And it did not stop there. In Acts 19:26-27, a silversmith named Demetrius gathered his fellow craftsmen and warned them that Paul had persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. Demetrius was not concerned about theology. He was concerned about revenue. He saw the temple of Artemis losing its grip, and he knew what that meant for the economy. The silversmiths rioted because transformed people had begun to reshape the financial landscape of the city.

See, real transformation has always been costly. It costs you comfort, convenience, old allegiances, and sometimes income. But that is exactly how you know it is real. A gospel that does not change the way you spend your money, the way you do your work, and the way you participate in the systems around you is a gospel that has not fully taken root.

And the effects went far beyond Ephesus. Forty years later, by the 90s AD, John wrote to seven established churches across Asia Minor. These were communities with leadership structures, theological conversations, and enough social presence to face persecution. In Laodicea, a banking and textile center, Christians had become wealthy enough to be criticized by Jesus himself for their complacency. They had not just survived... they had integrated into the economic life of their cities.

This is what multiplication does. It does not just fill rooms. It reshapes communities. It restructures economies. It changes the way people live, spend, work, and worship. And it all started with people who were willing to burn what the old life was built on.

Tomorrow we will meet a man named Epaphras who never went on a mission trip, never planted a church the way we think about it. He just went home. And everything changed.

Ask the Holy Spirit to show you one area of your life where you are still participating in an old system that does not honor Him. It might be how you spend, how you entertain yourself, how you conduct business. Whatever it is, take one step today toward burning it down and building something new.