Acts 13:1-52 - Blind Magicians and Rejoicing Gentiles

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Yesterday, we ended in chapter 12. We saw that Barnabas and Saul, who had come down to Jerusalem, they completed their mission, and then they left, and they brought along Barnabas' nephew, John Mark.

And today, we're going to be starting off in Acts 13 in verse number 1. We've got a little bit of ground to cover today, so I'm going to try and do it as quickly and timely as possible.

It says this in Acts 13, 1, Now there were prophets and teachers at Antioch in the church that was there. Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaean, who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul.

So those were some of the specific teachers that were at the church in Antioch. And what a cool thing it is when you're able to have several people that can teach the Word and be able to hear from the Spirit speaking through some different people.

And as in verse number two, while they were serving the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set Barnabas and Saul apart from me for the work to which I have called them.

Then when they had fasted, prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

So here we see, as with many things in ministry, the Holy Spirit is the one that once people are doing what God calls every Christian to do, God wants every Christian to be serving the Lord, to be fasting, to be declaring the Word of God to other

people. Sometimes it's in a big formal setting, sometimes it's just one on one. But these men were already doing what God had called them to. And here the Holy Spirit says, I've got a special plan, a special mission for Barnabas and for Saul.

And so they fast, they take time away from food to be able to pay attention to what God's will is and to love God's food for their life. I think of Jesus in John 4 where he tells the disciples, they come back, they go, Hey, has Jesus eaten?

And Jesus tells them, I have food to eat that you don't know about. And I think that's very many times true as we think about fasting, as we think about sacrificing the desires of our flesh for focusing on the Lord.

So when they fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, this is a commissioning. This is an ordaining to ministry. Ordination sometimes is thought of today as kind of like the bar exam.

And truthfully from how scripture speaks about the laying on of hands, it is a commissioning to a work.

So it's not a, okay, we didn't really know what you taught before, but we took one day and kind of talked with you, and now we know what you think about things, and so now you are ordained.

How scripture talks about ordination is the people that it is evident that God's hand is on them. It's evident that the Holy Spirit has called them. Then the church formally recognizes, hey, we believe that you are set apart for ministry.

It says when they fasted, prayed, laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

And what a wonderful thing it is when God grows the church by sending people out, that just like with any plant that you may have, where it has the seeds and it sends them out, or maybe a bee takes it from one place to another.

I think it's very apropos to how the Book of Acts works, that you have Saul scattering the church, you have Herod scattering the church, and all of the seeds go everywhere, and the kingdom of God is popping up in all of these different places.

Verse number four, So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

When they reached Salamis, they began to proclaim the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and they also had John as their helper. This is John Mark, Barnabas' nephew.

When they had gone through the whole island, as far as Paphos, they found a magician, a Jewish false prophet whose name was Bar-Jesus, or Son of Jesus, who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence.

This man summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God, but Elimus the magician, so this would have been Bar-Jesus, for so his name is translated, was opposing them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.

But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, stared at him and said, You are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness. Will you not stop making crooked the straight ways of the Lord?

Now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and not see the sun for a time. And immediately a mist and a darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking those who would lead him by the hand.

Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had happened, being amazed at the teaching of the Lord. Many of us would have been amazed by the magician suddenly becoming blind.

But here, the proconsul believes because of the teaching of the Lord, because of the doctrine that is being presented, that Jesus is very clearly God, and he needed to believe on him entirely.

I see in this section here, there's many things that could be said, but I think we can notice this. God is more powerful than any other thing on earth.

If there's magicians, if there's powerful governments, if there's any number of things, God is more powerful.

And as Christians, we can either have a fearful outlook on life, or we can have a realization that because God is more powerful, we can trust in him entirely. And we have nothing to fear in this world.

We don't have to fear what the future of our nation is, because God is more powerful. We don't have to fear for the future of our kids or our grandkids, because if they turn to the Lord, then God will get them through anything.

And we know that God doesn't let any of his children fall by the wayside. Ephesians 1 would tell us we are sealed until the day of redemption.

I think of Philippians 1 that we were in as a church a few weeks ago, where it says that God will complete the good work that he began in us. He will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. That we don't have anything to fear.

God is more powerful than at all. Verse number 13. Now Paul and his companions put out to sea from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia.

But John, Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem. But going on from Perga, they arrived at Pasidian Antioch. So this was in the area of Pasidia.

This is another Antioch, not the Antioch of Syria that we read about at the beginning where they were. It says. If you've read The Account in Exodus, you know how accurate that is.

It says, When he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he distributed their land as an inheritance, all of which took about 450 years in total for all of those things to take place.

After these things, he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for 40 years.

After he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, concerning whom he also testified. And said, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart, who will do all my will. That David was one that pursued God's heart.

He was after it. He was looking at towards what God's heart was. He didn't always do what God's will was, but he always had that desire.

That's always what he came back to. That was his MO, if you will, modus operandi. From the descendants of this man, David, according to promise, God has brought to Israel a savior.

So God promised the people of Israel that from David's family line would come a savior. He says God provided them Jesus. After John had proclaimed before Jesus is coming, a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel.

And while John was completing his course, he kept saying, what do you suppose that I am? I am not he, the Messiah, but behold, one is coming after me, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.

Brothers, sons of Abraham's family and those among you who fear God, to us this message of salvation has been sent.

For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers recognizing neither him, Jesus, nor the declarations of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning Jesus.

And though they found no grounds for putting them to death, they asked Pilate that he would be executed. When they had carried out everything that was written concerning him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb.

But God raised him from the dead. And for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now his witnesses to the people.

And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled his promise to those of us who are the descendants by raising Jesus as it is also written in the second Psalm, You are my son, today I have fathered you.

As for the fact that he raised him from the dead, never again to return to decay, he had spoken in this way, this is Psalm 16, I will give you the holy and faithful mercies of David. My bad, that one's not the Psalm 16. That's this other one.

Therefore, he also says in another Psalm, Psalm 16, you will not allow your Holy One to undergo decay. For David, after he had served God's purpose in his own generation, fell asleep and was buried among his fathers and underwent decay.

But he whom God raised did not undergo decay. Therefore, let it be known to you, brothers, that through him, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.

And through him, everyone who believes is freed from all things from which you could not be free through the law of Moses. Therefore, see the thing that is spoken of in the prophets, that it does not come upon you.

Look, you scoffers, and be astonished and perish, for I am accomplishing a work in your days, a work which you will never believe, though someone should describe it to you.

And I believe, I recall, that particular reading of scripture from the Book of Habakkuk. So as you can see there, Paul is going through all of the Old Testament scriptures and showing Jesus was the entire point, the whole way through.

He mentions Abraham, so that's in the very, very beginning of Genesis.

He mentions the Psalms and the Prophets, so how Jesus speaks in Luke 24 of kind of the breakdown of how they organized the Jewish books of the Old Testament back in the first century. They had the Law, they had the Prophets, and they had the Psalms.

We break it up somewhat differently.

We've got like history, so we've got the books of the Torah, the first five books, we've got books of history, we have poetry, we have the major and then the minor prophets, so we've got it in a slightly different format.

But Paul here is going, hey, every part of it, the law was about Jesus, the Psalms were about Jesus, the prophets prophesied about Jesus, and all of that is clear from Scripture.

So verse 42, as Paul and Barnabas were going out, the people repeatedly begged to have these things spoken to them next Sabbath.

They're like, hey, quick, whoa, the Messiah has come, and he rose from the dead, and there are people that saw it, and people that talked to him. We want to hear more.

Now, when the meeting of the synagogue had broken up, many of the Jews and the God-fearing proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas who were speaking to them and urging them to continue in the grace of God.

Verse 44, the next Sabbath, nearly all the city assembled to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began contradicting the things spoken by Paul and were blaspheming.

Paul and Barnabas spoke up boldly and said, it was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, since you repudiate it and consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life.

Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles, for so the Lord has commanded us. I have appointed you as a light to the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the end of the earth. They are quoting from the Old Testament.

When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed.

And the word of the Lord was being spread through the whole region, but the Jews incited the devout women of prominence and the leading men of the city and instigated the persecution against Paul and Barnabas and drove them out of their region.

But they shook off the dust from their feet and protested against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were continually filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Many things could be said about this passage, about this chapter, Acts 13.

I think at the first portion of the chapter, we are encouraged in wanting to focus on what God finds important.

Fasting and prayer and teaching and faithfulness and ordaining people, sending them out, that a church wouldn't hoard those that God has, God wants to send out into the world, but that they would graciously send them and send them as missionaries, as

the church Antioch did with Paul and Barnabas. I see from what Paul says, once again, Jesus is the entire point of the Old Testament.

As Tabernacle Talk continues and as we get into later some Old Testament books, we are going to see this again and again and again, that Jesus is the point of the Old Testament. You can't separate the two.

You cannot read the New Testament without the Old Testament. A lot of people go, Oh, I like Jesus. I like the letters.

I like, you know, 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. I enjoy all of those things. I don't really get the Old Testament.

No, no, no. The Old Testament is so vital to the Christian walk and life, and it's absolutely necessary to understand the New Testament. So we can see that from Scripture.

I see this. We are not guaranteed eternal options. We're not guaranteed eternal offers of salvation.

And here what was offered to the Jews, that the salvation plan is given. It's given from their scriptures that they say, hey, this was always the plan. And here now the Holy Spirit is telling you that this is taking place.

And they rejected it. Many didn't, but some did reject it. And I'd like to challenge you and I today.

Let us not take for granted that God is giving us truth, because there might come a day when we reject truth often enough that God says, okay, I will respect your decision. I will not offer you salvation anymore.

It's not that Christ, it's not that Christ's payment for sin is no longer applicable to your account, but that God won't be reaching out to you anymore.

And Scripture talks about that in many places of the fact that we can't just continually say no to God.

I think of Pharaoh in the Old Testament, where it says that God hardened his heart after so many times, that he cemented the decision that Pharaoh made time and time and time again.

And God finally said, okay, you're going to keep it this time and you're not going to go back on it like you have the previous four or five times. And I think that could be an incredibly sad thing.

And let's never ignore God and say, okay, later I'm going to take care of this. Later I'm going to accept Christ's gift of salvation. Today is the day.

Then I noticed this, that God has given salvation to the Gentiles.

And when the Gentiles heard that they were now grafted into God's plan in verse 48, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. Are you rejoicing in your salvation today?

Are you glorifying the word of the Lord today? I don't know what that might look like for you. I know it might look like a slightly different attitude as we interact with others online.

I think it might end up in a slightly different interaction with our families if we're rejoicing in the Lord, glorifying the word of the Lord, if we are believing in what encouragement and what a wonder it is that we can rejoice in the Lord.

That we can know him. He loves us and his plan was always that we would be his people. Hope this would be an encouragement to you today.

Tomorrow, we are going to be diving into Acts 14. I don't know if we'll take the entire chapter yet, but hope that today would be an encouragement to you. If you have any questions, I would encourage you, please email pastor@tbcessex.com

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