The Spirit versus the Devil - Acts 13v1-12

To turn the proconsul away from the faith.

But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?

And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.

Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.

Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.

Well, thanks be to God for his true and living word to us.

Start of our chapter, we find ourselves in Antioch, this great city, far away from us in Roman Syria.

Back in chapter 11, remember, this is the place where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians.

This is the place from where the gospel will go to the whole world.

This is where we come from.

This is, if you like, the beginning of our Christian family tree, the very first Gentile church.

Look at those names in the very first verse of the chapter.

They are appropriate.

The whole world was kind of crammed into the leadership of this one new church.

There's Barnabas, he was a Jewish convert from Cyprus.

Simeon, who was black, probably from Africa.

Lucius from Cyrene, what we would call Libya.

Manaean, now Manaean, not just a lifelong friend, but he was actually brought up with Herod, the powerful, the rich Tetrarch Herod.

Now there are loads of Herods in the New Testament, they're all related to each other.

In different ways, they are all enemies of the gospel.

This is the Herod who was rebuked by John the Baptist for his adulterous marriage.

Remember him?

So this guy, Mannaan, who grew up with him, probably in his household.

Manaian is now a Christian.

He's one of the prophets and teachers in the new church in Antioch.

And there with them is Saul.

Saul, the ex-Pharisee, Saul the former persecutor of the church.

He's now a follower of the Lord Jesus.

He's just spent a year in Antioch discipling this new congregation.

It's an amazing list of men, so diverse ethnically, socially, their religious backgrounds, and they are now united in the love and service of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is being given government over all of the earth.

And it's with those men there that the global rescue mission of God will now go out.

Paul's first missionary journey starts here.

We read about it in chapter 13, chapter 14 in Acts.

They'll go over the sea to Cyprus, then jump back on the boat again and go over to Asia Minor, to towns and villages and cities in what we would now call Turkey.

So our passage today, chapter 13, 1 to 12, it's an amazing story of how the gospel goes out, but more than that, what happens when the gospel goes out.

And the two most important characters in this story, the two most important characters in the mission of the church, they are invisible.

So had we joined in this voyage, this journey from Antioch to Cyprus, had we been with Paul and Barnabas, with our eyes, these eyes at least, we would not have seen the two most important characters.

Dr.

Luke, who wrote down the book of Acts, he tells us about these characters.

And you cannot understand the mission of the church without knowing about them.

Those two characters, I wonder if you spotted them: the Holy Spirit and the devil.

And here is what our passage is about.

This is what our passage is about.

It's about the power of the Spirit to defeat Satan and to save the lost.

The power of the Spirit to defeat Satan and save the lost.

Now the Gospels tell us this: that Jesus came to seek and save the lost.

Okay, Jesus came to seek and to save the lost.

What kind of lost, though?

Does God have a preference for one kind of lost person over another kind of lost person?

Does he prefer certain nations or certain skin colours or a certain kind of demographic?

And the answer is no.

All kinds of lost.

And so the book of Acts, from chapter one onwards, will show the gospel going from Judea and Jerusalem to Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

Where we join now from chapter 13 to the end of the book, chapter 28, we're kind of leaving behind us Jerusalem and Peter, and we are now focusing on the Gentile churches and the mission of Paul.

Because it is not okay when people worship false gods.

And all people everywhere must be both commanded and invited to worship the one true and living God, Father, Son, and Spirit.

So our passage today, at the very beginning of this mission, which will go to the ends of the earth, it shows us the power of the Spirit to defeat Satan and to save the lost.

So, how are the lost saved?

How is the devil defeated?

By the power of the Holy Spirit.

And that's where we get on board.

The lost are saved, the devil is defeated by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the words and the works of the church.

We jump in to the story.

Let's think first about the power of the Holy Spirit.

In verse 2, the church at Antioch is at worship.

She's worshiping, she's fasting, and she is praying, enjoying communion with God, expressing dependence on God, crying out to him, knowing that they are weak and he is strong.

And while at worship, the Holy Spirit speaks.

Presumably he does so through one of the prophets.

The church in the beginning of the New Testament age was given prophets, just like the prophets of the Old Testament, to bring the word of God to them until the foundation of the New Testament scriptures was laid.

So God comes and he speaks, a clear voice and an authoritative voice.

So God speaks, you must hear and obey.

I think it's 22 times, and almost always it's a word to the church, telling it to press outwards, to go beyond the fringe and into new territory.

And that's what God the Holy Spirit is saying here.

He says, take Barnabas, take Saul, set them apart, and then send them off.

So that's what the Spirit is doing.

He is setting apart these men and he is sending them to new gospel work.

The mission of the church to take the gospel to the lost, it's the work of the Spirit, and it's done in obedience to the command of the Spirit.

Now, as this chapter goes on, and the chapters that follow, it's full of the actions of the church, the obedience of the church, what the church does.

But be really clear, the lost are saved, and the devil defeated by the work of the Spirit of God.

So, right at the beginning of this, Barnabas and Saul, they had to go out.

You get the sense they were almost pushed out, compelled, expelled even by the Holy Spirit.

Because God's heart is a sending and a saving heart.

It's why Jesus was sent, wasn't it?

To seek and to save the lost.

And in obedience to that, mirroring that, his church must get on board.

So they obey and they lay hands on Barnabas and Saul.

Like when Aaron the priest raised his hands to bless the people, or when the church lays hands on men to ordain them, so the church gives them the blessing of God and the empowering of God.

The church releases them for this new work.

And the result is the very first overseas mission coming from a specific church.

So this isn't a mission coming just from an individual or spread by the persecution of unbelievers under the hand of God.

This is the instigation of the spirits through a church, the organized sending of missionaries.

And this is why we go, this is why we must go with the gospel into all the world.

So on a daily basis, wherever we are, on a special basis, in planting new churches, in sending ministers and missionaries, because of the sending and the saving heart of God and the sending and the saving work of the Spirit.

So the place names might have changed.

The heart of God has not.

So Paul and Barnabas, what do they do?

Well, they go down to the coast, they go to Seleucia, verse 4, onto a boat, 60 miles or so, over to the island of Cyprus.

Now, this is where Barnabas comes from.

Read about that in chapter 4.

The Gospels already got there.

We know that in chapter 11.

Barnabas and Saul, once there, they follow the same pattern that we see all throughout.

Verse 5, first they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.

And it's a New Testament principle, wasn't it, in those early days of the church, to the Jew first, then to the Gentile.

And it reflects the shape of the whole Bible story.

The gospel was given to Abraham and his family, and then the whole world was invited to join his family, a family of faith in the Lord Jesus.

Well, the Holy Spirit, he's still sending them, he's sending them on thence to Paphos.

Now, Paphos was the new Roman capital of the island, and amazingly, wonderfully, the Holy Spirit has already gone before them.

And we meet this seriously important, prestigious man.

He's the proconsul, think of him as the Roman boss of the island, and he summons them.

Amazing, isn't it?

He summons them because he wants to hear the word of God.

Just imagine a prime minister or a president summoning a pastor because I want to hear the word of God.

Good thing to pray that.

He wants to listen to these total nobodies from Antioch preach to him about this Jesus.

It's so wonderful.

The Spirit of God made this meeting possible.

He made it happen.

He gave this pagan ruler a desire to hear the truth.

He arranged the circumstances such that he could then summon and question Barnabas and Paul.

Such a beautiful encouragement for us.

The hearts of the great and the powerful, they are in the Lord's hands.

So if he wants to awaken hunger, spiritual hunger, in the heart of a king or a politician, or a dictator, of course he can do it.

He can put Christian people into the lives of such a man.

Nothing is too hard for the Lord.

That should encourage us in our praying for kings and rulers and great ones.

We do sometimes doubt that such a person could ever be saved.

We certainly cannot save them.

All of this, it is God's work, it is not the work of man.

And Acts, the story of Acts makes it so clear, doesn't he?

He scatters his people from Jerusalem.

He does things like uh kill Herod and send out workers and establish churches.

It's not just that he kind of gets the ball rolling and withdraws and leaves it to the church.

He does it all.

He does the sending, the preparing, the enabling, the speaking.

It is all the work of God.

We come second then to the opposition of Satan.

And that is what this passage draws our attention to.

The opposition of Satan in the person of this deeply sinister man.

Verse 6 begins to describe him.

He's a magician or a sorcerer, perhaps a bit like a witch doctor or a shaman, but he is also a Jewish false prophet.

His names, he's got a Greek name, Elemus.

He's got a Hebrew name, Bar Jesus, son of Jesus, or son of Joshua.

But the Apostle Paul, as he curses him, he denounces him for what he really is.

His paternity, he is a son of the devil.

See that in verse 10.

His family is the family of Satan.

Satan is his father.

Now, most of all, Satan hates the one true God, Father, Son, and Spirit.

And next, he hates those creatures God has made in his image, people.

And so he seeks our harm and our greatest harm, which is to keep men away from Christ.

Sometimes he does it through brute power, you know, obvious physical, bodily violence and oppression.

In the story of Acts, think of Herod Agrippa, chapter 12.

He kills James, he imprisons Peter.

Think of the Chinese state, think of any Muslim majority state, imprisoning, killing Christian people, and especially Christian ministers.

Sometimes, though, Satan will use false worship, false religion, false spirituality, including sorcery and the occult, sometimes chucking in subtle perversions of the true faith.

The New Testament would remind us, Ephesians 6.12, when we go out with the gospel, we don't wrestle merely with flesh and blood bodies, but with spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

So Paul and Barnabas then, us now, the church everywhere and everywhere, we actually engage in a serious conflict with the strongholds of Satan.

Now, when you read through the book of Acts and you look at the early church, the most obvious enemies of the gospel, well, they were three groups.

There were Jewish believers who would not repent and believe in Jesus the Messiah.

There was traditional Greek philosophy and Greek idol worship, and there was pagan worship, a pagan magic.

Think of what happened in Ephesus a few chapters on.

Magic scrolls, a whole industry built around the occult.

And in this man, Elimus, there is this toxic blend, a wicked blend.

He was Jewish, but he was a false prophet, perhaps the most serious of all sins, leading people astray from the truth, and mixed with it magic and sorcery.

The law of the Lord, the Old Testament law, it forbade such things, it denounced it.

You're trying to manipulate non-human powers through magic.

Now, what did Elamas do?

Look at verse 8.

Elamas the magician, he opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.

That word for turn, it's the word for twist or pervert.

He's trying to twist him away from the faith.

Paul uses in verse 10 the same word.

Will you not stop twisting, perverting the straight paths of the Lord?

Think of it like this: the Lord has got straight paths that bring the gospel to people and that bring people to himself.

Straight paths.

That's why he sent the Lord Jesus.

It's why he sends his Holy Spirit to seek and to save the lost.

Now here is Elemus.

He has a hatred of the truth.

He desires to keep his powerful master away from the truth and in the darkness and the slavery of non-belief.

Now, in his hatred, in his bitterness, did Elemus know that he was on the side of Satan?

Well, we don't know.

But Satan works through people to keep the gospel from going out.

Maybe you've had a direct experience of this.

It might be as simple as this.

You're among a group of people and you're trying to share the gospel with one person, and another person there simply will not let you speak.

Every trick in the book is tried to silence you or to make it impossible for others to hear.

It's the work of Satan unchanged.

We would be naive also to think that things like the magic magic and the occult has gone away.

It is one enduring form of blinding and enslaving unbelief.

But it is it is a real phenomenon.

It was G.K.

Chesterton who said that when people give up on the true God, it's not that they believe in nothing, they will believe in anything.

And along with that goes a deep desire to twist the straight paths of the Lord, to keep away from Jesus and to keep others away from him too.

So Elemus, he wanted the straight path of the Lord, which led to the salvation of his boss and master.

He wanted that straight path to be bent.

He would have wanted to see Paul and Barnabas's path lead right out the back door of the palace and into the deep blue sea.

But that is not going to happen.

Because the Lord Jesus Christ, he came to destroy the works of the devil.

God took Elamis's satanic works and wonderfully he reached out his mighty hand and he overcame it, and he did it in such a way that brought this powerful Roman ruler to faith in Christ.

So just look down, pick up the story with me in verse 9.

You know, but Saul, who was also called Paul.

Now, just a tiny side note here.

Paul was Roman, he was a Roman citizen, he'd have had three names, the third of which would have been Paul, Paulus.

Probably his Hebrew name, Saul, was in addition to these.

Now, the setting for the rest of the book of Acts is the Gentile world.

And so from here on in, he is called Paul.

Yeah, his Roman name.

It makes sense.

He's going to go with the gospel to Roman people.

He goes as Paul now, not Saul.

And Paul is filled with the Holy Spirit with a special enabling and empowering of God.

And he addresses Elamas with the authority of God to expose him as an enemy of Christ and to curse him.

And it's quite terrifying, isn't it?

What then happens?

It's part of the ministry of a prophet.

Through him, the hand of the Lord reaches out.

You can say this is this is the hand of the Lord doing this, but it's not the hand of the Lord extended to bless, but to curse.

And this enemy of Christ is blinded.

We're told it's temporary.

We might guess this is an opportunity for him to repent.

Did he?

We don't know.

So it's the ministry of a prophet, and it is also the sign of a true apostle.

It made it so obvious that Paul came with the truth and the power and the authority of God.

It's actually just like Jesus.

His ministry began with word and power.

Like Peter, his Pentecost sermon, Acts 2, it was followed by many wonders and signs.

And now Paul's global ministry, it begins in the same way, with word and miraculous deed, and this never-ending conflict between the one true God and Satan.

And very simply, Satan does not win and cannot win.

Yes, he is real, he possesses power, he prowls around like a roaring lion seeking to devour, but he does not win and he cannot win.

And therefore, the Church of Jesus doesn't need to fear.

I wonder, do you ever fear Satan?

I mean, he is unimaginably evil.

He is to be taken seriously, not dismissed or treated as a joke.

But the Holy Spirit of God is vastly more powerful.

The Spirit of God provides the necessary power and necessary gifts to overcome him, for the gospel to go out, and also for the gospel to go in.

And that's where this passage ends with a simple description of the governor's conversion.

So, lest we doubt that the opposition of Satan will be overcome by the Spirit of God.

Verse 12, then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.

He saw what had occurred.

Now, Elemus, the magician, we do not know what kind of influence he exerted over Sergius Paulus.

Was the Roman governor enslaved to the same gods and demons?

Well, Sergius Paulus sees the hand of God at work in disabling, cursing this tool of Satan.

And we read that he is astonished at the teaching of the Lord.

I find that a fascinating sentence.

A magician has just been cursed and blinded in front of you by the prophet of the one true God.

And what astonishes him is the message he has heard.

He had heard something about Jesus that gripped him.

So he summons Paul and Barnabas and he heard from them the teaching of the Lord.

He would have heard teaching about the Lord.

So here is Jesus.

Here is the one to whom all authority in heaven on earth belongs.

He owns you, Sergius Paulus.

He owns you.

He demands your life.

He is the best of all Lords.

He comes to you not just with power but also grace and forgiveness.

He heard teaching about the Lord.

He also heard teaching by the Lord.

That is, when we bring the scriptures to people, we do not speak on our own.

This is wonderful encouragement.

Now, why is it that the scriptures and the simple gospel spoken by weak and simple people can bring a mighty ruler to faith?

Well, it's because the Holy Spirit of Jesus, he is working through the speaking and the preaching of his word.

So we think about the mission of the church and the opposition of Satan, and we remember the power of the Spirit.

People will oppose, the evil one will oppose.

He will try to twist the straight paths of the Lord through persecution, through the likes of Herod, or through the likes of Elamis and other lies and deceits.

But God's goal is that straight path, isn't it?

People coming to know his son Jesus.

He clears the way.

And the church of Jesus, we are both commanded and invited to join him on that straight path.

Did you see in this passage how it was that the church gave herself to the Spirit's mighty work?

It started in Antioch with the church in worship, didn't it?

They are in earnest prayer and fasting.

The church commits herself to sending as they lay hands on those men and send them out, they release them, they push them out.

And then these real live men, flesh and blood, just like you and me, Barnabas and Saul, they go in obedience to God and they speak wherever they went.

It's a wonderful invitation for us to join in the mighty saving works of God.

Let's join him.

So let's bow our heads.

I'm going to pray.

Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we bless you that you desire to seek and to save the lost.

Thank you that that is your heart's desire and your plan.

We thank you that because of that you sent our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thank you that He sends His Holy Spirit to draw men to you and to draw you to men.

Thank you for your gracious and wonderful command and encouragement to your church to join with your Holy Spirit in bringing the gospel out.

Thank you that we participate with the infinitely powerful, wise, holy, good God.

Thank you that you use our weak and feeble efforts.

And we pray for ourselves for today, for the week ahead, that we would make the most of every opportunity.

Forgive us our fears and our sins and our weaknesses.

Pray that you would kindly use our words wherever it is you place us.

And we ask that in Jesus' name.

Amen.