Acts 13:1-12
Amen, you can be seated. Please
turn in your copy of God’s word to the book of Acts. Our reading
will be chapter 13, verses one through 12. Last week, we covered
chapter 12, 24, I think it was, through maybe
13, one to three. We just took a little sidestep
and looked at what it meant, what it means for God to set
apart and send people gospel emissaries out into the world
to proclaim the good news of God. Now today we’ll look at
the fuller story of Paul and Barnabas being set apart and
sent. They go to Cyprus and minister across that island. And so we’ll
think about that today in these couple of verses. Before we read
God’s word, let’s pause and ask for his help and grace. Pray
with me. Lord, you tell us that your word
is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. You tell us that
your word is to strengthen us, to nurture us, to fortify us
against the flesh, remaining sin, against the devil and all
that he means to do, including destroy us and your church. It
means to fortify us against the world and all that it offers.
So now, Lord, as we As we pump iron, as we lift weights, as
we work out in your word, we pray that it would do its work,
that its divine errand would accomplish its purpose, strengthen
us, nourish us, feed us, fill us, so that we can serve you
and the world as strong Christians, able to resist, able to walk
strong, able to be steadfast in purpose, and able to tell
the world about the dying and risen Savior, Jesus, who saves
people from their sins. hear us and help us. We pray
now in the name of our great savior. Amen. Here. God’s word with me. Uh, this
is indeed God’s word. It’s acts chapter 13, one to
12. And it begins this way. Now there were in the church
at Antioch prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, who was called
Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manan, a lifelong friend of Herod the
Tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the
Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas
and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then after
fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent
them off. So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down
to Seleucia. And from there, they sailed to
Cyprus. When they arrived at Salomius,
they proclaimed the word of God in synagogues of the Jews, and
they had John to assist them. When they had gone through the
whole island as far as Paphos, they came upon a certain magician,
a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus. He was with the proconsul
Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence who summoned Barnabas and Saul
and sought to hear the word of God. But Elemas, the magician,
for that is the meaning of his name, opposed them, seeking 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? 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. Amen. The word of our God for
us. If I were to ask if we were to take a poll today, who are
some of the greatest missionaries? Some of us would would stretch
back into early church history and we would think about the
apostles that we don’t really know all that much about. And
they went to far lands as far as India. We might think of Amy
Carmichael, David Brainerd. We might think of the father
of all missions, William Carey. We might think of the five missionaries
who lost their lives at the hands of the Alka Indians in Ecuador. We might think of Jim Elliot
and Roger Eudarian, Nate Saint and the others there. We might think of the many single
women who in the 18 and 1900s went off to the mission field
and establish God’s church across all kinds of lands. And we would
be right to think of wonderful missionaries, maybe through some
of the biographies we’ve read. But I bet there’s one missionary
you haven’t thought that much about. And when I say his name,
he’ll be very obvious to you. That great missionary is God
himself. God is a missionary God. We understand from the scriptures
that in eternity past, God determined to save a people for himself
through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In our theology, we call
this the covenant of redemption. I love how Steve Lawson puts
this, the Baptist preacher who many of you have heard through
Ligonier Ministries. Steve Lawson says that there
was an inter-Trinitarian boardroom meeting. that took place in eternity
past, and God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit
said in their divine counsel, what will bring us most glory?
And the answer was, we will save a people from their sin and draw
them to us. And the inner Trinitarian love
that we, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enjoy together, they will
enjoy with us. And so God is a missionary God
who made a covenant of redemption. And we begin to see that covenant
of redemption unfold in the life of Adam and Eve. God made a garden
and he put Adam in it to work it and to keep it. He gave him
a wife, Eve. They produced children as God had told them to be fruitful
and to multiply. God gave them a law. And that
law was simply this of all the Trees of the garden you may freely
eat, except of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You
shall not eat from it in the day you eat of that tree. You
shall surely die. Adam and Eve ate because they
were tempted by Satan. They gave in to the desires of
their own hearts. And God, our missionary God,
did not leave them in their sin. No, he came looking for them.
I love that wonderful stretch of Genesis chapter three, where
it says, God came looking for Adam and Eve in the cool of the
day, as he had done day by day in their regular fellowship.
And he asked a simple question to Adam and Eve, where are you? We live in a day and age. We
live in a culture where we, we write people off. I am done with
you. We walk away from relationships.
We put our hand up, we wag our heads and we walk away and say,
I am done. That’s how it is in this world,
but not so with God. He pursues. He comes. He sends. He is a missionary
God. And when Adam and Eve sinned
and God lined them up, Adam and Eve and Satan, and he doled out
their curses, it’s going to hurt to have babies. It’s going to
hurt to till the earth and there’s not going to be much fruit from
it. You’re going to hoe potatoes, but there aren’t going to be
any, right? Thorns and thistles and weeds. And he told Satan,
you’re going to slither on your belly. You’re gonna eat the dust
of the earth and the seed of the woman is going to crush your
head. You’re gonna be a heel nipper. I think of little snakes
biting at our heels, but the Messiah will crush the serpent’s
head. But in that doling out of curses,
God promised that from this woman, from Eve, there would be a Messiah.
That’s why the gospels trace the genealogy of Jesus back to
Adam. From your line, from or to Eve,
from your lineage, there will be one who will save sinners. And so we fast forward through
the story of the Bible. We have centuries of prophets
and judges and priests and kings and things getting slaughtered
and things getting burned. things getting sacrificed until
the fullness of time when God sent forth his son from heaven. One of the greatest missionary
sendings I read through all kinds of commentaries on these passages
from Acts over the last couple of weeks and much as made. about the church at Antioch,
about how big it was, how powerful it was, how multi-staffed it
was. And I was sad to read, even in
good commentaries, they’ve taken modern American church and imposed
it on the church at Antioch. Oh, there was, they must’ve had
staff meetings every week. There was the head of staff.
I mean, you wouldn’t believe the corporate church interpretation
on, and I don’t mean corporate church, body gathered. I mean
like USA, you know, run the church like Boeing or, you know, the
serial company. That’s what I mean by corporate
there. But you would not believe how many good Bible commentators
just imposed our American church on Antioch. Well, the greatest
sending was not an Antioch or from New York City or from London.
The greatest sending was from heaven itself. He who was rich
beyond our measure, for our sakes became poor, that we might become
rich. God promised a Messiah. He sent
a woman, or sent a Messiah born of a woman. Eve, the story of
the birth of Jesus, we’ll be thinking about in a few months
as Christmas comes. Jesus was born of her without
sin. He was conceived by the Holy
Ghost. He was obedient to fulfill his mission. Every time Satan
tried to stop him, whether it was by Satan coming to him in
the wilderness or trying to use Herod as he killed all the babies
born in or near Bethlehem during the time of Jesus’ natal star. While many tried to stop Jesus,
he kept on going. He stayed on mission. He went
to the cross and became a sacrifice for sinners. And when he finished
the work, he rose again into the heavenly place and was seated
at the right hand of God. almighty, but before he went
to heaven, we understand from our studies and Luke and now
in Acts that for 40 days he spent time in the upper room with his
disciples, preparing them for the ministry, which he would
commission them to do. Remember his hands raised. He
says to the disciples, all authority in heaven and on earth has been
given to me. Therefore, go. and make disciples
of all nations. And while you’re going and making
disciples, you’ll baptize them and you’ll disciple them or teach
them everything that I’ve commanded you. And that’s, that’s the simple
mission of the church, isn’t it? The mission of the church
is the mission of God. And if God is the greatest missionary,
then the church is the best when it does the missionary work of
God almighty through the power and commission of Jesus, his
only son, who has all authority and has accomplished the work
of redemption. And so we think about the mission to the world,
take the gospel to all nations. We think about assisting in God’s
work to keep his promise. that he made in that inter-Trinitarian
boardroom meeting in eternity past. We’re gonna save a people
for ourselves, for our own glory. This is also a promise to be
kept to Abraham. Abraham, stand on this land.
I’m gonna give it to you. Abraham, as you stand on this
land, look up to the stars and can you count them? No, you cannot.
And this will be the number of your offspring who will come
after you, who will be your children. God says he will gather elect
from every nation, every tongue, every tribe, every people group. And so as we think of the events
of the book of Acts, we think of Pentecost or the establishment
of Stephen as a deacon, even as stoning. We think of the ministry
of Philip. We think of Saul becoming Paul
on the road to Damascus. We think of the powerful preaching
of Peter who had previously denied Jesus. and was rash in his thoughts
and his actions. And now we look at this church
in Antioch, this multicultural and diverse church. The list
of names shows you there’s all kinds of people from all kinds
of places with all kinds of skin tones. And this church is at
an important crossroads, not just in geography. It’s a place where all kinds
of people pass through and stayed. It might be, you know, what do
we joke that if you’re gonna die, you gotta go through Atlanta.
or Chicago if you’re probably a pagan, to get to heaven, right? You gotta get your connecting
flight. There are certain crossroads where roads cross or airports
make most of their flights from what Antioch geographically was
a big crossroads. This is the church also at a
redemptive crossroads. This is going to be the beginning
of the mission to the Gentiles. Oh yes, we’ve seen some Gentiles
come to faith. Yes, we’ve seen some Gentile
conversions, but remember Paul on the road to Damascus, when
he met Jesus, why are you persecuting me? I’m gonna show you how much
you must suffer for my name. You’re gonna go. Remember, he’s a bonafide
Jew, got all the papers and all the diplomas. He’s gone to all
their best schools. He’s their brightest, made more
sense to send them to the Jewish people, but God in his missionary
work says, no, you’re gonna be a Gentile guy. So when Paul gets
sent off here, this is really the first mission to the Gentile
nations. And so we see the church at a
physical, geographical crossroads, but a real redemptive crossroads. The Gentiles are gonna be brought
in in mass. This is a church on the move,
this church at Antioch. This is a church that has the
strength and the ability to send two of their pastoral staff,
you might say, away from the church and out into the world. You know, I think sometimes most
churches think this way about themselves. The kingdom stops
at their doors. And so the best way to plant
a church, in my estimation, is to daughter one out. Instead
of sending a guy over to Timbuktu and saying, here you go, do it.
Good luck. Here’s some cash. We should take 50 people who
can serve and go with and start a church with some strength and
some support and some encouragement. Oh no, we don’t want to lose
50 people. Then we’ll have less than the Methodist or the Baptist.
See, we start thinking that way. It’s all about nickels and noses.
We’ll have less money. No, it’s about the kingdom. This is a
church that’s comfortable enough in its own skin to hear the voice
of God and obey it. and to set apart and send gospel
missionaries. And so in the life of the early
church, we see a sending church. And we see not only that they
give up two of their pastoral staff, as it were, they give
their best and their brightest. Paul and Barnabas were guys you’d
wanna keep around. Their Sunday school classes were
really full. And when they were off at the beach, people would
say, well, whoever subbed for Paul, he was all right. but we
can’t wait till Paul comes back next week. His classes are really
good. That’s kind of the mindset that you might see here, that
they pray and they listen to the Holy Spirit and they set
apart and send so that the gospel can go the distance into the
world. The gospel must be told and the
gospel must establish new churches. You know, sometimes we get somebody
with a twinkle in their eye and they say, you know, I’m gonna
be a missionary. And it’s wonderful to go around the world and tell
people about Jesus. But unless we are telling people
about Jesus and establishing churches, we’re really not doing
missionary work. We’re telling people to come
to faith in Jesus, but there’s no church for them. And so I think
the best is when the church sends the church and the church sends
the church and the church sends the church and the church multiplies
so that churches are established where God is worshiped. There’s
the sound preaching of the word and the right administration
of the sacraments, the discipleship of people and the baptism of
new converts and others brought into God’s covenant family. So
the gospel we’ve seen has left Jerusalem. It’s gone through
Judea. It’s gone through Samaria. Now it’s up at Antioch and it’s
going to go across the sea to the island of Cyprus and then
on from there into Galatia and then on and on through the other
missionary journeys, possibly as far as the country of Spain. This is an exciting time in the
life of the church of Jesus Christ. Paul and Barnabas are going to
get on a boat. They’re going to make a day long sail across
the Mediterranean to a little island called Cyprus. This is
where your maps. are really important. You can
follow those little missionary journeys. Usually they start
and they go and they come right back. Then they start and they
go a little farther, come right back, start, go a long ways farther
and come right back. But you can follow their little
missionary journey circles in the maps in the back of your
Bible. Some of you also have picked
up, I think there’s one left, maybe two left, in the library,
The Life of Paul. John MacArthur made a wonderful
summary where he takes the Bible and puts it in Chronological
order, it’s a wonderful little order of the life and ministry
of Paul and his journeys. But by God’s power, by the orchestration
of the Holy Spirit, these go into the mission field speaking
for God. They go from the east end of
the island to the west. Barnabas and John Mark, who they
meet up with, are probably natives. It’s a little helpful, I would
think, to have a couple of guys on the home turf. They go to
the synagogues because what does Romans tell us? The gospel is
for the Jew first, then the Greek. And then they preach the gospel
freely after they’ve been to the synagogue. But we bump into
Satan. on this journey. We bump into
the powers and the forces of darkness. This is an island and
maybe some of you have been to the Caribbean. Islands are usually
full of funky things. Not only do they want your money,
your tourism money, and somebody was telling me they’re going
somewhere this fall, and they not only have to pay a tax to
get on the island, they have to pay a tax to get off the island.
So island visiting is usually weird, right? You think about
like Haiti, where there’s a lot of voodoo, you think of islands
in the Caribbean, there’s just a lot of things pulled together. And so preaching the gospel on
the island, you know, suffering for Jesus in the island life
is actually Improper, right? It’s actually hard usually to
minister near water. My family was in a church on
the coast for a time and it was probably one of the darkest places
that I think dad ever served. And so don’t always think, you
know, suffering for Jesus in the Caribbean is a wonderful
thing. It’s usually actually much, much harder. But as we think
of this passage, I want us to think about it very briefly in
light of the eyes, the eyes of Saul. the eyes of Elemis or Bargesis,
and then the eyes of the Proconsul. The eyes of Paul, you might think,
he has night vision, or a form of it. He’s a navy seal for God,
you might say. And so Saul, or Paul as he’s
gonna be called hereafter because he’s gonna use his Greek name
to speak to the Gentiles, he sees spiritually. He sees and
he seeks and saves the lost because he is like the missionary God
who set him heart and sent him on this mission. He sees Bar
Jesus or Elimus and sees his darkness and his paganism and
his evil, his gospel stopping efforts. He sees Sergius Paulus,
the proconsul or the governor of this whole island. And as
Paul and his missionary comrades spread their efforts across the
island from east to west, you can imagine he sees with spiritual
eyes, the opportunities and the dangers. He sees people come
to faith. He sees people reject the gospel.
But in this particular encounter, we see him with his eyes on Elemas
or Bar Jesus. What does Elemas see? Elemis
sees with his eyes darkness, he sees evil. He himself is still
in the bondage and the chains of sin and satanic power. He serves himself by trying to
destroy and trap others in his black magic, his dark powers
across this island. You can say Elemis or Bargesis
has a ministry of darkness. And what does he see with his
eyes? He sees falsehoods. He sees evil, he sees wickedness,
he sees opportunities. And the opportunity that Paul
zeroes in on with his spiritual eyes is, bar Jesus here, Elymas
wants to block Sergius Paulus, the governor, from responding
to the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can imagine this fella has
his, powers over this whole island. He’s got this place in a spell.
And so we don’t know why Paul and Barnabas and John Mark went
across this island first. We’re not told those details,
but we can guess it was a dark place that needed the light of
the gospel. And what does Saul or Paul see when he sees Elemas? He sees truth versus falsehood. He sees one sent, that’s himself
by God, missionary God, versus one who’s on the loose for the
devil’s work. And he gives this righteous rebuke. You are a child of the devil.
Hopefully you never hear those words. Hopefully that’s not a
rundown of your behavior as a four to six year old, right? The Sunday
school teacher didn’t drop you back with your parents. He’s
a child of the devil. That’s not good. No, that’s not
what Paul’s speaking the truth here. You have a birth in evil. You are doing the evil ones work. Some years ago, we had a house
that was out in the woods and I moved a rock and under that
rock was a nest of little snakes. And what do little snakes become?
But big snakes. And what do big snakes do? They
cause trouble. And so what did the little babies
of the devil do? They become big babies of the
devil and they seek to destroy Jesus and his gospel. And so
Paul’s righteous rebuke, because his eyes are intent on this man’s
wickedness. He sees who he is and what he
is. You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything right.
You are a fool, he says, of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop? perverting
the right ways of the Lord. What a strong rebuke. I was reading
a couple of weeks ago, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about
church membership in our congregation over the last six, eight months.
And I was reading, it’s the 100th anniversary of Harry Emerson
Fosdick. Some of you have known who he
is through history, but he was the Baptist who to poke his eye
in the, the history of church order. He takes one of the most
prominent Presbyterian churches, a Baptist taking the pulpit at
a Presbyterian church. That’s a big no-no. And he does
it to prove it doesn’t matter. And he was the father of what
we call open membership. So we have these standards and
you come to us and say, I want to join. And we say, okay, these
are the standards of our denomination. If you’re willing to abide by
them, you’re welcome here. Well, Fosdick said, no, we need
open membership. You come to us and you tell us
what you’re willing to do. Um, that’s like a theater. We
as a family go to in Southwest Virginia called the barter theater.
And back during the great depression, if you didn’t have the eight
bucks to get in or whatever it was, you could bring an egg or a chicken
or a sack of flour. You could barter your way in.
And that was your price of admission. Well, what happens to the church
of the living God? When the people barter, they,
their way in the standards for membership in the household of
faith become whatever, whenever, however. And it really becomes
about feeling or subjective things or whatever. And it’s hardly
ever God standards. And so this article was saying
Fosdick ushered in what the last hundred years, 125 years of the
church has become an open membership thing where we come to God on
our terms. And isn’t that a contradiction
in terms? And so sometimes I think it’s
good for us to rebuke the unrighteous, those who are seeking to destroy
the church of the Jesus Christ. We maintain our standards. We
look for professions of faith and we keep darkness outside
our doors. And what does Paul say to this
man? He says, now the hand of the
Lord is against you. What a chilling statement. Do
we want the hand of God against us? Well, even Jesus, the great
missionary, didn’t remember the night before he went to the cross.
He sweat blood because why? The hand of the Lord was to be
against him next day. You will be blind for a time,
unable to see the light of the sun. And all of a sudden, mist
and darkness came over him. He groped about and sought someone
to lead him by the hand. He was cursed. His behavior against
God was rewarded with these curses. And so we look at the eyes of
the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. He’s watching this whole encounter. He’s hearing everything the apostle
Paul is saying. He’s the one who summoned Paul
because he was seeking Jesus. He’s a big guy, smart guy, our
passage tells us. No doubt he’s heard the report
of the missionaries, wants to see it and hear it for himself.
And boy, does he get a show. There are obstacles that get
in the way of our gospel presentations, there are obstacles that get
in the way of the ministry of the church, there are obstacles
that get in the way of us telling others about Jesus Christ, their
powers of darkness, who are against preaching, against church, against
worship, against evangelism, against missionary work. But
remember the gates of hell. will never prevail against the
Lord and his power. And so this proconsul saw with
his eyes, he heard the encounter and he came to faith in Jesus
Christ. And this is really on Paul’s
first missionary journey, the first missionary journey to the
Gentiles. This is the first Gentile convert. Saul’s Paul’s work has been made
effective by the Holy Spirit. So how should we think about
being a church? In light of missions, you know,
we support a handful of people who are set apart. sent to do
work locally. We work with the Fellowship of
Christian Athletes on all the campuses in Caswell County, Elements
County, and I think Chatham County. We work with the Piedmont Rescue
Mission that works with men in trouble with pregnancy crises.
It also has a shelter for women and families. We also work with
our brother Darren Stone who takes the ministry to the state
capitol. nurturing disciples and preaching
the gospel among those that serve in government there. We also
have the Goodmans in Wales, the Kings in Spain. We have the Mitchells
who are working among Muslims in America and equipping the
church to deal with that. And so we send a portion of our
funds to support these folks. And so, yes, pat ourselves on
the back. We’re doing what we can. We’re a church that’s open.
We have a pulpit. We preach. We’re equipping you
to be good evangelists. You have families, children,
neighbors. You have a sphere of influence. That’s all well
and good. But I want us to think about the John Piper challenge. Some years ago, John Piper said
about the church and missions, you either go or you send or
you disobey. And so God may not call us to
go, that’s only for a few, but we need to be ascending people. Otherwise we are a disobedient
people. But I think it’s even worse than
that. We’re not missionary like our
God who sent forth his son into the world to save us. If we so
love Jesus and what he’s done, should not the light of our countenance
spread across the face of the earth? until all men and women
and boys and girls have the chance to hear about salvation through
faith in Jesus Christ. May it be so. Even from our little
congregation here, let’s pray together. Our great God, we thank
you for this display of your love, this display of your faithfulness,
this display of your calling and equipping and set apart and
sending your people to do gospel work. Help us to be faithful
in our part as the gospel goes to the ends of the earth. Hear
our prayers as we make them now and the one who loved us and
came after us, looking for us and found us, Jesus Christ, our
savior, amen.