If you’d turn in your Bibles to the book of Acts, we’re finishing up Acts chapter 12 tonight; that’s on page 921 in the Bibles in the pew in front of you. Acts chapter 12. We’ll start at verse 25.
The other day I thought about the famous line from John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration speech where he said, “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” I feel like I should say that in a JFK voice, but not tonight! What he was saying there is that there are two ways to think about the country, what it means to be a citizen of this country. There are different ways to think about democracy and civic duty and so on. I thought about that because I found myself asking this question as we study through the book of Acts – “How can we make more of the Holy Spirit? How can we put more of a focus on the Spirit of God in the life of the church or in what we teach or how we worship? How can we prioritize more the Holy Spirit?” But I think that’s the wrong question. And maybe the better question is not, “How can we make more of the Spirit?” but “How can the Spirit of God make more of us? How can we be more alert to what the Holy Spirit is already doing? How can we keep in step with the Spirit in how we speak and how we serve and how we love and how we give of ourselves and of our resources? How can the Spirit make more of us?”
In Acts chapter 13, the Holy Spirit is active and engaged in the worship and the work of the church. It’s the Holy Spirit that sets apart and sends out and fills up as the teaching of the Lord breaks new ground. And what we find in this chapter is as the Word of God breaks new ground, it meets opposition as we have found all along the way. We saw it last week with Herod Agrippa. That’s what we hear from Paul in Ephesians chapter 6 where he says, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” It is that serious. The conflict is that serious. And we are reminded of what C.S. Lewis writes when he says, “There are two errors that we oftentimes make when we think about spiritual warfare, and one of those is to deny its existence.” But there is another error, and it is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in demons and evil spirits and things like that.
But I think there is a third error. And the third error is to miss the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us and among us. So I want us to notice two things from these verses that we’ll read tonight. I want us to notice first the strongholds of the enemy and then secondly the weapons of the warfare. The strongholds of the enemy and the weapons of the warfare. Before we enter into reading God’s Word, there are strongholds of the enemy at work among us even now, and so we want to rely upon the weapons of the warfare and go to the Lord in prayer, so let’s pray together.
Father, we confess that we do come with much on our minds and with much that can distract us. We cannot understand what is written here before us tonight. It would make no sense to us unless You open our eyes and unclog our ears and give us hearts that are willing and ready to receive it. We pray that Your Spirit would work in us even now, that You would help us to see the good news of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Would You draw us to Yourself. Help us to see Christ. Speak Lord, for Your servants listen. And we pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Acts chapter 12, starting in verse 25:
“And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.
Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen 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 Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the 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 Elymas 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? 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.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
As we come to a passage like this, I don’t think that we fully appreciate how unlikely, how radical is the project that is being undertaken in this part of the book of Acts. Something new is happening. Something big is happening in Antioch. And you remember back in chapter 1 in Jerusalem, we read about Peter and James and John and Andrew and the rest of the eleven. They were men of Galilee doing the work of ministry there. But now, we come to Antioch and in Antioch, in chapter 13 verse 1, we find it’s “Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.” They were prophets and teachers too, but they were not men of Galilee. No, they came from other places. And we have Barnabas. Barnabas was a Levite from the island of Cyprus. Simeon was called Niger. That seems to indicate he was a man with dark skin, that he came from African descent. We find Lucius; he was from Cyrene. Cyrene is a city in the modern-day country of Libya on the northern coast of Africa. We have Manaen. Manaen was someone who grew up with Herod the tetrarch, which means that he was closely connected, he was a close friend, maybe even a foster brother with Herod the tetrarch which was the Herod who questioned and punished Jesus as Jesus made His way to the cross. And now here he is with the church in Antioch. And then there’s Saul. And who was Saul? Saul was a Pharisee and Saul was a persecutor of the church.
And so what you have here in Antioch in Acts chapter 13 are these dividing lines that are converging on one another. There’s politics, power, race and religion and they are coming together and intersecting here in the city of Antioch. I saw a headline for an article recently and it said, the headline was, “The Best Smalltalk Topic.” What do you think the best smalltalk topic was? Well the byline for the article said, “Go ahead and talk about the weather.” Well why is the weather the best smalltalk topic? Because you don’t want to talk about politics, power, race and religion among mixed company because someone is sure to get offended! And you see all of these dividing lines coming together in the city of Antioch. God was doing something new. God was doing something big in this place. Here in Antioch they were worshiping the Lord and they were worshiping the Lord together. We’re told that they were worshiping the Lord in the church. They were the ecclesia. They were the gathered together ones in Antioch.
And you remember if we look back in Acts chapter 11 verse 26, it was in Antioch that they were first called Christians. And so there is this remarkable unity within this diversity of the people who are gathered together in Antioch, and yet they would not stay in Antioch, would they? They wouldn’t stay there. No, they set out to new places. And we find them going to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus and went through the whole island from Salamis as far as Paphos “proclaiming the Word of God,” is what verse 5 says. But why? Why did they do that?
We’ve had many too many mission conferences for us to really be able to see this for what it was. But this was unheard of. For them to go out into these different places, different cultures, different languages and to go and to take this message about this Jewish man who had died and who had been raised again and that He was the way of salvation; they went out to take that message to distant places. Why did they do that?
I was reading one of the apostle Paul’s biographers and he was telling about how, in his study of the Bible, that a couple of different things converged. He found that his childhood love of maps converged with his love of studying the Bible when he came across the different maps that we oftentimes have in the backs of our Bibles. And he says that what interested him was this almost restless, relentless way in which Paul always seemed to be on the move. And you can find those maps with the squiggly lines that show all the different places that Paul went throughout his missionary career and how he crossed mountain ranges, he forded rivers, he went to these exotic places like Ephesus and Corinth. He made good use of the remarkable road systems that were available in the Roman Empire and he also made us of the ability to sail through all these different places on the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas. Paul was everywhere. He was doing all of these things. But this man said, this biographer said, it never occurred to him to ask the question, “What did Paul think he was doing and why? Why did he go in the first place?”
And those are the questions that are presented before us at this part of the book of Acts. Why did Paul launch out on this career as a missionary? What made him tick? And why did it work? Why did it work? Because right away what we find in this chapter is that Paul is met with extreme opposition. I remember a comment I read once about missions to Japan, especially after World War II. And it didn’t elaborate on the challenge, it didn’t elaborate on the history, but the comment was something like this. That the experience of missionaries in Japan would have been vastly different after World War II if they had taken seriously beforehand the grip of Satanic power in that country. And even today, Japan is the second largest unreached people group in the world.
And we see something of that sort of opposition on display in Acts chapter 13. Because in Acts chapter 13, the first response that is recorded for us in this book, the response to Barnabas and Paul’s ministry, is one of demonic hostility. And it came from this magician. It came from a false prophet. His name was Bar-Jesus. And when the proconsul, when Sergius Paulus called Barnabas and Saul to hear the Word of God from them, we find that Bar-Jesus, or Elymas as he was called, he opposed them and he tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. Now we’re not told what he tried, we’re not told exactly what he did, but whatever it was, he received the strongest of rebukes from Paul. And Paul says to him, “You son of the devil! You enemy of all righteousness, full of deceit and villainy! Will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?” And then as a sign of judgment against this man, Paul makes him blind for a time.
You see, when we think about the strongholds of the enemy, these are the kind of things we think about. When we think about the challenges out there to the Gospel, these are the kinds of things that we often times think about. We think about the magician in Acts 13. We think about tarot cards and witchcraft and new age spirituality. I’ve had conversations with men who have been in recovery who have been led into things like Native American sweat lodges and Buddhist mindful thinking and Hare Krishna chanting. These are the kind of things that often times come to our mind because these are the sort of spiritual realm of a person like Bar-Jesus that we meet in Acts chapter 13. Same thing that we saw in Acts chapter 8 with Simon the magician. But you know what we often don’t think of? When we think about the strongholds of the enemy, the things that we often don’t think about are things like political views and racial discrimination and sports tournaments and prayerlessness and worry and doubt and fear. We don’t think about a lack of hospitality. We don’t think about the neglect of evangelism. But you see, the enemies of the Christian life are the world, the flesh, and the devil, and it would have been just as much of a spiritual barrier to the early church to divide according to the ways of the world and to look like the ways of the world around them. It would have been just as much of a spiritual barrier to them to just stay comfortable in the ways of the flesh and not go anywhere with the Gospel as it would have been to go head to head with this son of the devil and enemy of all righteousness.
And yet, the early church, they could not take down, they could not overcome the strongholds of the enemy on their own. They couldn’t do it by themselves. They needed something more. And what they needed were the weapons of the warfare. I came across an article on a college website. It listed what it said were the seven sins of writing. And the first sin of writing is, according to this website, using the passive voice. And it was a discouragement for using the passive voice in writing and saying things like, “A number of things can be seen from these results…” That’s the passive voice. It’s just not as clear. It’s a little bit clunky. But you know what? The passive is really the key to this passage. It’s one of the most important parts of this story because it’s used in two places. We find the passive listed in verse 4; there’s a passive participle where it says they were “being sent out,” and then in verse 9 there is another passive participle that says Paul “was filled with the Holy Spirit.” So what we are being told in those two places is that Barnabas and Paul were being acted upon as they carried out the ministry that was given for them to do. You see, that’s the key to the weapons of the warfare. It’s that the strongholds only come down by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And three times we find the Holy Spirit mentioned in this chapter. Verse 2, it says that Barnabas and Saul were “set apart by the Holy Spirit for the work to which He called them.” Verse 4, they were “sent out by the Holy Spirit” to Cyprus and beyond. Verse 9, Saul or Paul was “filled with the Holy Spirit” when he rebuked the false prophet and cloaked him with blindness for a time. They were “set apart,” “sent out,” and “filled by” the Holy Spirit. So the message of this chapter is that the church did not operate out of its own strength and supply, but no, they were directed and carried about by the work and the power of the Holy Spirit.
And we see that in a couple of different ways. We see both the operation of the Spirit but also the cooperation of the Spirit. Dr. Doug Kelly, in his most recent volume on the Holy Spirit, he says that “The supreme gift is God Himself, and by means of the Holy Spirit, God comes to us so that we know God and are lifted in His salvation.” Dr. Kelly says that, “God in His goodness gives Himself to His people. That is the supreme gift. That is the source of the highest known blessedness that can ever come to us.” It’s the gift of God Himself through the gift of His Spirit. And we find here in this passage that it’s through that gift of the Holy Spirit that all of the other gifts flow. And it’s the Holy Spirit who had given gifts to certain men to be prophets and teachers. And even within those there were some who were called to be evangelists. Think about what Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 4. He says, “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ.” The Holy Spirit gave them the gifts that they needed to do in order to carry out the task that He had called them to do.
You see, the Holy Spirit, He gave them the gifts, but He also gave them the heart, gave them the desire to go and even provided the opportunities when they went. Did you notice that? Did you notice that it was Sergius Paulus who summoned Barnabas and Saul to come to him and it was Sergius Paulus who sought to hear the Word of God from them. It wasn’t Paul’s initiative; it wasn’t Barnabas’ plan. Sergius Paulus sought them out. Because? Because why? It’s because the Holy Spirit was already at work in the life of Sergius Paulus. The Holy Spirit was already at work. The Spirit was at work to bring these men together, to bring together both the witness and the willing heart of the proconsul, and the Holy Spirit was at work to bring those two together and the Holy Spirit provided the results. Because not only was Paul empowered to defeat the opposition of the false prophet and to curse him with blindness, but what else happened? Sergius Paulus believed. He came to faith. Verse 12 says, “Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.” The Holy Spirit does it all. The Holy Spirit prepares His people and sends them out. The Holy Spirit provides the opportunity and the Holy Spirit even produces the results.
The Holy Spirit does it all but the Holy Spirit doesn’t do it all alone. And what we also find in this passage is the cooperation with the Spirit. And while the passive might be the key part to this passage, notice also that Barnabas and Paul are actively engaged in cooperating and partnering with the work of the ministry that the Spirit had given them to do. Before they went anywhere, before they did anything, before they said any words to anyone, they were already teaching and hearing the Word of God. They were giving their attention to God’s Word. They were gathering together for worship and they were praying. They were praying together as was their custom from the very beginning. This was their regular practice that they were already doing before any of these things happened.
And those are our regular practices as well, aren’t they? That we are regularly engaged in gathering together and worshiping, hearing the Word, and praying. But I’m missing one, aren’t I? I left one out. Because what else were they doing? It was probably the thing we often times leave out of our own spiritual disciplines as well, because they were fasting. Verse 2 says they were “worshiping the Lord and fasting.” Verse 3, “Then after fasting and praying they sent them off.” They were fasting. And fasting is the giving up of our most basic physical worldly need, giving up food for a time in order to seek and to submit to God’s will above anything else in our lives. Fasting is an expression of relying not on our own strength, not on our own resources, but relying on the power and the work of the Holy Spirit. It may not be right for everyone, depending on your health conditions. It may not be appropriate at a particular moment, but what we find with the precedence of the Bible, throughout the Bible, is this pairing of prayer and fasting in times of seeking God’s guidance. And I wonder how much we do that.
David mentioned this morning the upcoming deacon election. And I wonder, for some of you seeking discernment and standing election for the office of deacon, might this be a good time to pray and fast? Pray and fast and to say, “Not my will but Thy will be done.” And maybe there are some of you, in light of the mission conference that we recently had, that are discerning something of a call to missions, to be a long term missionary. Is that not a wonderful opportunity to pray and to fast in seeking God’s will for that purpose. Before Paul and Barnabas did anything, before they went anywhere, they prayed and they fasted. It could be any decision, it could be any calling in your life, it could be a struggle with sin, but we can cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives by engaging in prayer and fasting. The early church did that.
Notice what else they did. The early church also cooperated with the Spirit in choosing where they would go. Where did they go? They went to Cyprus. Why did they go to Cyprus? Why start there? Well, it made sense. It made perfect sense to go to Cyprus because Barnabas was from Cyprus. Barnabas probably still had family in Cyprus, he had connections. He knew people. He probably had been to the synagogue that they went to and knew something of the traditions and customs there. And notice that that’s where they also started – they went to synagogues. Why did they go to synagogues? Because they were Jews. And you have Barnabas who was a Levite, you have Saul or Paul who was a Pharisee. These were there people. This is where they were comfortable. This is where they had open doors on the island of Cyprus. Cyprus was an open door. The synagogue was an open door and that’s where they started. That’s where they began because the work of the Holy Spirit is not isolated from our backgrounds and our experiences and our relationships and even from the desires that God has put into our lives. No, the Spirit uses all of those things in order to spread the Gospel.
That’s why we cannot collapse all of ministry and evangelism into the clergy or ministry staff. We can’t do that. Because all of you have access and opportunities and gifts that the rest of us do not have access to. And it is invaluable for the spread of the Gospel that each of us is using those experiences, those relationships, those backgrounds and even the desires in our hearts and the gifts that God has given to us to go and to take a Word about Jesus to those around us. It can’t just be a limited view; it has to be all of us. Because the Holy Spirit uses those things as we cooperate with the Spirit in the work of ministry. Where is your open door? Where is your open door? Where are the places where God has put in your path, the people God has put in your path where you might find opportunities to say a word about Jesus and about the forgiveness of sins and about life in His name? There are open doors there and we are called to cooperate with the Spirit in being sensitive to good old common sense and reason and going where the Spirit leads us.
Lastly, notice how Sergius Paulus was brought to faith. How was the proconsul brought to faith? Well, it wasn’t so much about what he saw Paul do in the miraculous act. But look at what verse 12 says. It says, “Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished” – what was he astonished at? “He was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.” Paul and Barnabas taught him. They opened their mouths and spoke the message. They told him about Jesus and they told him about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and about the forgiveness of sins and about new life in the kingdom of God through faith in Jesus’ name for all those who trust in Jesus. And what happened? Sergius Paulus believed. He was astonished. He was astonished and he believed in Jesus for salvation to receive that supreme gift of God Himself.
You see, Paul and Barnabas, they didn’t fade into the background and just let the Spirit do His work. No, they were actively engaged. They had to take that step of saying something about Jesus. They had their part to play in cooperating with the work of the Spirit. And we do too. We do too. We have to be ready to open our mouths with the Gospel because the Holy Spirit does it all, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t do it all alone. There is the operation of the Spirit and the cooperation of God’s people together in the work of ministry and the spread of the kingdom of God.
Sometimes you hear about participating in the work of the Spirit as being compared to catching wind in the sails. Well, a few months ago we got invited by some friends to go sailing. And I’ve never been before. It was a beautiful day, we had a great time sharing a meal and spending time with friends, and we went out to the marina, we got on the boat, we put on our sunscreen and our life jackets, and we pulled the sail out from under the boat. We tied it to the mast, hooked it to the mast, hoisted it up. We pulled up the anchor, untied the boat from the pier, and then went to the back of the boat to start the motor to get out from the dock. And the motor wouldn’t start. Nothing. And we tried several different solutions, nothing worked, and in the end we didn’t get to go sailing – because of the motor, which seems like it has nothing to do with sailing, doesn’t it?
But I wonder how much we’re like that sometimes. And we’re called to go along and to catch the wind of the Spirit but we’re stuck on the motor. And our focus can be on any number of things. We can be focused on the perfect color and the flower arrangements and the menu and the quality of the coffee or the length of the sermon or whatever it might be that we’re tempted to focus on. But one of the things I did learn that day in our conversations is that sailing is a very active activity. And sailors are very actively engaged in the act of sailing. Well let’s make sure that our activity is keeping step with the Spirit and focusing on the ways that the Holy Spirit works in our lives and in the church. Let’s make sure that we are cooperating with the Spirit so that we might enjoy the operation of the Spirit in our lives and in the church for the glory and the spread of the name of Jesus. There are strongholds of the enemy out there, to be sure, but the Holy Spirit is the weapons of our warfare and we can’t miss that as we go to live for God’s glory, by His grace, and for the fame of the name of Jesus.
Let’s pray.Father, we pray that You would be at work in our lives and in this church. Help us to keep in step with the Spirit, that we would not quench the Spirit, but that we would submit ourselves in all of our doing to what You have called us to do – to rely upon You in faith. We thank You for the gift of Christ and for the message of salvation, for this good news. We pray even now as we have read Your Word that there would be someone here who would be astonished at the Word of the Lord, who would be astonished by what You do by the power of Your grace in our lives, and would believe. Sent us out from here to make us ambassadors, witnesses, that we would be ready to speak the Word to others in the open doors that You give to us. I pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.