Acts 13 Evil Used for Good Paul's Sermon

Paul continues his missionary journey and encounters opposition from a magician named Bar Jesus. Paul exposes him and he is punished by God. Despite the enemy's attacks, the proconsul believes in the teachings of the Lord. Paul and his companions then travel to Pisidian Antioch and are invited to speak in the synagogue. Paul gives a sermon summarizing Jewish history and the preparation for Christ. He emphasizes that the law was meant to show their need for a savior, which is fulfilled in Jesus. We're going to continue next chapter 13 tonight, if you're following along. And the journey continues. We're going along with the early apostles, and we're going to branch off with Paul now. And as you know, Paul wrote most of the New Testament, a really significant character. And this is just one of many missionary journeys that he's going to go on. But before we start on his journey, let's go ahead and go to God in prayer. Let's pray. Dear God, we come before you tonight to continue in worship and just to set aside this time. Lord, I just pray that you would speak to us in the way we need to be spoken to tonight. Help us to stay out of the way of what you want to accomplish and forgive us for our sins. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. So the journey continues, and I have it titled to where evil tends to destroy itself. Because we're going to see later on, he's going to talk about the Jews and how they hated Jesus because he came along and destroyed their religion. So they destroyed him, right? They put him on the cross. But that very action was the very thing that destroyed them. And that happens time and time again. God uses evil for his good. And it's crazy how God uses that. But the journey continues here. We see this map and we have them coming from Antioch. Now there were several towns called Antioch. We're going to be in the other Antioch, the one that isn't their base up in the north in Galatia. They've kind of swept through the island of Patmos there, of Cyprus, through Paphos and Salamis. They've reached everybody they can reach now. Now they're going up to Perga and they're going to settle in Antioch. And that's where Paul's going to do a lot of his talking. It's a big crowd going to be up there. Thousands of people he's going to be able to talk to. But before we get started in that, let's kind of backtrack a little bit. Remember we were talking about that musician, not musician, magician, Bar Jesus, the guy hanging out at the bar with Jesus, no, the son of Jesus. He pretended to be good. You know, the word Joshua comes from that word, that Hebrew word. So it was a very common name that people use, kind of like we have a lot of Poles and Johns. Not a lot of Scots out there, not a lot of Danes necessarily, but I'm from Dane land. He's from Scotland. So I think that's pretty cool anyway. But when they had gone here in verse six, had gone through the whole island, as far as Paphos, they found a magician, a Jewish false prophet, whose name was Bar Jesus. So they were successful here, apparently on this island. And of course they encounter some opposition. They're going to encounter opposition and it's going to get more and more intense as they get more and more effective. And eventually some of them are going to die because of their efforts. And that's how it is as a Christian. When we first start out, you know, we may be super kind of successful and things seem to be going right. And then all of a sudden, boom, something will be thrown in our path and it gets hard. But you know, God wants us to push through those hard times. And when we come out of those hard times, we come out stronger. They've already been thrown in prison a couple of times even. But here we have this guy, he's going to be sneaky and try to get people to not believe this magician in verse seven, who is the proconsul, who is with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence. This man summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. So this influential guy, as we talked about last week, he wants to learn more about the word of God. But Elemas, the magician, for so his name is translated, was opposing them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. Now, this Elemas, another name for him was the Bargesus. He's the magician. You have the good magi, the magian, and then you have the bad magi or magio. And if you look at the original Greek, you can determine the difference by that definition. But he's a fraudulent wizard that uses the stars to predict the future. And sometimes they're so believable because they do have satanic influence and spiritual influence behind them. So they do have some supernatural power. The enemy knows how to get a hold of the influencers, knows how to get a hold of the powerful people. How often do we see good, awesome people go to Congress and then after three or four years, they're corrupt? And you're like, I don't recognize that person anymore. They get up into those positions of power. Satan is probably literally there in Washington, D.C., along with his followers, trying to convince people away from the truth. And that's too bad because people just believe these people. They trust these people. You know, Einstein said this, blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. So they go to college, they see these smooth professors, you know, that are very believable, extremely intelligent. Well, it's hard to believe they're intelligent when they miss the obvious truth. But people trust them, they believe them. People trust our...well, they don't trust our government statistically anymore. Fortunately, they've woken up to that. They don't trust our media anymore like they used to. So people are waking up to this and knowing that we just can't blindly believe in people with authority. So Saul became a whistleblower here. He exposed the enemy for who they were. He said in verse 9, that Saul, who is also known as Paul, and he's going to be the guy that's going to be giving a sermon here we're going to get into. He was filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze on him and said, you who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord? And when Satan is involved, when evil is involved, no, they don't stop. They live to make crooked the ways of the Lord. They live and breathe it. They wake up and plan for it. It's amazing. I think they're more actively seeking and working against us than we are against them. We often think God has it, you know, I don't have to actually do any work, but he wants us to do the work. So there's a punishment here for this guy, Elmas. 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. And we love it when justice comes on our enemies like this. David prayed for it. We should go ahead and feel free to pray that justice comes upon our enemies. You know, justice is God, so he gets to determine the severity of that punishment. So you may not want to pray, God, please stab this guy in the eye through his skull or whatever you're dreaming of in your dreams. God may have a different way to punish than we do, but pray for justice and God's justice to come down on them. But when the truth comes out here, it says, then the proconsul believed when he saw what had happened, being amazed at the teaching of the Lord. So despite the enemy's attacks to get this proconsul, this executive position away from the faith, God got to him anyway, which is awesome. Now verse 13 goes on. Now Paul and his companions put out to sea from Paphos and they came to Perga in Pamphylia. So they're off the island now. But John, he left them and returned to Jerusalem. But going on from Perga, they arrived at Pisidian Antioch. So they docked their boat and then they went up farther inland. And on the Sabbath day, they went into the synagogue and sat down. So on the Sabbath day in the synagogue, the Jews would read from the book of Moses, the Torah. And so verse 15 goes on, after reading the law and the prophets, the synagogue officials sent to them saying, brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say it. So this was a great invitation for them. God used the Jewish people to allow them a platform actually to speak. You know, they don't want to give us a platform to speak because many times people hear the truth and it sets them free and their minds open and they can't allow that. But the law, this whole time for the Jews has been their number one thing. It's been their path to salvation. It's been their focus. And now Jesus is preaching, hey, the law was just to expose your need for me. The law came about to point forward to Christ and Jesus Christ fulfilled that law. Matthew 5.17, do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not came to abolish, but to fulfill. So, you know, it's important that we know that the law was to put that measuring stick against us. The measuring stick that shoots from here to the moon that we could never live up to. And now we know our need for a savior that should click with the Jews. Wow, there's no way I could keep that law perfectly. So I needed a savior from them. Paul stood up here in verse 16 and motioning with his hand said, men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. So this brings us to several verses of a sermon he's going to preach to the Jews of this time. It's kind of a God inspired sermon. It's what we all hope as pastors we do. God would inspire our sermons. And this is one of them. But Paul gives a quick summary of Jewish history in this. He talks about the preparation for Christ. He talks about how the Jews rejected Christ. And he talks about the forgiveness provided by Christ. So let's look at the first one. He's going to talk about the Jewish history lesson quickly. The preparation for Christ. So in Acts 13, 17, he says, the God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt. And with an uplifted arm, he led them out from it. For a period of about 40 years, he put up with them in the wilderness. God tolerated them. He was sick of them. He rescued them. And then they turned their back on him. Kind of like what's happening now with Paul preaching to a lot of these Jews. Jesus came, died on the cross, rescued them. And now they're turning their back on him. You know, not all of them, obviously. A lot of them are coming to him. But some of them have been stubborn. So 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. So after these things, he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king and gave them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for 40 years. Now, basically every one of those verses is chapters worth of scripture. If I was going to go to each one of those, we're not going to. I'll be here for a couple of years. So I'm not going to do that. But verse 22 goes on. 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 own heart who will do all my will. From the descendants of this man, according to promise, God has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus. So now he ties it all together and gets to Jesus. After John had proclaimed before his 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, but behold, one is coming after me, the sandals of whose feet I'm not worthy to untie. So a lot of them thought John could have been the Messiah. But he's saying, no, I'm not worthy. I'm just somebody being used by God to introduce. You know, imagine being John to be able to introduce the Messiah after thousands of years of waiting. Here he is. So you have the kind of a quick history. And then the second part of his sermon, he talks about the Jewish rejection of Christ. Chapter 13, verse 26. Brethren, sons of Abraham's family and those among you who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, recognizing neither him nor the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning him. He fulfilled this by the Jewish condemnation of Christ. Jesus provided salvation through his death. It was the ultimate act of love. Meanwhile, the Jewish people performed the ultimate act of hate by killing the one who's called ultimate love. So this is where God used evil, the Jews of that day, and turned it for good. So this in Genesis 50, verse 20, says, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. And this can give us confidence as we face persecution or we face struggles or problems that we run into. The enemy can't really hurt us if we have that attitude. No matter what happens to me, I know that God's got it. I know even if I struggle, even if you kill me, even if I perish, that God is there for me. He will use that evil and turn it into good. Pretty awesome message there. So it's important for the Jews to understand the history. He first talked about the history because everything throughout the Old Testament pointed to Christ in such an obvious way, too. Even down to predicting he would be born in Bethlehem. I mean, it was one thing after another. And yet they did not. They read it every week on the Sabbath. Right. They were reading the Torah every single week. They saw those words every single week, but did they comprehend what they were reading? They must not have fully understood what they were reading. It's important to read and comprehend, kind of like Garfield here. He says reading makes life a lot easier. You know, you want to read and comprehend. Otherwise, you're going to be spinning your wheels. Funny, but you know, here the Jews had the obvious sign on that door, Jesus. Everything pointed to him. It was so obvious that they forgot to look up. They forgot to open their mind and they thought they had the right way to get that door open. But verse 28 goes on. And though they found no ground for putting him to death, they asked Pilate that he be executed. So, I mean, what's that called when somebody is not guilty of something, but they still pursue a persecution of them? That's called a political persecution. We see a lot of that today. A lot of just attacking people, even though they're not guilty of anything, over and over because you don't like them. I mean, that's happened. We know the names of those people, but there's no justification for that just because they don't like them. And that's the same idea as what the most evil man that we can remember in recent time, what Hitler said. He said, we're imposing authoritarian rule and regime of political prosecutions in order to save our country from authoritarianism. So they're being authoritarianists to save them from authoritarianism. They're doing the persecutions to save them. But that's exactly the technique that Hitler used. You know, persecute your political enemies, even though they're not guilty of anything, just because you don't like them. And that's what was happening to Jesus here. He was absolutely not guilty of anything, totally innocent, yet they still killed him. Verse 29 goes on. When they had carried out all that was written concerning him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him up 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 the Bible says that there's 500 witnesses, at least, that was documented in Scripture. But we know there's many secular witnesses too. Josephus wasn't literally there, but within that same generation or on the edge of that generation. Around 94 AD, he wrote a lot about Christ. And in his antiquities, 1833, he says this about Christ. And this is even more amazing because he was a secular person. He was there to please the Romans. You know, the Romans were all powerful during this time. He wasn't there to impress the Christians or impress the Jews at this time. He was just writing the facts here. And he says, now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. And he pointed out that he was a wise man, apparently, if it be lawful to call him man. For he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and also many of the Greeks. This man was the Christ. Well, Josephus wasn't a Christian. He's just telling us what he was in history. He was the Christ in this history. And this is just within that generation. And when Pilate had condemned him to the cross upon his impeachment by the principal man among us, those who had loved him from the first did not forsake him, for he had appeared to them alive on the third day, the divine prophets having spoken these and thousands of other wonderful things about him. And even now, the race of Christians so named from him has not died out. So the Christians were still obviously growing during this time. But you got a lot of secular historians writing about this moment. Verse 32 goes on. And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers that God has fulfilled this promise to our children, in that he raised up Jesus as it is also written in the second psalm. You are my son. Today I begotten you, pointing again forward to Christ. And how did he raise him up? He raised them up to life, but also he raised them and placed them at his right hand and to that position of power. And the Jews would understand that really well because of the kings in history. They would put their right hand man, you know, you hear that term, the one that does all the stuff. You know, Jesus did all this stuff. He was the creator in the beginning. He was the one that went and died for us. Yeah, he took action for us. But God raised them up to a position of power, just like he did David. We see this from Psalm 2.1. He says, why the big noise nations? Why the mean plots peoples? Earth leaders push for position. We see that. Demagogues and delegates meet for summit talks. The God deniers and the Messiah defiers. Let's get free of God, cast loose from the Messiah. That's what this one world government, we see this in modern day. This is David writing way back. And I think of these people as the one world government people or the leftists in our nation pushing for this one world government. But he says in verse 4, heaven thrown, God breaks out laughing. So, from God's perspective, them trying to take over the world is just plain ridiculous. You know, they're nothing. I mean, gosh, you are flying on a plane even and look how small, little cars driving on the road. You ever look down from the view of a plane and they're like little ants, like you could almost just like squish it with your finger. Now take that perspective and see how much higher God is and how funny it is that these little ants are trying to take over the world. At first, he's amused at their presumption. Then he gets good and angry, furiously, he shuts them up. I've been listening to a lot of like the near-death experiences he's come across. Those are really interesting. And you got to make sure they're biblical and stuff. But one of the ladies went up to heaven and he said, God, the father and God, the son were like joking around, like they were just making jokes and cracking jokes and just having fun because, you know, God has a sense of humor. In fact, he created our sense of humor, right? So you see, God has a sense of humor, but then God also has his justice. So he's got this perfect personality in a sense. But God's response here is, but as for me, I have installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain. David's right in this. David's king. But that verse wasn't about David at all. That was about becoming Messiah. That was about Jesus being installed on that holy mountain. And what is that holy mountain? Jerusalem. Jesus will be on that throne in Jerusalem one day. And he'll reign from that throne. But in the meantime, we have a divided Jerusalem. We don't have a Jerusalem that worships Christ. We have a little tiny Christian quarter. We have a little tiny Armenian quarter. Go back to that map there. We have the Jewish quarter. And then look at the biggest part. This is like the city of Jerusalem. The biggest part is the Muslims. And they're not even close to anything like Christianity. They were invented in 600 A.D. through a satanic appearance. And you know how many mosques they have in Jerusalem? I thought there had to be quite a bit because they have the biggest one on the Temple Mount called the Dome of the Rock. But they've been allowed to have over 70 mosques in Jerusalem. So they've really kind of taken over the city of Jerusalem in the meantime. So it's not anywhere near what God wants it to be. But one day it's going to be, this next one here, 1,500 miles square. Now that could be a cube. It could be like a pyramid type of structure. But it says it's 1,500 miles high, 1,500 miles square. So it would accumulate to 1.9 million square miles. And it kind of shows you the size of that. It almost takes up the whole United States. I saw some pictures of that on the United States as well. But that's a big place that Jesus is going to rule from. Even the leader today, he has a hint of what's going to happen. We have this next picture. Benjamin Netanyahu, he's the current leader of the nation of Israel. He says, we have built in Jerusalem. We are building in Jerusalem. And we will continue to build in Jerusalem because he knows it's our eternal capital. So even he, a Jew, doesn't really understand the whole thing, has an idea that it's the eternal capital. This new Jerusalem is going to be really interesting. I mean, there's a lot of math involved too. The number 12 comes up quite a bit. You have 12 gates with 12 angels with the 12 tribes of Israel in there. In Revelation 21, 14, it talks about the 12 foundation stones. On them were the 12 names of the 12 apostles. The width of it is 12,000 stadia, or in today's terms, it'd be 1,400 miles. We have the thickness of the wall is 144 cubits, 12 times 12 is 144. We have the 12 gates, now get this, were made out of a single pearl. That's how it's described, a single pearl. Can you imagine a clam that big that would make that kind of pearl? But 12 pearls were assigned for each gate. And then it talks about the tree of life that bears 12 kinds of fruit in Revelation 22 too. Why does God use math and numbers all the time? Well, he created it. I mean, we're made up of math and numbers, you know, our DNA is so complex. It's like an advanced computer code basically is what it is. Our God is a genius and he has it all planned out by the numbers. So we'll continue on here. He says the Jews, God's going to put his son Jesus Christ on that throne someday. He is the Messiah and it was important for them to know that he was raised from the dead. Going on in verse 34, he says, as for the fact that he raised him up from the dead, no longer to return to decay, he has spoken in this way. I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David. Therefore, he also says in another psalm, you will not allow your holy one to undergo decay. Referring back to the psalms that they read every, you know, all the time. They would know these verses. For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay. When you see fall asleep in the scripture, most of the time it's they're goners. They have passed away. And this king that was installed in Zion, according to the psalms, as David was probably thinking of himself at that time, but he wasn't because he actually underwent decay. So you know that David was not the Messiah, but somebody that did not die in decay is going to be the Messiah. He says, but he whom God raised did not undergo decay. So the result now, he gets into this and I'm not adding a ton to his sermon because it's, like I said, we'd be here for weeks, but the result of Jesus coming and rejection ended up being forgiveness. And this is maybe the most important part of this whole story. He's drawn him in by telling him the familiar things, the things that made him remember the scriptures that they read every week. He's told him that, hey, you guys put him on the cross and because of that, now you can have forgiveness. He says in verse 38, therefore, let it be known to you, brethren, 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 freed through the law of Moses. This had to blow their mind because they thought the law of Moses was everything. Everything revolved around that. But this picture says, therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious, conscious of our sin. So if you don't believe in God, there is no right and wrong. So you have no need to be forgiven from that right and wrong. So that's why the atheists push this idea of moral relativism, where there is no right or wrong. Whatever is right for you, you'll hear the evil terms speak your own truth. That comes from Satan, because if we're speaking our own truth, there's no right and wrong. There's no consequence of our sin. And ultimately, there's no need for a savior. So it completely takes Jesus out of that equation. So just pure evil stuff out there, getting people to think in terms of moral relativism. Whatever I say goes. Verse 40 goes on, therefore, take heed so that the things spoken of in the prophets may not come upon you. Behold, you scoffers, and marvel 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. Talking about what Paul's doing here. These Jews would have something so incredible happen. Jesus coming and dying and rising again, something so incredible. And now they weren't going to believe it until they saw it or heard it. So now they're hearing it. And the cool thing here is they're in this zone where they didn't want to end this sermon. They didn't want this sermon to end. They were so into it. It says in verse 42, as Paul and Barnabas were going out, the people kept begging that these things might be spoken to him the next Sabbath. They couldn't get enough of this truth. Now when the meeting of the synagogue had broken up, many of the Jews and of the God-fearing proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who were speaking to them, were urging them to continue in the grace of God. They wanted more truth. The world may not know it, but they're hungry for truth. So that's why if you can get a little bit of truth into them, they're going to be drawn to it and want more of it. So that's why the Facebooks of the world doesn't want any of that out there. Verse 44 goes on. The next Sabbath, nearly the whole city assembled to hear the word of the Lord. So he had them starting in this little synagogue, and apparently those maybe a hundred people or however many could fit in the synagogue told all their friends, and all of a sudden you potentially, because the whole city, there was this amphitheater that held, it's still there today, held 15,000 people in this amphitheater in the city of Antioch. So you imagine, wow, Paul's preaching this effective sermon to a hundred people, all of a sudden the next time he comes up, it's 15,000 people. Talk about a fast-growing ministry. But you know how many, I was trying to get this in my head, you know how many people the Memorial Coliseum holds? Here's a picture of it. Go ahead and count them. 13,000. 13,000 people. So it's pretty close to what Paul could potentially have been preaching to in the city of Antioch. And just within a matter of a day, how fast his ministry spread, and it wasn't anything that they did. It wasn't the fancy words he said. It was the power of the Holy Spirit working through them. And to finish up here, just a few more verses of his sermon. It says, 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 out boldly and said, It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life. Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. So first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. He wanted to give the Jews a chance. They were very much against it. Not all of them, obviously. A lot of them were hungry for it. So the Lord has commanded us, I have placed you as a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the end of the earth. When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as 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 leading men of the city. Again, another one of the ways Satan works. He goes to the leading people of prominence in the city and instigated a persecution against Paul and Barnabas and drove them out of their district. But when you offer the truth to somebody and they almost violently reject it, do you sit there and keep on trying to get them to be convinced to believe? No. God tells you, don't worry about it. You've done your job. Move on. You can go guilt-free on to the next person. So they shook the dust off their feet and protest against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were continually filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. And those two things go hand in hand. And we see God and the Holy Spirit and joy was their motivation. The joy of the Lord is their strength. I don't know how they had the strength to keep on going on like that. I don't know how they had the guts to speak in front of 15,000 people. Other than the Holy Spirit was definitely helping them out. And I know the Holy Spirit's helped me out in many areas of my weakness that there's no way I could overcome it without that power of the Holy Spirit. So I just encourage you guys to be filled with the joy of the Lord and the Holy Spirit the rest of this week. And we're going to go ahead and stop there. So let's close in prayer.