Dennis Tuuri

We have the privilege today of hearing from the scriptures really the fulfillment of some of the things we’ve just read and sung from the psalter. Indeed, we see a proud man whose face is filled with humiliation today in the scriptures before us in Acts chapter 13. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. We’re reading Acts 13:6-12.

And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-Jesus, which was with the deputy of the country, Sergius Paulus, a prudent man, who called for Barnabas and Saul, and desired to hear the word of God.

But Elymas the sorcerer, for so is his name by interpretation, withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith. Then Saul, who also is called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him, and said, “Oh, full of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season.”

And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness. And he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.

We thank God for his word and pray now that he would illuminate our understanding. On the tape labels today, the title I’ve decided to give this talk, which I guess I’m usually lately giving these talks two titles, is “The Apostate Church is Cursed and God’s Word Prevails.”

And we see before us the recitation of such an event. Let’s just go through the text verse by verse, talking about it. And then at the end I want to make a couple of emphases in terms of its application to our lives.

You remember the setting, of course. This is the first missionary journey. Paul and Barnabas and their underling—that’s what the word means in the Greek that we talked about last week—John Mark have gone to this island of Cyprus. And in the verse before us we read that they had gone through all the island. They started at Salamis, went on from there, and essentially traversed the entire island. And we assume, I think correctly, that as they do that they’re preaching the gospel first to the Jew. Remember they go to the synagogues to perform their ministry.

Larry Woody again—who I’ve quoted many times in this series on Acts and his commentary on Acts—talks about how in this pattern of going to the synagogues, Woody sees that as a mandate for missionaries and for us as well to go to the apostate churches, because the synagogues were essentially filled with those who had rejected Christ, and yet they needed to hear the message of salvation that were effected in those apostate churches as well. And I think we see that same pattern in a sense here in a little broader application outside of the synagogue.

So they’ve gone through the whole island by now and they come to Paphos. Now Cyprus was a nice place to live. It was called a happy island, but it was also the center of Venus worship and a place of great immorality, and Paphos here is the center of that Venus worship. There is a worship center for Venus at Paphos. This is the capital of the island essentially, and this is where they conclude or wrap up their traversing of the island.

Now when they come to this particular city on Cyprus they find a person here, and the person is identified for us in many direct ways. In verse six we are told, first of all, that he is a sorcerer; he is a false prophet; secondly, he is a Jew; third and fourth, his name is Bar-Jesus. And so we have a great deal of emphasis here on particular characteristics of this person—kind of like bam, bam, bam.

He’s a sorcerer. He’s a false prophet. He’s a Jew. And his name is Bar-Jesus. And so it’s worthwhile pointing out here that these things are important because they identify for us one of the major characters in this little short but very powerful and I think very important piece of scripture for us in the book of Acts in the first missionary journey.

A sorcerer here is that word that we talked about—the same as the magi, wise men. It wasn’t necessarily an illusionist or a magician the way we think of them. Rather, it was those who were familiar with natural sciences, attempted to manipulate natural sciences, as well as the demonic spiritual world. All those things are sort of wrapped up in this word for sorcerer. Its origins being wise men, understanding the processes of nature and able and attempting to manipulate those processes for a particular end—usually self-aggrandizement, their own self-esteem, their own position in the community.

This should, of course, remind us of the encounter with Simon in Samaria. You remember there that Peter rebuked Simon, and we see Paul here—as I mentioned last week—dealing with a magician the same way that Simon Peter had, rather dealing with Simon in the missionary endeavor in Samaria. Same word is used here of that particular personage.

He is also a false prophet, and of course there are many warnings in the scriptures about false prophets. Our savior in the Old Testament—there’s also warnings from our savior that false prophets and false teachers will arise in the context of the church. And so this person is identified as someone who prophesies but not truly, but falsely.

Third, he’s identified as a Jew, and this makes him part of what I’ve referred to—Mr. Woody—what he has is the apostate church. Some people say, “Well, he’s a Jew by birth.” Well, I don’t know if that’s being emphasized, but the text wants us to understand this person in relationship to a member of the privileged community, those ones who have been given the word of God in a special way. Very privileged to have the word of God, in the context of and yet this person had obviously sinned grievously against the God of that scripture, and so he is apostate in that sense.

And his name, finally, is Bar-Jesus. Bar means son; Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua and of course the name of our Savior. The name means, can mean by implication, salvation. Joshua comes from “Yo Jehovah saves,” and so he’s the son of salvation is one way to look at this, and he is a false son of Jesus Christ. By way of application, we’ll see that as we go through this—whose son he really is. Paul will make very clear for us in the context of the text.

Verse 7 says that there was with that this sorcerer, Bar-Jesus, was with the deputy of the country. This means not that he happened to be there at a moment. He was attached to him. It was common at this particular point in history for rulers to have a retinue—at least one, maybe several wizards about them to help advise them and consult them in terms of what they’re supposed to do. Sounds kind of stupid to us, but you know, it isn’t really, and it isn’t that ancient.

You remember that one of our presidents in the recent past, a very conservative Republican, as it turns out, had in the context of his household also seers around him relative to horoscope reading, etc., to advise him. And so this is a common practice throughout the ages of men who try to lead civil states—to call upon the forces of the occult to help them to do that.

Well, and in any event, so this man is attached to a man who is the deputy. His name is Sergius Paulus. He’s the deputy of the country. Some of your translations may say proconsul. I don’t want to—I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but it is worthwhile pointing out that this is another one of those many examples in scripture where for many years people said, “Oh well, there’s a mistake in the Bible,” because these Roman provinces were not governed by deputies or proconsuls. They were governed by legates. Well, as and that Cyprus itself was a legate region. What I mean by that is that under the Roman system, you could either have an imperial province or a senatorial province. Lands were either governed directly by the Emperor, or Augustus had also made other provinces governed more directly by the Senate.

And so the Senate-governed provinces would have these proconsuls or deputies under the control of the council, the head of the Senate. Whereas the imperial provinces would have legates, or direct representatives of Caesar himself. So Augustus had divided these countries up this way. Well, they said Cyprus was one of these imperial provinces, and indeed it was for a period of time. And so they said, “Here’s a mistake in the scriptures because they’re calling this guy a deputy, a proconsul.” But in point of fact, recent—I say recent in the last hundred years—there have been several archaeological finds that indeed affirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that Cyprus was indeed at this particular point in time a senatorial province.

There was a coin found with an inscription, and the very title used here—deputy or proconsul—is referred to the man who succeeded Sergius Paulus on this coin that was found. And additionally, there have been fragments of other archaeological finds that identify Sergius Paulus with this particular region at this particular time. So we have here another affirmation as the archaeology uncovers more and more evidence of what we believe by faith: that the word of God is inspired and every detail is true and accurate.

So in any event, they have this ruler there, Sergius Paulus, and he had this wizard attached to him, so to speak. But the scriptures tell us one thing about him. It tells us three things about Bar-Jesus: sorcerer, false prophet, and Jew. Sergius Paulus is identified as a deputy, but he’s also identified as a prudent man. The word prudent can mean intelligent or wise, and it has the connotation—at least Alexander thinks, in this particular text—that the connotation is one of being reflective. He’s a thinker. He meditates upon things. He doesn’t just reject them out of hand on the basis of his own presuppositions. Rather, he’s open to hearing things. And when he hears—and by now we can assume that they spent some time at Cyprus—he’s heard about the preaching of the gospel through various sources, as a good ruler would. And he’s interested in this. He’s prudent; he’s intelligent; he’s reflective. And so he calls for Barnabas and Saul.

And you’ll note the order there: Barnabas and Saul. That’s the way it’s been up to now. Barnabas has been preeminent; Saul secondary. He calls for Barnabas and Saul and desires to hear the word of God.

Well, this is a great opportunity—great opportunity for Barnabas and Saul to talk to this man about the word of God. And so they do; they come to him. But remember that in his court is this man that the scriptures are identified for us already as a sorcerer and a false prophet.

And verse 8 tells us that Elymas the sorcerer, for so is his name by interpretation, withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith. Now here the name changes from Bar-Jesus to Elymas, and I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s very common at this particular point in the historical region which we’re dealing with here for people to have two names—and particularly a Jew—because he’d have a Hebrew name and he’d have a Greek name.

His Hebrew name is Bar-Jesus, which means son of salvation, son of Joshua, son of Jesus. And his Greek name here is given to us as Elymas. And of course, there is, as I said, this is a common thing. We have Saul and Paul, for instance. It is still common in some countries to this day. For instance, in the highlands of Scotland, you will have people have one name for the city and one name out in the country where they live because of the language dialects involved.

Sometimes these names—the Greek and Hebrew names—correspond in meaning. Sometimes they correspond in sound. And here we’re told that the second name for Bar-Jesus is Elymas. Now we’re talking about him here in the context of this visit of state between these two ambassadors of Jesus Christ to Sergius Paulus, the deputy. And so some people say we’re given his Greek name here because this is in a Greek court—now setting his advising the Roman governor, the deputy of the entire island, and so that’s why this name is used.

But it’s again another indication—it’s a second witness—his second name is that he is a sorcerer. Now there’s some confusion about this word grammatically, but Jay Alexander points out that this Elymas probably is related back to a Hebrew term, and the Hebrew root means to cover, whereas another root that is directly kind of related to this term—and that this term also refers to—means knowledge. And so Elymas more specifically, if you want to look at it directly, an interpretation of the two roots that are used, it means both knowledge, but it means covered or secret. And so secret knowledge—we have the term today, “occult science,” and that’s really kind of a relationship to this secret knowledge that these sorcerers would supposedly have access to.

So Elymas is again identified for us here as a man who has secret knowledge. In the context of that, then we’ve had a double witness now to this apostate nature of this man. These repeated emphases—in verse six and here again—his name is second name, which means by interpretation a sorcerer, or one who has secret knowledge and attempts to—remember what we talked about before—the other magician who attempts to manipulate the physical forces and the spiritual forces of the universe apart from obedience and submission to God, to manipulate them for one’s own ends. That’s what this man’s doing. And he’s going about his job well in this verse. He’s manipulating knowledge, and what he says to Sergius Paulus is to undermine the influence or authority of Barnabas and Saul, and more directly, of the word of God.

He is seeking to pervert. He is withstanding Barnabas and Saul. That’s an interesting term. Because when Stephen preached—remember Stephen, who was martyred—it said that the Hellenistic Jews—the Hellenistic Jews he was preaching to could not withstand him. They also attempted to withstand Stephen. And here we have Elymas who is attempting to withstand the power of the word of God as preached by Barnabas and Saul. So you see the correlation throughout the book of Acts. These things build upon one another.

We have one message going out, and the message—the pattern that follows—is frequently met with opposition, attempting to withstand it. And just as it was the Hellenistic Jews trying to withstand Stephen, here we have another apostate Jew, Elymas, who is attempting to withstand the truth of God’s word here.

He is attempting to withstand it by—and the scriptures tell us how—seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith. To turn away here is a very strong Greek word. It means to twist, to pervert something. As Jay Alexander said, in the classics this word denotes the act of twisting or distorting. It is commonly employed in the New Testament to signify moral perversion or perverseness. Here it means to divert attention or to withdraw the mind with an implication of violence or great exertion.

Okay. So he is working real hard at twisting the faith and to turn Sergius Paulus away from the faith. You know, it’s kind of like in those Star Wars movies where people were trying to be turned to the darkness. Well, you can imagine Elymas here doing everything he can to try to turn Sergius Paulus, who is attracted to the light of the gospel, to turn him away from that, to turn him again to the evil side under which he’s been influenced by Sergius Paulus, probably for a good period of time.

So he is attempting to do that. Jay—excuse me—Matthew Henry said that in terms of this perversion, this turning away Sergius Paulus, attempts to mislead others, suggesting rather to them unjust prejudices against these ways, as if the doctrine of Christ were uncertain and precarious, as if the laws of Christ were unreasonable and impracticable, and as if the service of Christ is unpleasant and unprofitable. Those may well have been some of the means by which Elymas here attempts to turn away Sergius Paulus from the truth of the gospel.

Now, in response to this, then—so we’ve seen this introduction of these characters and what they’re trying to do. Sergius Paulus is attracted to the gospel, desiring to hear the word of God. Elymas is attempting to turn him away from the faith. And then Saul takes the preeminence in verse 9.

Verse 9: “Then Saul, who also is called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him.”

Now this is a very significant verse in the New Testament and in the scriptures because we have for the first time now Saul being identified with his Greek or Roman name, Paul. And from now on, Saul will be referred to as Paul. There’s a transition that goes on here in the life of Paul or Saul. He’s now fully confirmed in his mission to the gentile world. And so the name Paul—his Roman name given to him at birth—takes preeminence here.

Additionally, we don’t see Barnabas setting his eyes upon Elymas, but rather Saul or Paul. So, secondly, we see here in Saul and Paul a preeminence in terms of his preeminence in the teamwork that goes on between Barnabas and Paul. So we have Paul really coming to full flower now, beginning to fulfill in a very direct sense the mission that God has peculiarly called him to with his very conversion—that he’d be a light to the Gentiles, that he would be the apostle to the Gentiles. And so he is found in that role here.

And so he takes preeminence in the text, and his name is now changed—the recording of that name—away from his Hebrew name to his Roman name. And this is part of the whole transition of what’s going on in the book of Acts: first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. And what we’ll see as we go through here is increasingly the Jews are really representing essentially the apostate church who attempt to withstand the faith, pervert men away from the faith. And it is to the Gentiles that Paul, of course, will increasingly go in his ministry. And that begins in a very direct sense.

Here you have this picture of a Roman and a Hebrew. And the Hebrew is apostate, and the Roman is part of the select community of God. God has given him a desire to hear the word and reflect upon that word. And that Roman is being perverted. He’s attempting to be controlled by the apostate old church that sees its position of privilege threatened. Remember we talked about that before—that what happens to the Pharisees and many of these apostate Jews: they see their particular position threatened.

And Elymas here knows that if Sergius Paulus converts to the faith, he’s gone. He’s out. So he’s committed to his own well-being. And as a result, Saul then fixes his eyes upon him, Paul, and addresses him in a very direct manner.

So we have the preeminence of Paul given to us here. I wanted to read a quote along this line from J. Alexander. There are different people who suggest different things about why his name is changed to Paul here.

Some think it’s because this first convert of his, Sergius Paulus, is a convert—his first Roman convert—his name is Paul. I don’t think that makes much sense. The disciples usually take the name of the teacher, not the other way around. And others—Augustine, actually, suggests that Paul takes the name Paul here because it means little, and he wants to demonstrate his humility. Probably not accurate either. His father probably named him Paul because Paul was a famous Roman name and a strong family associated with it. It wasn’t little. It does mean little, but that’s probably not why he chose it.

Jay Alexander says this about why his name is changed: “This was the time fixed by divine authority for Paul’s manifestation as apostle of the Gentiles. That this manifestation was made more conspicuous by its coincidence with his triumph over representatives of unbelieving and apostate Judaism and the conversion of an official representative of Rome whose name was identical by his own episode with his own apostolic title. The critical juncture was still further marked by Paul’s first miracle or sign of his apostleship.”

You can look at 2 Corinthians 12 in terms of the relationship of miracles to being a sign of apostleship. Preceded by a few words but conceived and uttered in the highest tone of apostolic authority, he was filled with the Holy Ghost—not for the first time, but renewedly and spiritually inspired to utter this denunciation, which is therefore not the natural expression of any merely human sentiment or feeling, but an authoritative declaration of God’s purposes and judgments.

Saul, Paul, now receives his apostolic authority. He’ll do a miracle of blinding this man. He’s filled with the Holy Ghost, and he speaks the prophetic word of God in a very powerful way. So all these things take preeminence now as Paul comes up and begins to fill totally the shoes that God has called him to fill relative to the Gentiles and the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles—the apostle to the Gentiles.

We see a large transition here from Peter to Paul. We’ve talked about this, and Paul is here elevated to his position as apostle to the Gentiles. In that position, he then says this, having fixed his eyes upon Elymas, or upon Bar-Jesus, he says:

“Oh full of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season.”

So first there is this judicial declaration of who Elymas is. That judicial declaration is followed then by the curse, the judgment of God against him. And now behold the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt—thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell a mist and a darkness, and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. This was the leader of Sergius Paulus, this was his divine, his sorcerer, his wizard who would lead Sergius Paulus, and now he is blinded. The declaration of Paul—the Holy Spirit through Paul—and he now seeks someone to lead him about by the hand.

Let’s think about this a little bit here. Paul—we now have, just as in verse six we had kind of a shotgun description of who this guy was (he was a sorcerer, he was a false prophet, he was a Jew, and his name was Bar-Jesus—boom, boom)—now we have a very rapid-fire declaration of who this man really was by the apostle Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit.

He is full of two things. He is full of all subtlety, and he’s full of all mischief. This being filled of these things identifies him then—in the words of Paul—to be a child not of Jesus but instead he is a child of the devil. And because he’s a child of the devil, he is an enemy of all righteousness. He’s not a son of Jesus. He is an enemy to everything that Jesus stands for. He is directly opposed to him.

So he first describes what goes on inside this man—his subtlety and his mischief—in profound fashion. All subtlety, all mischief, being filled up with these things. Paul, stood with the Holy Spirit, this man is filled up with the spirit of subtlety, deceit, craftiness, and mischief, recklessness, violence. That’s what this guy is filled with—hurting people. And because he’s filled with those things, Paul can’t assert that he is not Bar-Jesus. He is Bar-Devil. He is the son of the devil. And the salvation that he offers to Sergius Paulus and others is no salvation, but his damnation, because it is opposed to everything that is righteous.

Righteousness means justice, goodness, truth. Anyone opposed to the Lord Jesus Christ is opposed to all truth because in Jesus Christ all truth resides. This man is a son of the devil, not a son of Christ.

And then he so he tells about what he’s filled with, what that identifies him as. And then he gets to the external evidence of all of this: “Will you not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?”

The right, straight truth of God is trying to be made crooked. He’s throwing in all kinds of stuff here to Sergius Paulus, trying to make crooked, trying to confuse, obfuscate, make unclear the very clear, straight word of God. That’s what opponents to the gospel do. They try to make it all a big blur so you can’t figure out anything anymore. No standard left, no clear, sure, straight standard of the word. That’s what Elymas was doing.

So Paul has no problem. You know, he has no problem addressing the motivation of this man, not just his external actions. The external actions, the fruit of the tree, indicates the state of this tree’s heart. And Paul, in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, speaks right at him in a very deliberate fashion: Boom. Boom. Boom.

And because he goes through these judicial declarations—being filled with mischief, violence, subtlety, craftiness, or deceit (the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field)—remember Nathanael? When our Savior called him, he was a true Israelite in whom was no guile, no deceit, no hidden agendas. He was forthright. He was transparent, so to speak—no hidden agendas. This man is exactly the reverse. Everything is a hidden agenda. He is full of craft, deceit, and trickery. And because of that, and because of the violence, he enters into all mischief against people. He demonstrates himself not to be a son of Jesus, but rather to be a child of the devil.

Remember in Genesis, there’s two kinds of seeds in this world: the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And what do we find when our Savior—when John the Baptist talks to the Pharisees? What does John the Baptist call him? He calls them a brood of vipers, snakes, serpents, devils, Satans. They’re the offspring. He’s saying, “You think you’ve got Moses for a father? No way. Because of your subtlety and your wickedness and violence and perverting the right ways of God, you have declared yourselves to be a generation, an offspring of vipers.”

So there’s two kinds of people walking around out there: those who are elect in Jesus Christ (and that election may manifest over time), and those who aren’t. And those who aren’t are a brood of vipers. They’re children of the devil. They are enemies of all righteousness.

So he goes through this declaration, and then having gone through that he then pronounces—then at the end of his findings on who this man was—he then comes to the announcement of the verdict of God against him. And that is blindness. But very apt considering the fact that Elymas—who has the secret knowledge—is essentially trying to blind Sergius Paulus, blind men to spiritual truth.

God then strikes him. Eye for an eye, truth for truth, tooth for tooth, rather. And He strikes him with physical blindness. And so, and it’s interesting though because it says it’s blindness for a season. And the tradition has it that Elymas actually converts to the faith. We don’t know that. We don’t know what happened here, but it is for a season. What that means—there’s a lot of difference about what that might particularly mean.

Maybe Paul just simply did not know the period of time for which God would blind him for. So, for however long God wants to keep you in blindness, that’s going to happen to you. Maybe it was a season because it wasn’t a perpetual duration, because he would repent of his sin. After all, we cannot help but think about the correlation to Saul’s own conversion experience on the road to Damascus. He also was blinded for a season. And the fact that there was this mist and darkness, this blindness that comes upon Elymas in correlation to Paul, may well give us some hope that this man was blinded, chastised by God to the end that he would also repent of his sins and turn to the Lord. And tradition has that he did do that. We don’t know. But in any event, there is this progression—description of who he is based upon his actions, and then based upon the specific action of perverting the right ways of the Lord.

Now I wanted to sort of look at for a couple of minutes here the fact that he is identified as a son of the devil. We’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s good to kind of talk about it here a little bit, too.

He—the term “devil”—he could have said “son of Satan,” but he uses the term for Satan here that is specifically “devil.” A devil is a slanderer. You know, I thought this last week. There was a man whom I greatly respect who was telling me once about other men whom I also greatly respect, but who he had a particular feud going on with for a number of years, and that feud continues to this day. All these men are Christians. And he once told me, “These men are just devils, Dennis. They’re devils.” And I remember thinking at the time, man, that is strong language.

But you know, as I meditate on this verse this last week, I think I understand now why he used that particular term. The term “devil” really means a false accuser. An accuser of the brethren is an accuser, somebody is a devil. We have in the qualifications for deacons, wise men, that they not be slanderers, and that same word is used here: they not be devils. And in again in qualifications for widows, one of the qualifications for the older women is that they should not be false accusers—okay, or at least a description of the ideal character they should have. They should not be accusers. In both those cases, slander is given in terms of women, and it is important to remember that when women have time upon their hands—any of us when we have time upon our hands—we can enter into this sin of slander.

I think that I think it’s important here because I think that God gives us here one of the means whereby Elymas or Bar-Jesus was trying to pervert the faith. I find it very easy to go to the supposition, and it is only that—but a supposition here—that one of the ways that he attempted to do this was by slandering the faith of God, the scriptures, but more than that by slandering the messengers.

We know that Paul will be slandered repeatedly in his ministry. You read 2 Corinthians, and you read a defense of who he is against those who would slander him. And he—it’s a very spirited defense—is the last three or four chapters of 2 Corinthians. It’s very interesting reading how Paul goes through that and talks about the slander that he had suffered.

Well, it is very important to recognize here that slander is one of the main ways, one of the main devices, that Satan uses through his children to try to pervert the word of God and to pervert the messengers of God’s word. It’s very important because we fall into it so very easy. You know, we love to hear gossip. We love to hear—we wouldn’t call it gossip. We love to hear whatever the news is about this person or that person. But we must be very, very careful in these matters because that is one of the characteristics here of this man: that he’s son of the devil, he’s son of the slanderer. And I think it’s because he slandered Paul and Barnabas relative to this attempt to turn away Sergius Paulus from the faith.

So it’s very important for us now. I mentioned 2 Corinthians 12. Let me just read a little bit of this from Paul’s writing. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:11 and following:

“I am become a fool in glorying. Ye have compelled me. For I ought to have been commended of you. For in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostle, though I be nothing.”

See, he’s not being commended by them. He’s being put down by them. And he’s put down by these false apostles who are going to the Corinthians and trying to pervert them from the faith. The way the false prophets are doing that in 2 Corinthians is probably the same way the pattern is given for us here with Elymas. And that is by slandering Paul the Apostle.

Goes on to say:

“Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you, in all patience, and signs and wonders and mighty deeds. For what is it wherein ye are inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you? Forgive me this wrong.”

He gets real sarcastic with them. You know, in other words, he’s saying, okay, these guys have come to you now and tried to throw aspersions on my character. And remember what I did amongst you. He’s saying, how did I hurt you? What did I do to you? He says, I didn’t do anything to you. How are you in fear of other churches? Well, maybe because I wasn’t a burden to you. Maybe I should have made you pay for my services. That’s what he’s talking about here—physical compensation, monetary compensation.

“Forgive me this wrong. Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not be burdensome to you, for I seek not yours, but you. For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. So I will very gladly spend and be spent for you. Though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.”

He recognizes that his ministry is to go ahead and to serve these people in spite of the slander. And the slander has turned their love away from him. But he says that’s okay. If I come and be spent for you guys, that’s good.

“However, he says, The more I love you, the less I am loved.”

You see, he was suffering some of these persecutions of slander against his character. But be it so, I did not burden you. Nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile.

I think he’s being somewhat sarcastic again. He goes on to the end of the chapter really kind of berating them. And then he ends by saying, “Well, I’ve got to go now. Greet each other a holy kiss, be good, be filled—you know, be good people.” And he kind of turns on a positive note in the end.

But the letter is a very strong defense of himself by pointing to his past actions. And it’s obviously against someone who was slandering him. And so this model for us here at the beginning of Paul’s ministry is something that I think Paul will have to deal with for the rest of that ministry. You’ll see it in the book of Galatians as well, as well as other places, the contending that he does.

Well, in any event, so he then performs this service. He offers this renunciation of who Elymas is, and he then just the result of this is the conversion of Sergius Paulus.

Verse 12: “Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.”

So we have here the first conversion of a very high official in the Roman world—a Roman official here. And so we have a lot of firsts in this passage. And we have his conversion clearly pointed out for us here: that he did believe. He was attracted to the word. He was part of the elect community of Jesus Christ. And he becomes astonished at the doctrine of the Lord and as a result comes to conversion.

Now this term “being astonished at the doctrine”—to be astonished is to be kind of flattened out, to be really impacted very severely or strongly. And it is used in several places relative to our Savior as well. Let me just read you some of these verses.

In Matthew 13:54, we read that they were astonished, those that heard Christ preach. And they said, “Where hath this man the wisdom in these mighty works?”

So in Matthew 13, they’re astonished because of his wisdom and his mighty works.

In Mark 1:22, “And when they were they were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one that had authority and not as the scribes.”

So they’re astonished at his doctrine or teachings, but it’s not just what he says—it’s the manner in which he says it. It’s the authority by which he preaches.

And then finally in Luke 4:32:

“And they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with power.”

So when we read here that Sergius Paulus was astonished at the doctrine of the Lord, we want to remember that the doctrine or teaching of the Lord includes both the content of the gospel. But he also obviously is reflecting upon the content of what Paul has told Elymas. But also the force with which he told it, the authority and boldness. And then of course God’s miraculous action of blinding Elymas immediately.

So he’s not astonished just at the miracle. That’s my point. He’s astonished at the content of what he has been taught. But he’s also astonished at the authority or power. If we want to make correlation here between Paul and our Savior, and so what this tells us is that when we go out and seek to witness to people, the authority and power with which we speak is an important aspect of it. It was with our Savior. It was with our Savior working through Paul here, and it should be with us as well.

This should serve as a corrective to us to some degree. We have been filled—we’re in a country that many people, as we’ve said many times, thank that the role of Christians is to be nicer than Jesus and to not be powerful and not be strong in our speech at all, but rather to be weak. And the scriptures don’t give us that kind of picture.

Yet we see in this particular passage of scripture the victory of the gospel over magic for the second time, repeated to us. And we see it relative to the strong words of the apostle Paul as he come forward to deal with this particular person.

We, as I said, this gives a pattern for the rest of the book of Acts. We’ll see Paul in this same way contending with members of the apostate church as he seeks to present and call forth the elect community of Jesus Christ out of the gentile world.

So we have here a model for what’s going to happen throughout the rest of the book of Acts, and Paul will deal with members of the apostate church in very strong terms just as he has done here. That is his role. That is his job to do this.

Now we read in Matthew 24. I meditated on this verse as I was thinking about this passage, and I think by way of application it’s very significant to our text. Matthew 24:24 says this:

“There shall arise false Christs and false prophets and shall show great signs and wonders, in so much that if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect.”

Well, by way of application, that’s kind of what’s going on here. Elymas is a false Christ. He’s a false son of Jesus. He is a false prophet. He is a sorcerer who apparently has the ability to show some great signs and wonders, so that even if his days weren’t shortened, the elect would be deceived. And we have here a member of the elect, Sergius Paulus, who was deceived by this man for a period of time. And if Elymas’ days have been shortened, the scriptures want us to think they wouldn’t have come out of that deception.

So the question is, how does this shortening of these false prophets—people that show signs and wonders—happen? It happens through the preaching of the gospel of Christ producing contention. And the contention is resolved with the authoritative declaration of God’s word, accompanied by a seeking for God’s judgment upon—and in this case, physical judgment upon—those that would seek to deceive the elect.

By way of application, instead of looking at this verse and thinking about some far-off distant time when there’ll be these demons in the world that will have their dimes shortened by the coming of Jesus Christ to cut off things physically with his physical presence (that may happen at some point in the future), the application of texts like this—eschatological text—should be an encouragement to us to go out to a gentile world that is filled with people who are deceived, many of whom, or at least some of whom, are elect in the Lord Jesus Christ.

How do we cut short the days of deception? Who does it? You do it. I do it. Members of the church of Jesus Christ, faithful members, go out and enter into—they speak the word into the context in which we live, knowing that we will be opposed by the apostate church just as Paul was and just as men have always been.

We read of the tremendous religious warfare that occurred at the time of the Reformation and following. And without sanctioning some of the all the things that were done in the name of Christianity, you know, it’s easy to point at those battles and think, “Well, the church is fighting amongst itself.” It has always been so. The visible church will always fight amongst itself because the visible church will be filled with apostates.

We live in a time and age today that really is very similar to the description of what’s going on here. I mentioned this conservative president with the sorcerer. I could speak a little more directly about the present president. I don’t know, you know, if he’s elect or not, but I do know that he has evangelical advisors who probably give him—I wouldn’t want to equate them with Elymas the sorcerer, but there are some relationships between the two.

Arminianism—and I’ve talked about this before, and RG he’s caught a lot of flack for this, and I probably catch a lot of flack for saying it. But Arminianism, in its boldest and most strong sense, is an attempt to manipulate God by one’s actions. “I’m going to determine if God saves me or not by my decision.” See, it’s an attempt to manipulate. That’s why Rushdoony relates it to magic in its more literal sense. Wise people attempt to manipulate things or manipulate God through incantations or spells. And we live in the context of an apostate church that attempts to manipulate God many times in the same ways. Though most of them aren’t self-conscious. Some are. Some are like Elymas, more self-conscious in what he’s doing. And even Elymas might have been part of the elect community of Christ.

So when we go forth, we see the same thing. We see civil rulers who have liberal churchmen at their sides advising them in matters of state and frequently advising in a very wrongheaded fashion. We have a president who, you know, you talk about wanting to feel people’s pain. And you could see the extension of President Clinton’s policy is cheap grace to the country. “You’ve got a problem? No problem. We’ll help you take care of it. Little health card, we’ll take care of all your problems. You got VD, got AIDS, you got things that are result of your behavior? No problem. We’ll take care of this little health card.”

That’s cheap grace. But why do we—you know, we can see that easily. But where did it come from? The scriptures say, just as this scripture asserts, that Sergius Paulus is directed by the false church. It is the church of God, for good or evil, that directs society. And in this country particularly, with its Christian roots, it’s the Christian church that’s directing civil policy through it.

Cheap grace was a doctrine in the church long before it became a doctrine of the civil state. And it became a doctrine of the civil state, I think, primarily because of the influence of an apostate religious perspective upon civil leaders.

They live in the context of all those things. We’ve got a job to do. We live in the context where there is much deception, and there are people bound up through this deception of the false church and false views of religion. And we have a job to go out there and to find the elect and cut the cords of darkness away from them. And that cutting of the cords is not always accomplished—and usually isn’t accomplished—by trying to be nicer than Jesus to people.

Paul didn’t do that. He spoke very sternly to this man who was deceiving a member of the elect community. And so we have a responsibility. We’ve talked about it before in this church. We sang Psalm 83 today. We recited antiphonally a psalm that talks very much about what happens just in the context of Saul’s work in this text.

He says that he hates the work of them that turn aside. “It shall not cleave to me. A froward heart shall depart from me. I will not know a wicked person. Who so privily slanders his neighbor, him will I cut off.”

That’s what Saul did to Elymas.

“Him that hath a high look and a proud heart will I not suffer.”

The Syriac version of this New Testament, this portion of the New Testament, instead of calling Bar-Jesus Bar-Jesus, they changed the second name to call him not the son of Jesus or salvation, but the son of pride. Now, that’s an editorial comment. You shouldn’t do that in the Bible. But the fact is, it accurately reflects the pride that drove Elymas to be rejecting the truth of God and seeking to pervert it.

And that pride, the slander, who the son of the devil…