Dennis Tuuri

stood up and motioning with his hand said, “Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt. And with an uplifted arm, he brought them out of it.” Now for a time of about 40 years, he put up with their ways in the wilderness. And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he distributed their land to them by allotment.

After that, he gave them judges for about 450 years until Samuel the prophet. And afterward, they asked for a king. So God gave them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for 40 years. And when he had removed him, he raised up for them David as king, to whom also he gave testimony and said, “I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do all my will. From this man’s seed, according to the promise, God raised up for Israel a Savior, Jesus, after John had first preached before his coming the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel.

And as John was finishing his course, he said, “Who do you think I am? I am not he, but behold, there comes one after me, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to loose.” Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent. For those who dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not know him, nor even the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, have fulfilled them in condemning him.

And though they found no cause for death in him, they asked Pilate that he should be put to death. Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead. He was seen for many days by those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses to the people. And we declare to you glad tidings, that promise which was made to the fathers.

God has fulfilled this for us, their children, in that he has raised up Jesus as it is also written in the second Psalm. “You are my son today I have begotten you.” And that he raised him from the dead no more to return to corruption. He has spoken thus: “I will give you the sure mercies of David.” Therefore he also says in another Psalm, “You will not allow your holy one to see corruption.” For David after he had served his own generation by the will of God fell asleep, was buried with his fathers and saw corruption. But he whom God raised up saw no corruption.

Therefore, let it be known to you, brethren, that through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins, and by him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. Beware, therefore, lest what has been spoken in the prophets come upon you: “Behold, you despisers, marvel and perish, for I work a work in your days, a work which you will by no means believe, though one were to declare it to you.”

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you for calling us to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit in the steps of Jesus in our day and age. Bless us, Lord God, as we consider the work of your Spirit spreading the gospel throughout the world. In the book of Acts, bless us, Father, so that we can understand how better to talk to our neighbors and friends and also based on this text what we can say to other Christians and what they might bring to us as well.

Bless us, Father, by an understanding of your word. Transform us by the power of your Holy Spirit without which we are lost trying to understand or apply your word in our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated. So a little context for this—I gave a little bit at the beginning—but this is the so-called first missionary journey of Paul. What has happened in the immediate context of this is in chapter 12. The great persecution against the church in Jerusalem has started and Peter is imprisoned and then Peter is freed, gets out of prison by the prophetical work of God miraculously allowing him to escape from prison. And then Peter leaves the scene and we really don’t hear much more about Peter.

And now in chapter 13 Paul—or Saul—steps up. So this is a great transition point from Peter to Saul/Paul. He’s called both in the text before us. And this is at the same time the first missionary journey. What’s happened because of the persecution in Jerusalem and other things is that Paul or Saul goes to Antioch. It’s Antioch, Syria. In today’s text, we read about Antioch Pisidia. Different Antiochs, different names of cities and different regions.

And he’s there with Barnabas and other people. And then he’ll be commissioned from Antioch, Syria, to go on this missionary journey. So what we’re seeing here, I think the way to think about it is that we’ve had a new exodus. There’s a new persecution, right? Herod is sort of acting like Pharaoh did. God judges Pharaoh. God releases his people and brings them out of Jerusalem. And then after they get this exodus thing and they’ve established themselves now in places like Antioch, then what happens next, of course, in the account of the first exodus is after a period there of moving out, then they begin to move in to Canaan and they begin to evangelize, take control of, and move into Canaan.

So as we said before, Acts is very much like the book of Joshua and it’s sort of what we’d say is the book of Joshua picks up in pretty significant ways now in chapter 13 because the exodus recorded in the earlier books in the Pentateuch has now been kind of recapitulated in the movement away from Jerusalem. And now they’re going to start then evangelizing the world in the same way that Joshua and his men went in to occupy Canaan, a particular territory.

So that’s kind of the parallels that are going on here. And so when we read in this text and other texts, you know, a bunch of different cities and regions and the journeys of Paul and the guys to those regions, it’s like reading in the book of Joshua. You get a lot of geography there too. So there’s these parallels between the two books. And in this text, it’s sort of like a very explicit parallel as we move now after the exodus into the evangelization of the world.

So this is the first missionary trip. There’ll be others. This will occupy both chapters 13 and 14. And at the end of chapter 14, which we’ll deal with next week, at the end of that chapter, Paul and Barnabas go back to Antioch. And they’re there for another three years. And then there’s another missionary journey. So chapters 13 and 14 are the first missionary journey. And there’s two different groups that Paul will talk to, which is why we’re looking at them—the contextualization of his message depending upon who he’s talking to and how he acts or says things differently between the two.

It’s interesting that in the historical runup to this, let me read the opening verses in the chapter. We read this:

“Now in the church that was at Antioch, there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ So having fasted and prayed, they laid hands on them and sent them away.”

Okay, so at the beginning of this first missionary journey we’re being given the context. There are these people at the church in Antioch. And so the missionary journey is instituted by the Spirit in the context of worship service. That’s what ministering to the Lord is about. It’s a description of the worship service.

And so in that worship service, the Holy Spirit reveals to them that they should send forth Barnabas and Saul for the work to which God has called them. And then it says that having fasted and prayed, they laid hands on them and sent them away. So this is why it starts and it kind of reminds us of the significance of the institutional church, which I’ll talk about in a couple of minutes.

And then we read: “So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus. And when they arrived in Salamis they preached the word of God in the synagogue of the Jews. They also had John, that’s John Mark, as their assistant.”

Now, it’s interesting to me that the first geography mentioned is that they arrived, or that they were in—they went down to Seleucia. Now, it’s interesting because Seleucia is named after one of the four generals who basically split up the world, so to speak, after Alexander the Great’s death several hundred years earlier. And Seleucus took the eastern section. They did it by the four points of the compass. And so what we have here is a reference to one of the great generals who can—one of the four men who controlled, so to speak, the world. It wasn’t the whole world, but you know, an empire. And so it’s interesting to me because the first missionary journey begins with a geographic reference that talks about the past Greek empire. And now what’s going to happen, of course, is that what will be going on is the establishment of the Christian empire over the whole world. That’s the project that begins here. And so that’s where we’re at as well as we’re in the context of that history.

So the history is given, geography is cited in a particular kind of geography that reminds us of empire and the conquering of empire by the proclamation of the Christian gospel.

On your outline I also have “Individuals and Church.” So, you know, it names individuals at the beginning of this account in Acts 13 and then it talks about those individuals gathered together in worship. And so you have a kind of balance between the significance of individuals—your life is significant, my life is significant—and on the other hand, the significance of the church.

Now, in our day and age, everybody’s into the significance of the individual and they denigrate the church. In other ages, everybody’s into the institution of the church and denigrate the significance of individuals. But in the scriptures, they’re given kind of equal emphasis here at the beginning of the project that will result in the discipling of all nations in the world.

We’re in this project. What we’re involved in began in this account. And so as it reveals itself, it will reveal the significance of these things that it lays out at the beginning. And so to successfully complete the work that Jesus has called us to do means that we want to see the significance of our own personal lives. But we also want to see the significance of the institutional church and specifically the worship of the church. The whole thing begins as they’re ministering to the Lord.

So the individual and the church—and specifically the worshiping church—are stressed here.

Oh, I see a spelling mistake in my outline. It’s supposed to be Stephen. Angie must have missed it—well, she never saw it. I did this yesterday. So: Stephen, Peter, and Paul. You know, if you’re really familiar with the book of Acts—and I know that none of us are all that. I’m not that familiar with it myself. I probably wouldn’t have picked it up myself if I didn’t read about it from other people. But it’s very interesting that this first sermon by Paul, or talk by Paul—it kind of reminds me of Peter. There’s actually, for instance, when he begins to talk, he motions with his hand. And we read just the previous chapter that Peter in a group of people motioned with his hand to get them to be quiet. And so there’s a connection drawn with the gesturing that’s going on.

And if you know the content of Peter’s first speech, right, on the day of Pentecost, you know that he cited the Psalms as well and kind of making some of the same basic points that Saul will make or Paul will make in this sermon. So there’s a parallel in how Peter presented the gospel and how Saul/Paul presents the gospel. Now they’re both presenting it to people who are people of the book.

And so the methodology used here—and we’ll be commenting on this as we go through the text—can help us understand how to talk to people who, if their basis of authority is already the scriptures. The scriptures are what Paul’s going to appeal to. And that’s what Peter appealed to as well, interpreting contemporary events by means of the scriptures. So to the extent that we can interpret the contemporary events of our world in relationship to the scriptures, this will help us minister and spread the good news to people that may not believe in Christ, may not be a disciple of Christ, and yet affirm the scriptures in some way.

But in any event, the point is that there’s a kind of parallel account here between Peter and Paul in terms of the actual first talk that they give. They’re connected up. And of course, what’s happening is as we’re transitioning from Peter, who is primarily the apostle to the Jews, to Saul/Paul, who’s primarily the apostle to the Gentiles.

It’s interesting as well that in this chapter we read about Saul/Paul, right? Paul, Saul, who was also called Paul. Well, Saul is his Hebrew name and Paul is his Greek name. And the transition of the use of his name is a picture of the transition of Paul himself from beginning with the Jews and going to the Gentiles. And we read about that in this chapter as well. And that’s what’s going to happen with him.

And that if you just think about his name change from Saul to Paul, it’s not one, you know, we get confused about this. It’s not who he was before he became a Christian and then his Christian name. That’s not it. Because he continues to be referred to as Saul in this passage where he’s preaching the gospel. The transition rather is one from his Jewish name to his Greek name. There may be practical things involved as well, but in the story that’s written for us here that’s significant.

I say practical things. N.T. Wright says that Saul—if you heard that word in the Greek and you were Greek, you would think it meant “effeminate.” Apparently that’s kind of the implications of that term. It wasn’t in Hebrew, but it was to the Greeks. But I think the primary thing here is a theological shift through what’s happening here and the binding together of Jew and Gentile that have been separated deliberately by God for a period of time.

So Paul is like the new Peter and Paul is also like Stephen. The other thing that Paul does that we just read is he gives these chronological references of 40 years and 450 years. If you go back to Stephen’s defense of himself while he’s going to be martyred, you’ll read the same numbers: 40 and 450. Stephen does the same thing Paul does in part of his sermon. He gives a chronology. So, you know, in the beautiful picture, the beautiful story of the development of what’s happening in the book of Acts and what the Spirit is doing, you know, you’ve got Peter on the day of Pentecost, you’ve got Stephen at his martyrdom, and both these men really are kind of resurrected—or their work is bound together in the person of Paul who presents this first sermon.

So there’s significance to that and the unity of the message and the way God works in the context of people’s lives.

Another thing you can pick up in the general way the scriptures deal with these significant men is: John the Baptist in Luke chapter 3 is introduced with a lengthy excerpt from his preaching. Okay, so John the Baptist is introduced that way. In Luke chapter 4, and you know Luke wrote both Luke and Acts—in Luke chapter 4, Jesus is introduced with a sermon at Nazareth. You remember that? In Acts 2, the Peter phase of the kingdom is introduced by Peter’s Pentecost sermon. We would say. And here in Acts 13, Paul is essentially introduced as his ministry begins. The preaching ministry of Paul begins; he’s introduced by a lengthy sermon—one of the more lengthy accounts we have of his, maybe the longest.

So what’s the point? Well, the point again is that there’s a commonality here. And what’s the commonality? The commonality is the preaching of the word. And so the significant phases of covenant history—you know, John, Jesus, Peter, Paul—those significant events are marked at the beginning with the preaching of God’s word and an emphasis upon that. And throughout the book of Acts, including in our text today, we read that the word of God increased.

So, yes, what we do is important. Yes, all the other elements of the worship service are important. Yes, relationship with your neighbors is important. All those things are important. But at the center of this seems to be the word of God and the significance of the word. Without the word of God, we really have nothing. We have nothing to tell people. We have nothing on which to base our own hope and trust, and we have no source of real comfort.

The scriptures are really at the heart of the whole thing. And so the significant movements of the church—preparation, Jesus’s coming, the expansion, the taking of Jesus’s message, of him to the Jews and then to the Gentiles—all marked by an emphasis right at the beginning of the preached word of God. And so this is a very significant thing in the history of the world and it should be significant to us as well.

Okay. So what we’re going to do now is look at a kind of five-fold structure. And I didn’t read the whole thing. I just read a couple—I read the sermon and then I’ve now read a few things at the beginning of the text. But essentially you can kind of outline this chapter with five particular movements. And if you do that, at the center of this text again is the preaching of God’s word—the sermon itself.

Either side of that, there’s division between Jew and Gentile. So before Paul preaches, in the place before that we got a dust-up between Paul and a Jewish magician, but we have the conversion of a Roman governor. And after the preaching of the sermon we have the division that happens between Jew and Gentile there.

So at the center is this sermon. Either side is dust-ups between two individuals who sort of represent Jew and Gentile and then between Jews and Gentiles—groups, individuals, groups. Either side of that we have a depiction of joy in the Holy Spirit in the verses I just read. It begins with this depiction of what’s going on in the worshiping community and the movement of the Holy Spirit in the context of the local church. And at the end of it, we read that the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

So you’ve got references at beginning and end with good stuff happening—joy in the Holy Spirit—in spite of the divisions that happened in the middle of the narrative. So that’s kind of the structure. And again, that structure, as well as the length of the sermon itself in this chapter, draws our attention once more to the preaching of God’s word as being very central.

And I cannot emphasize that too much in the life of the Christian. The scriptures have to be the center. You have to have a commitment to God’s word, a growing knowledge of God’s word. You want to witness to your friends and neighbors, lifestyle evangelism, great. But it has to at some point involve the instruction in God’s word, the discussion of God’s word, which means you need to know God’s word well enough to talk about their problems, their particular motivations.

Even apart from that, for your own sanctification, you need to know the scriptures. That’s what sanctifies you. It’s not just some sort of mysterious thing. I mean, certainly the work of the Holy Spirit’s involved individually in our lives, but everything flows forth from and is described as the increase of the word of God in our world. So I cannot stress that enough. And when we have a congregation that’s marked by people regularly reading the scriptures, being involved in personal study or Bible study, attention to learning as much as you can about the word, that’s a healthy church. That’s a church that will actually do evangelism. Okay? That’s a church that will grow, will have impact in a community. That’s what has impact.

And to the extent that a church doesn’t have those things going on and have people that you know the only time they hear about the Bible is in the preaching of the sermon—I mean that’s good, particularly if you work it through throughout the rest of your week in terms of how it relates to your life, but the word has to be central. And when you’ve got a congregation where the word is no longer central in people’s lives, that’s a weak congregation.

And I think, you know, I think that’s what’s happened in our country. There’s been a diminishment of the significance and the importance of the word. Why? The word divides. That’s what it does here. I mean, we want unity. We want that precious oil. We want that. But God has a way of getting there by first bringing division.

And we don’t like division. We don’t like controversy. We don’t like, you know, people that get involved in arguments that are kind of we’re not all agreed and not everybody’s smiling all the time. That makes us nervous. I think particularly up here in the Pacific Northwest. I think the particular cultural context here sees confrontation very negatively. And you know the word of God confronts us. And so God’s going to bring division. We don’t like that. So we tend to shy away from emphasizing the word and particularly those elements of the word that we may not agree with somebody else about—another Christian, for instance.

Paul does just the opposite. He goes right to this Jewish synagogue with Jews and Gentile God-fearers. He knows that he’s talking about the hot topic of the day that has already brought great division and persecution in Jerusalem. He doesn’t shy away from it and he doesn’t put it in the context of everything’s being great. He does affirmation, as we’ll talk about in just a minute, but he brings the word of God and the significance of it and a centrality to it.

You know, dear ones, the word has to be central to who you are. To the extent that the church in America has lost the word—you know, they lost it by just getting rid of two-thirds of it. The only thing that’s significant is the New Testament. You know, there’s a verse in here. There’s a verse in here. I’ll talk about this at the end of the sermon about how as many of the Gentiles as were ordained to eternal life believed. It says that toward the end of the text and the narrative after the sermon.

This sermon is filled with the providence of God. Hopefully you recognized it, right? You saw that the Jews killed Jesus, but they were fulfilling the very word of God, which they rejected, right? Strong statement of the sovereignty of God in this sermon. And at the end there’s this verse: “As many as were appointed to eternal life, many as were ordained by God to eternal life”—those are the ones who believe. Paul says he does all things for the sake of the elect, the elect, the ones that God has chosen.

And that offends people. Well, that’s the word of God. It has to be at the center of who we are.

There’s a—I was listening to a guy. He’s an apologist and apologetics professor. And he talked about an ongoing series of back-and-forth debates with David Hunt. David Hunt is a dispensationalist and someone who early on attacked Christian Reconstructionists. But he’s an Arminian and he doesn’t like this verse about being ordained to eternal life, that only the ones that believe are those who are ordained. And so he had a book, and in this book he said, “Well, you know, in the Greek blah blah.” And so this apologetics professor wrote back and said, “Well, no actually in the Greek it’s this,” and all the Greek experts agreed with the second guy.

Hunt then revised his book. And here’s how he revised it. He says in this book that the first—what is it?—15 chapters of Acts were originally written in Hebrew and that this word in the Hebrew meant that they were self-appointed. They appointed themselves to eternal life. I mean, you know, completely unsubstantiated claim about the language these chapters were written in. And why? Because of a commitment to Arminianism.

You know, these texts tell us that right at the very heart of them is an assumption about the sovereignty of God that’s made. And this word will bring controversy. It will bring some degree of division, but it will eventually lead to that joy and unity in the Holy Spirit.

Okay. So “The Spirit and the Church”—verses 1 to 4a. This is the first section of the sermon I just read about. And in terms of how we witness to our friends, right, so we want to look at these texts in terms of being better at evangelizing and being missional. The first thing that I put on your outline is, and the first of these paired points is about how it affects our witnessing. The second one is how it affects our interactions with other churches.

So in terms of witnessing to people: preconditions for evangelism. You need to be hooked up and committed to the local church to effectively evangelize. I think that’s the implication of these first four verses—that the Spirit works through the local church. We like to say the Spirit works in the church, and then we turn the church into some sort of amorphous, you know, sort of unconnected thing that we’re just sort of part of generally. And occasionally we’ll go to this church or that church or this church or that, particularly in our day and age.

But here we’re talking about a local church is where the Spirit of God moved to send out these missionaries. And so your ability—and now I know too, by the way, just to get this on the table—we’re talking about people that this is their calling for, you know, for a long time was to engage in mission very evangelistic activity. And that’s not you. Your calling is you’ve got vocations that you’re involved with. You’re raising families, et cetera. But I think that we can look at some application of what we see in the life of Paul and Barnabas and these other men and make some applications to us. And the first one is a commitment to the local church. You’ve got to be a good churchman. That will assist you in evangelism, not detract you from it.

In terms of the church itself, what message do we have to tell the church? Paul’s coming to a church. He presupposes their commitment to the word of God and their faith in God, Yahweh. He doesn’t say, “Well, some of you are going to believe this, some are going to reject.” It happens. He knows it’s going to happen, but he treats them as Christians, we could say. And so he’s talking to another church coming from this church. And he has a message for them.

And so what can we see in this text that would help us to have a message to other churches or Christians in other churches? And one of the points from this part of the narrative in Acts 13 is the significance of the worshiping church. Churches today are losing an understanding of the significance of the local church. So these texts in Acts—this particular text—can help us to remind other Christians of the significance of the local church and specifically the worship of the church.

You know, we’re now in a period of time in the Pacific Northwest when churches close down worship occasionally. So they don’t go to church because they want to be the church. If we never go to church and we just want to be the church, we’re not the church anymore. That will completely eviscerate who we are. We’ll lose any ability to affect this culture. Worship comes first and worship prepares us, you know, for the witnessing that we’re going to do in the other portions of the week.

Okay. The next section here—that I began to read—is about Sergius Paulus and Bar-Jesus. I didn’t actually read that part. But what happens next in the narrative is like a cameo. Now what’s a cameo? Well, you know what it used to mean? Nowadays it’s an appearance on a TV show by someone. But what it used to mean was there’s a piece of jewelry. And so you’d have a little brooch or something. There’d be like somebody’s portrait, maybe in ivory or something, in raised relief. That was a cameo. But you know, it really represents a whole person. And so because of that, cameo is also used to talk about something that represents a bigger whole—but something that sort of pictures it in small form.

Let me read this. That would probably be a good idea. Okay.

“Now when they had gone through the island of Cyprus, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man. This man called for Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer—for so his name is translated, Elymas is like ‘wise man’ or ‘magician’ or something—withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, ‘Oh full of deceit and all fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease perverting the straight ways of the Lord? And now indeed the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.’ And immediately a dark mist fell on him, and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand. Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had been done, being astonished at the teaching of the Lord.”

Now that’s a little cameo of the whole rest of Paul’s ministry—and specifically of what’s going to happen when he preaches this sermon at a synagogue and division occurs. So the division that we know happens after normally his preaching, and certainly in Acts 13 where the Gentiles want to hear more about the word of God, the Jews get envious because the Gentiles and everybody comes out to hear the word of God after Paul preaches the first time. The Jews get envious and they start subverting the work of Paul and trying to keep the Gentiles from believing. Well, that in small form is exactly what happens with Sergius Paulus and Bar-Jesus.

Now it’s interesting: Bar-Jesus. That means “the son of Jesus,” right? Well, the Jews are the sons of Jesus. The Jews are sons of God, right? That’s what God calls them. Throughout the Old Testament, one of the biggest metaphors for God’s people is that they’re his son. They’re his sons, his children, the children of God. So what does he represent? He represents Jews who would not believe and were rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And what does he do in that rejection? While he tries to pervert the teaching, not just for himself, but he tries to keep the Roman governor from believing as well. But what happens? Paul overpowers him. He pronounces a judgment against him. By the way, you notice the judgment. Does it sound familiar at all? “You’ll be blind for a season. You’ll have to look around for somebody to lead you.” Who did that happen to earlier in Acts? Well, that happened to Saul, right?

So he’s not being a jerk. Saul/Paul—he’s actually trying to get this guy to come to faith, I think, because he’s cursing him with the same curse that came to Saul as he rejected Christ. So anyway, but the point is that this division immediately happens here and it’s a picture of the divisions that will happen. The Gentiles—represented by a governor, a Roman governor here—comes to faith.

And notice that it’s not that he’s astonished at what happens, at the blindness of Elymas the magician, right? But it says that he’s really impressed by the teaching of the word, you know.

Okay. So what does this mean for our work with our neighbors? Well, it means, number one, a couple things. It means, one, our neighbors are going to have people around them, you know, who may not want them to be brought to faith. You just got to be aware of that. You got to be aware that division might happen, right?

Number two though: you’ve got to have the confidence that the word of God will prevail. As many as are ordained to eternal life will come to eternal life. Okay? So there’s an optimistic story in the context of division and opposition. So that’s okay. You’ve got to be ready for that. You know, if you don’t like confrontation, if you don’t like, you know, people getting upset with you, don’t witness because God says over and over again, if you try to talk to your neighbor, your friend, your coworker, you’re probably going to get some push-back by somebody. And it might be significant push-back with all kinds of mischaracterizations of who you are. But that’s okay. God works through that stuff.

Now, you know, another thing that it tells us here, I think, is the Jews. And this is—this is I’m going to go out on a little bit of a limb here—but the Jews who reject Paul later on in the chapter and will reject Paul throughout the rest of his preaching ministry. Not all of them, some of them. Paul is not anti-Semitic. Paul is Semitic, right? But we’re talking about unbelieving Jews.

And it seems like if this is a little picture, Jew and Gentile—Sergius Paulus and the Gentiles, and Bar-Jesus, the magician guy, with the Jews. I think the scriptures want us to associate the Jews with being magicians. Now, what does a magician do? I don’t know if you thought about this much. A magician seeks to control the supernatural by the natural. A magician seeks to say things, to do things, right? He seeks to manipulate the world around him and by doing that control the unseen forces, the supernatural.

The Jews don’t like the message of God’s sovereignty and the Lord Jesus Christ. And the thing they really are upset about is when Paul tells them, you know, you just fulfilled the word of God when you crucified him. They want to control God. They want God to be for them, right? They don’t want to have to submit to a sovereign God. I think the text is telling us that the Jews are trying to manipulate God always, or frequently did in their history for their particular purposes.

Now, there’s something we can say about this, and it’s not something that’s going to win us any friends in evangelicalism. We’re evangelicals, but within the context of evangelical—just like Paul was a Jew, but in the context of evangelical—what I’m going to say now isn’t going to win us any friends. But I think it’s very significant that this text—one of the most significant messages that we have for other Christians and specifically to other churches—is that this Calvinism/Arminian thing. That’s not optional. That’s not, you know, some kind of irrelevant fact of life in this whole thing.

To Paul, the fact of the sovereign God is what he really focuses on in the scriptures. Now it’s a sovereign God who is fulfilling his promises to us and blessing us with eternal life. And we don’t see corruption. You know, Jesus didn’t see corruption. We have no fear of death. He deals with the worst nightmares that we have about life and existence. And Jesus has—by the providence and sovereignty of God using sinful men sinlessly—God’s sovereignty is set in the context of his love and grace and mercy. The sure mercies of David are given to us through Jesus. They’re set in that context.

But you could say it the other way around as well: that the grace and love of God is set in the context of the sovereign God who ordains and appoints certain people to come to eternal life. Now we could immediately say that doesn’t mean that you’ve got people who really want to become Christians and can’t. Scriptures nowhere say that. It says that the fallen person is unwilling as well as unable to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. God ordains and elects particular people. He’s sovereign. But the fact is, you know, it’s not as if people want to be Christians. They are unwilling to submit to God.

Now, so this Calvinism/Arminianism thing—right at the core of Paul’s sermon here—huge emphasis in it. And then in the account of what happened. And so the Jews reject this. And I think we can say that there could be some connection between people that believe in a non-sovereign God. Everybody will say they believe in a sovereign God. Everybody says it’s grace. But is grace sufficient? That’s the question. Everybody says, “Yeah, yeah, you need the grace of God to repent, but then it’s up to the individual. Once the grace of God does its work, then it’s up to how I respond to it.” No. That’s synergism—where I’m working with God to affect my salvation.

The Bible says, “All glory to God, because every one of us would reject God apart from his grace.” So God’s grace is sufficient to bring us to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So that’s the rub. That’s what we mean by sovereign—that God has ordained certain people to eternal life, and only those people are the ones who will come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you reject that then you’re part of this crowd that rejects the preaching of Paul. And I think you’re kind of like Elymas. That’s really—this is the hard thing to say. So let me let somebody else say it.

R.J. Rushdoony has this book, Biblical Philosophy of History. And Bahnsen actually, I think, has translated this in the last year into Polish and is now distributing it there. And in that book, he talks about Arminianism. First, he compares it to evolutionists as opposed to creationists, which is bad enough. But then he actually compares Arminianism to magic. Here’s what Rushdoony said, quoting:

“Magic is the attempt to control and govern the supernatural by means of the natural. It is thus a belief in the destination of eternity, a determination rather of eternity by man. Arminianism is thus a form of magic, a magical theology and belief. It holds that we individuals—or that the individual’s rather decision—governs eternity. Man is saved because man chooses Christ. But Jesus declared, ‘You have not chosen me but I have chosen you.’ The primary and determinative choice belongs to the eternal order and the eternal decree of God.”

Now, so you see, it’s kind of an obvious point that if you think man’s eternal destination is a result of man’s actions, then you’re kind of like the magician who thinks that he can control the supernatural and eternity by his actions. That’s a tough message, and it’s not one I would lead with an Arminian brother. But it’s one that I have in the back of my mind to try to bring out in a way that doesn’t call him a magician, but helps him to see what he’s saying—that you can’t have shared sovereignty. He doesn’t understand that. But what he’s doing is subjugating God to the will of man. And he’s trying to make man sovereign. This is not a small point. This is a huge point.

So the little cameo that this story gives us of these two men and Paul’s interaction with them, you know, is helpful for interpreting what happens after this and remembering it. And it’s also helpful in terms of how we discuss things with other Christians as well.

I think I’m going to stop, and we’ll deal with the actual sermon next week. You know, I don’t want to give you two or three sermons. But I think that this was really kind of the emphasis I was going to make at the conclusion of the sermon. God’s sovereignty—the fact that he ordains certain people and appoints them to eternal life—is what gives you the ability to do what is going to be uncomfortable for you to do.

It’s uncomfortable for us to talk to someone about Jesus because we fear rejection, right? And we fear that we’re not going to do it right somehow and we’re going to mess things up or they’re just not going to like us. But if we recognize that at the end of the day, we’re not magicians, right? It’s not how well we handle our neighbors. Yeah, you should be thinking about who they are. You should be thinking about your approach, what authorities to cite, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, what you want to remember is you’re not the magician here. The Holy Spirit is doing this alchemical work of potentially taking dead people and making glorious, shining, living beings of them by his power and his Spirit.

Some of the people that you talk to will likely be ordained by God to eternal life. That’s why he’s put you in their lives. But others won’t. And if you recognize that and recognize that you’re not in control, I think that means that you will then have a stronger commitment to endure the shame, right, that potentially is seen in relationship to the preaching of the gospel or sharing it with a neighbor.

You’ll be able to do that, I think, in a more deliberate way and in a confident way and in a peaceful way. And when you do that, then you will be filled with joy and the power of the Holy Spirit in your life as well.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for your word. Bless us, Lord God. I pray that the congregation would read the particular sermon and the results of it in Acts chapter 13 so that when we discuss it next week, we can discuss it with some knowledge. I pray that we would be a people who are committed to your word at the center of our being and see the tremendous significance of it.

I pray that we would make commitments to be good churchmen. I thank you for this church. I think it’s a shining light in terms of commitment to the local church and participation in it, as we’ve seen, which is a powerful thing enabling missionary activity and evangelism in our world. So we thank you for that. But bless us that we don’t fall away from that as a church. Help us, Lord God, to be committed to the local church and to your worship and to believe that this worship indeed empowers us and prepares us and somehow is used by the Holy Spirit to affect our witness into the world.

Bless us, Lord God, as well with a sense of assurance that you’re in control. You’re in charge. We’re not. Thank you that Paul bluntly spoke forth these things to people that would reject them. Help us to do so as well in a way that’s winsome, but at the same time in a way that will likely lead to some kind of contradiction, reputation, and difficulty for us. Help us not to be afraid. Help us not to feel that we don’t know what we’re doing. But help us to trust your Holy Spirit that this week we might speak to our neighbors, friends, co-workers, et cetera, about the work of Jesus.

In his name we pray. Amen.