Clough Acts Lesson 32

Using Missionary Contacts – Acts 13:4-13

Turn to Acts 13 to continue our study on the first Christian missionary expedition. Acts 13 and 14 present how Christian missions began. These chapters are guidance for us; if you are in a Christian church that selects its own missionaries or you are asked to vote to support or not support another one, then you have to have something other than the way the man parts his hair to go on. And the book of Acts gives some criterion that you can use to decide and use to evaluate.

One of the things that we are doing in the book of Acts, particularly from Acts 12 on, because Acts is so highly emphatic on divine guidance, what I’m trying to do is downplay the supernatural aspects of guidance and up play the natural aspects of guidance. That’s not to knock the supernatural but it’s to produce a more ordered balance in our present day situation when the Holy Spirit does not guide us quite like He did the apostles, but the areas where the Holy Spirit does guide us like He did the apostles are in these natural things, the common sense things, the things in our environment. We look, we decide on the basis of data; not on the basis of some roulette wheel, around and around and around and all of a sudden God says this. That’s just not orthodox Christian guidance. Divine guidance in the Scripture is not disconnected from common sense data, data that you would use in normal every day decisions; even the non-Christian would use to make good decisions data.

All of this is to show one basic doctrine in the Scriptures associated with divine guidance and that is the doctrine of providence. Providence is the sovereignty of God in every area of our life, in every part of the universe. Providence used to be a familiar word to most people in the English speaking world; it is not no longer a familiar word. It used to be so well-known that the early settlers in America named one of our major metropolitan cities after this particular doctrine. The doctrine insists that God, not Chance, reigns in the environment. Now in our day we have a resurgence of humanism; even in the hearts of so-called Bible-believing Christians. This being election week you can reflect upon almost every political campaign, conservative or liberal, that has been involved in this country and you will notice it’s humanistic presuppositions, you’ll notice that instead of an appeal to providence there is an appeal that government must do this or government must do that; after all, if government doesn’t do it, it will all fall apart. Now that’s a common faith, and almost every candidate is forced to take some position in this because his voting constituency demands that he do this; he couldn’t be elected to public office if he said hey, it’s not government’s job to do this, if I’m elected to office I’ll see to it the government never does this. Can you imagine someone getting elected on that kind of a ticket.

The point is that because Americans have basically become humanists in our hearts, regardless of the surface lip profession, nevertheless, humanism has said that not providence, but chance reigns and no one wants to be in a chaos and so therefore “somebody” (quote, end quote) has to step in and bring order out of chance and order out of chaos, there being, of course, no such thing as providence. You see this in the economic realm; years and years ago, in fact in the very year of our independence, in 1776 a famous book was written by a famous economist, Adam Smith, who wrote the book, The Wealth of Nations, and the thesis of the book was that the free market place, guided by what Smith called “the invisible hand” would establish values. Smith argued out of a Christian framework that the market would be controlled by providence, not by the state. But wherever humanism has arisen you’ve had a rejection of the invisible hand in economic affairs and it’s always the government that must step in. Now this is true in our own country in the past, of both political parties.

Let’s go back to one point to illustrate this; let’s go back to the days of the depression. Both Hoover and FDR met the situation by rejecting the doctrine of providence; both insisted that everything would fall apart if nothing were done, when it could be argued that the best thing government could have done in 1932 was to close up shop and go home, and let the free market place get rid of itself and even out. To show, however, that men would much prefer the meddling of a finite fallen man, or men, or committees over what they call chance, than trusting in the God of providence, we have the amusing story told in the diaries of the Secretary of Treasury, Morgenthal, who wrote about the early days of the depression, when the price of gold against the dollar was being fixed on a daily basis and Morgenthal gives us this portrait of how the price of gold was actually fixed:

“Every morning Jesse Jones and I would meet in the President’s bedroom with George Warren, to set the price of gold for the day. Franklin Roosevelt would lie back comfortably in his old-fashioned three-quarter bed, and the actual price that we set forth made little difference. One day, when I must have come in more than usually worried about the state of the world, we were planning an increase from 19 to 22 cents. President Roosevelt took one look at me and said, 21 cents, it’s a lucky number, the President said with a laugh, because it’s three times seven.” And so the United States price of gold was set because someone played lucky numbers, three times seven is fortunate. This is what always happens when the humanist rejects faith in God’s providence in the market place and instead puts his trust in man or men of whatever party, whether state, federal or any other place. It’s always the humanist that determines this. We say this because after the evening service you’ll see a film that comments on governmental intervention into the market place, a famous film, The Incredible Bread Machine. But the government today is a manifestation of the rejection of the doctrine that you see in the book of Acts.

In Acts the people believe in divine providence; therefore had these men been the citizenry, the voting citizenry, they wouldn’t have listened to say oh, vote for me because my hand is bigger and I can reach deeper in the federal or state cookie jar for you and bring up the goodies. There wasn’t that kind of appeal at all, that the state was going to control everything. It was God who was going to control things, and so rather than the state as the comforter and protector Christ was their Comforter and protector and so it shall always be: God versus Caesar, one or the other, they both can’t be your protector.

Now in this section in Acts 12 and 13 we’ve noticed the faith and providence expressed several ways. One of these ways that their faith in divine providence is expressed is by taking advantage of family relationships. You usually think of the apostles being guided by some glowing light or some other mysterious mystical system of guidance, but we saw last time that men like Barnabas, the apostle Barnabas, who had a cousin by the name of John Mark, and it’s not any surprise that when the first missionaries are sent out, when Barnabas is included in those missionaries sent out, that John Mark goes with them as sort of the errand boy. That’s a convenient thing because after all, John Mark is his cousin. In other words, common sense; who can we work with best? Members of our own family, so thus John Mark is selected.

And then on that first missionary journey where do they go first but the island of Cyprus and what is the island of Cyprus? Barnabas’ home. And there’s a second point on that first missionary journey that they go, southern Asia Minor. And where is southern Asia Minor and what is it? Paul’s old stomping ground. So the people that go on the first missionary journey and the places they go to on the first missionary journey are all products of common sense. Now that’s not to say that they didn’t pray about it to make sure that God didn’t veto it; but it’s also to say that their guidance was not wholly supernatural at all. They simply put together the common sense thing in their environment.

We saw another situation; we found out that as they moved into the world they used a certain strategy or they used a certain concept of missionary-apostles, or apostles and missionaries, we’ll put a hyphen between, that is a system that Christians didn’t invent. The Jews invented that in the days of the Diaspora, in 586 and 721 BC when Jewish people were kicked out of their homeland, thrown out into the Gentile cultures, the only way they could maintain contact with Jerusalem was through apostles. And so there had been centuries upon centuries of this system of maintaining contact through traveling apostles. And not only did they travel but they carried letters of commendations similar to what we call the New Testament epistles. So a second common sense thing, it wasn’t written in lights on the ceiling, they simply adopted a method that they had seen used for centuries before, the apostolic missionary technique. So there’s a second illustration of simply respecting providence, looking into the environment to see how God has already worked there and then pick out the things that seem best.

We saw a third thing in the realm of wealth; how were these first missionaries supported. In the first days of the Church, the churches did not support missions. In the first days of the church the missionaries themselves supported missions; they took their own funds and went out, so does it surprise you then, when the two men out of the five are picked, one of them is the wealthiest of all, Barnabas. They needed somebody with money so they picked somebody with money, it’s just that simple; it’s just that natural. And then we saw something else about their simple use of common sense items at hand, and that was the tactics they used on the field when they got to the field. The first thing they did was they swept through with an evangelist thrust and then they followed it up with teaching. The first wave, much like a military invasion, as to clear the fields for the enemy, secure the high ground, and then later they would sweep in with pastor-teachers to follow up in the local congregations and you can easily compute, no extended mathematics required, you can easily compute the number of hours that the first Christians were taught and this is astounding.

Some of you have heard in the book of Acts how the first century Christians turned the world upside down; you wonder, oh, they must have more power than we had. No they didn’t, the Holy Spirit is the same today, yesterday and forever. Well, they must have had more gifts than we did. No, they had the temporary gifts which we don’t but the canon makes up for that; there weren’t any more gifts. Well, they must have been more educated than we are. No, they were less educated than we are. Well then they had more of them than we have; no, they had less of them than we have. One national news magazine says 50% of Americans claim a born again experience and if that’s true it’s a blight on Christianity because in the first century, in the first century of our nation we had less than 5% people regenerate, the best church historians estimate, in the colonial America. Now look what 5% of the people did; they reinforced the entire theory behind the Constitution; now why is it that 50% of the people can’t influence the rest like 5% could, something’s obviously different. What is it then, it can’t be education, it can’t be numbers, it can’t be gifts and it’s not the Holy Spirit that’s different. What is different. One of the things that was different was their system of teaching. In the ancient world Paul’s first year he would teach approximately 1,000 hours to new Christians; you can estimate that by him teaching so many hours a day as he does in Ephesus and Asia Minor, multiplying it by six days, multiplying it by 52 and you come out to about a thousand hours of instruction. That’s how much instruction a new convert to the faith was given. Now even in the best Bible teaching churches today, figuring an average of, say, three hours a week instruction, it would take twelve years for us to do one year of teaching the way the apostles did it. Now is it any wonder why 5% of the people at one time in this country were able to turn the world upside down, the great Puritan era, when men were taught much like this, over and over and over. Of course; teaching, they knew what it was they believed and what does the Bible say, that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” And thus it is that teaching was used very effectively.

Now in Acts 13:4 we come to the first section of this missionary journey. “So they, being sent forth by the Holy Spirit, departed unto Seleucia; and from thence they sailed to Cyprus. [5] And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews: and they had also John to their minister. [6] 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: [7] 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. [8] But Elymas the sorcerer (for so is his name by interpretation) withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith. [9] Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him, [10] And said, O full of all deceit 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? [11] 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. [12] Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.”

Now this section depicts part of their missionary struggle and a fifth principle of providential guidance and leading, a very important principle of missionary work. It’s in that little phrase in verse 5, “when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews,” the word “preach” is in the imperfect tense in the Greek which means they continually did this as a habit. This was a lifestyle, this was their strategy. What was their strategy? Let’s look at it a moment; watch how it compares with strategy today. It had a Roman element to it, it had a Jewish element to it. Now the Romans, wherever they went, actually under the sovereignty and providence of God, were preparing the world for Christianity. They prepared it in many ways; one thing, they united the culture with a common language. They took Greek and moved it eastward and they made… Greek of course, Alexander had made it the lingua franca but the Romans continued to use it adding to it Latin. The Romans devised a system of roads, the Romans, in short, established a law and order environment in which Christianity could flourish.

Now less this seem a small thing, just think of what it would be like if the Apostle Paul started out from Israel today. First of all, he couldn’t get across the Lebanese border because there’d be a fence. Then he’d have to go through all sorts of rigmarole to get a passport. He couldn’t go to Cyprus because the Greeks and the Turks are fighting there and they don’t like people coming aboard. If he went into Turkey he couldn’t go to Greece because if you go to Turkey you can’t go to Greece, if you go to Greece you can’t go to Turkey. If he goes from an Arab country he can’t go to Israel. So you can obviously see that today’s political environment was not half as open as it was in these times. The Roman Empire made open borders and they made secure roads and the Romans did it with one thing, the force of military might. The Romans did not negotiate, the Romans simply destroyed their enemies and that’s how you get peace. Peace is never by negotiation; when you have a person intent upon your destruction, there’s only one solution. If you can’t talk him out of it destroy him. And that’s the way the Romans did it, and to make sure that they didn’t get any more enemies, the Romans had certain colonies they established. They sent surveying teams in with the early legion and they would survey the hills and they would look at the passes and they’d say let’s see, if we send caravans through that pass, highway men can get up on top of that ridge and come down and cut off our highways so therefore what we will do is establish a colony on the top of that ridge line. And so throughout the Roman Empire there’d be Roman colonies. From our New Testament you’re familiar with them; one of them was Philippi, and there were other Roman colonies, the Roman colony at Antioch of Pisidia which is mentioned here in Acts 13. Everywhere the Romans went there would be Roman colonies, major metropolitan areas that would influence the countryside around them and hold it.

So, guess where the first apostolic missionaries went? Did they go into the farms? Never; they went to all the Roman colonies; they went and they piggy-backed Christianity on top of the Roman administrative system. The Romans made right decisions by these colonies that secured points and the Christians just came along after them and said okay, we’ll evangelize this colony, this colony, this colony, this colony, we will not evangelize the countryside. Paul never did that; he evangelized here, here, here, here and then the Christians in the cities would move out and evangelize the countryside. Totally different strategy than modern mission organizations where we get guys locked down to one field, that’s all they do, specialize in one field; that’s not what they did here; they were flexible, they were maneuverable, they had a flexibility in their response to a spiritual situation that we do not have.

Now the other element, the Jewish element, specifically mentioned here in verse 5, everywhere there were Roman colonies there was a lot of urban activity and business, so there’d be a Jewish ghetto here, there’s be a Jewish ghetto in this colony, a Jewish ghetto in another colony, and so on. There will always be a Jewish ghetto. Now Paul made use of this for the following reasons. If you were called by God to go out and evangelize country X, Y, Z, in the middle of Africa, what would you face as a problem, immediately. You might know all of the doctrines of Scripture, you might have great Christian maturity but you’d have a major stumbling block. First of all, you don’t know their language, you don’t know their customs, there are certain things you ought to do, certain things you ought not to do, or you’re going to just foul up the image of Christianity. So how are you going to do it? How are you going to crisscross from one culture to the next one? There’s no way you can do it without very extensive preparation, and so today missionaries spend sometimes years preparing to cross cultural barriers, and even then they’re not really successful.

So how did Paul do it? He didn’t have a summer institute of linguistics like Wycliffe has. He didn’t have years of anthropological and sociological studies as are available today, but he had something else and he made use of it to the maximum. He had a fifth column in every one of these areas, fellow Jews. He made use of the dispersed Jewish population; that was his vehicle for crossing the culture and so we have the Cypriot Jews out here on Cyprus, or over here we might have the Alexandrian Jews in Egypt. Now consider what advantage this is for Paul; he comes into an area, the Jews know Hebrew, the Jews know the Torah, the Jews know the Nabiim, the Prophets, they know they Kethubim, the Writings, they know all these things, so Paul has common ground with them in the area of communication. He can communicate to the Cypriot Jews, he can communicate to the Alexandrian Jews; these are vehicles of communication. But, something else interesting, at the same time that these Cypriot Jews are Jews, they are also Cypriots and they know Cyprus like the back of their hand; they know the customs of the land like the back of their hand, they know the language of the people, and so now Paul has the bridge that he needs to communicate the gospel into this foreign culture. He does it by means of the Jewish ghettos and thus everywhere you see the book of Acts the first place he hits is the local Jewish synagogue.

Now this is a system of very rapid evangelism. By the way, I know of no evangelistic mission today following this procedure, interestingly enough, and it could still be followed. But in the tribulation there will be 144,000 Jewish evangelists and in the tribulation they are going to make use of the same missionary dynamic that Paul made use of; again in those days, those horrible days just before the return of Christ, when the world is in geophysical upheaval, economic and politic upheaval, the world will be evangelized several times. You say well look, it’s taken us 1900 years to evangelize the world once, how’s it going to be done two and three times in the middle of a seven year period? It’s very simple; they’re going to go back to the missionary strategy of Paul and they’re going to go from Jewish ghetto to Jewish ghetto to Jewish ghetto and then from there fan out into each country, always to the Jew first, and use that as a cross cultural channel.

So this is what we read in verse 5, “And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God,” the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the Levant, here’s Turkey, here’s the island of Cyprus. They crossed from Antioch to the eastern side of the island at the major metropolitan area of Salamis. In verse 6 they crossed the Paphos which is the major metropolitan area on the west side of the island; from there they’re going to cross up into Asia Minor. Notice they hit the major areas, the port cities; they don’t spend time in between, they haven’t got time to do that; that’s the job of later Christians, more ways that fan out from these sections. So verse 5, “they kept on preaching the Word of God in the synagogues” plural, there were several of them, that’s why it took some time in the city of Salamis. Then the little cryptic remark at the end of verse 5 is to prepare us for something that is coming up, that John Mark was with them, [“and they had also John to their minister”] that John is not John the apostle, it is John Mark, the author of the second Gospel.

In Acts 13:6, “And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer,” now this little incident about Sergius Paulus is an incident typical of Luke. Remember back in the days when I started the book of Acts, as we’ve gone through it chapter by chapter, we said at the very beginning that one of the things you want to look for in Luke is that he is writing for a Roman audience. Luke’s writing for the whole church but he’s writing in particular for a Roman audience. Some scholars even believe that the book of Acts is the court proof to defend the apostle Paul in his trial. That’s why, incidentally, the book of Acts was never finished; the last sentence in the book of Acts stops and for some reason Luke never finished the book, it does not come to a conclusion. So the book of Acts was written to show in particular that Christianity was not hostile to Roman authority, that everywhere Christianity went it’s okay, Christianity, therefore, Luke would argue, deserves official Roman recognition like Judaism. And so his argument was to show Christianity in a helpful light, not a harmful light. And thus, this little incident about a Roman bureaucrat and governing official, to show that when Christianity came into his area it did not harm but it helped.

Now the particular man, it says in verse 7, his name was Sergius Paulus. Now about 100 years ago the liberal critics of the Scripture began to have a heyday with practically every book of the Bible. I often say that one of the liberal axioms of scholarship is that any one could have written the book except the one the book says wrote it. So anyone could have written the Gospel of John except John, he couldn’t have done it, we know that for sure. We don’t know who else did but we know that for sure. And so it was with the book of Acts; they discredited Acts and said Acts was all screwed up in its history, there’s false fact and one of the places is verse 7, they said there was no such thing as a deputy on the island of Cyprus, it has a proconsul, you don’t have proconsuls on the island of Cyprus in the 40s and early 50s AD. Luke made a historical boo-boo.

And so this was the pitch, until, that is, another man by the name of Dr. William Ramsey came out. Ramsey was interested in the historic basis of the New Testament book of Acts. So Ramsey, not content to stay in the classroom and pontificate from behind the professors desk, unacquainted with the field data, went to the field and he began to investigate site after site after site and he discovered a remarkable thing; hey, Luke was right after all, I’ve found inscription after inscription after inscription that says exactly what Luke said all along, and in particular in verse 7 when it says “the deputy of the country” around this area of Paphos, was at this time in the late 40s called Sergius Paulus. Ramsey found some inscriptions and here’s what Dr. A. T. Robertson says about those inscriptions:

“There were two inscriptions that have been found with the date, 51 AD and another one 52 AD with the names of the proconsuls of Cyprus, and one is an inscription found at [can’t understand word] with the name of Paulus as proconsul.” So isn’t that strange that Luke did finally know what he was talking about. And it took Dr. Ramsey digging around in the archeological liter to find data to substantiate Luke’s claim, but we can approach Luke as an accurate historian, that when he says there was a Sergius Paulus there, there was; we now know the man from other sources, he was a real historic Roman ruler. He was a member of the governmental establishment; it says here he was “a prudent man,” it means he was skillful, a respectful man.

But Christianity insist that the powers of darkness rule this world. It insists that the powers of darkness even influence certain government officials. One doesn’t have to be a history student to remember back in the days, in fact if you’ve seen the film, Nicolas and Alexandria, you know back in the Romanoff era and the days of the Czars, who was the famous boogey man that controlled Russia? The monk Rasputin. And the average Russian peasant sometimes wondered whether the Czar was in charge or Rasputin was in charge. And so there’s been this history down through the years of the government official here, but in behind his cloak hiding on the left or right side of his chair would be this unnamed individual, or named one, who has this mysterious influence, like Rasputin, over the elected or the sovereign government official. This always happens, it’s happening in our own time and our own generation. So it was no different with Paulus.

But Paulus was “a prudent man;” and it’s said in verse 7 that although he “was with the deputy,” the word “was” there is in the imperfect, it was customary, he had a very close relationship with this exorcist. But nevertheless, having heard the Word he “called for Barnabas and Saul,” the word “called” there means he called them into the palace for an official presentation of the gospel to him and probably his advisors in government. Can you imagine this happening today? Can you imagine men of the stature of, say Dr. Frances Schaeffer or someone like this, being asked in to the White House of the Governor’s capital to give an address on Christianity and culture, to the government officials. This is what it was in this verse, Saul and Barnabas.

But then it says in verse 8 they had a problem; “Elymas the sorcerer (for so is his name by interpretation) kept on withstanding,” constantly “withstanding them,” and from what Paul says in verse 10 we can infer certain tactics that this man used. First of all the man, like most of these men, was a yellowbelly. He was a coward, he would never openly debate Paul and Barnabas, face to face and man to man. He was a chicken who always used to wait until after Paul left, then very deceitfully he’d creep back and very deceitfully he’d creep back and he’d begin to say Mr. Paulus, you really don’t want to go with this Barnabas/Paul character because you know, after all, they say that God is sovereign over history; now we can’t have, that would infer providence. It would mean that we’re not in charge, don’t you want to be in charge, don’t you want to have magic powers so that autonomous man might be the final say of all history & so on & so on & so on.

So every time Paul and Barnabas would go out to teach this man would go to un-teach, but he was always sneaky and deceitful, he’d never come out into the open and carry on a rational discussion. And this is why we have in the last part of verse 8 the statement, “seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith.” And when it says “the faith” it refers not to the act of believing but to the content; the content of faith. The emphasis throughout this passage is on content, not a quick pitch to become a Christian—hold up your hand to become a Christian, sign a card, trot down the aisle while we sing 40 stanzas of Just As I Am to make sure everybody has a chance, and a few of the other gimmicks that are used to work up people to a froth. We must stress content, content, content, because our generation hates content; our generation is dominated with TV and TV is just a medium that’s very hard to work with if you want to work with content. TV emphasizes the impact emotionally of the viewer but it doesn’t emphasize the content of the message. And so an entire generation is for TV and against reading. And it’s only in reading and discussion that content is stressed. So Paul emphasizes the content.

Saul, in Acts 13:9-10 now begins to be called Paul. Some people think that Saul was his non-Christian name and Paul was his Christian name. Not so. Saul was his Jewish name and Paul was his Roman name; he probably also had a Greek name somewhere along the line. So the point is that men in those days had several names; Luke now calls Paul, Paul, because he’s looking at Paul functioning as a Roman citizen throughout the length and the breadth and the height and depth of the Roman Empire. It’s not Saul wandering around the dusty cities of Jewish Palestine any longer; it is Paul out into the world. So now he’s called this, and this is the first time and from this point on every time he’ll be called Paul. “[Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,)] filled with the Holy Spirit, set his eyes on him,” the reason for the setting of the eyes is apparently because this man is demonic. Don’t read too much into The Exorcist and The Omen and a few other things, but it is true that demonically afflicted people can usually be identified by their eye and particularly by the pupil of the eye. This is one of the giveaways; and classical Christian missionaries will tell you the same thing; you see a person demon possessed in the field you can always spot it by the eye. The reason is very sound, it’s because the eye is the only place in the body where your nerves are directly exposed and since we have the evil spirit influencing the central nervous system, obviously the eye is the place where this is going to most show. So the eyes are the place. And so when Paul looks at him he looks with his eyes into the eyes, man to man, of this man he pronounces an imprecatory curse upon him.

Now this is a concept that many, many Christians dislike; in fact, it’s a no-no to even talk about it in some circles, but there is an imprecatory element in Scripture. Do you know what that means? It means really damning someone. Now this isn’t saying just “damn you.” This means “damn you in the name of Christ.” That is an imprecatory curse and it was a literal cursing of anyone who tampered with the text of Scripture. Anyone who began to manipulate and twist the content of revealed truth was asking for damnation. To show you this and show you that the Bible itself is protected by an imprecatory curse, turn to the last book of the Bible, the last chapter, and the last few verses of the last chapter. You’ll see that your Bible that you hold in your hand is protected by a curse; a curse leveled against anyone who would tamper with that Bible and it is a curse given through the Holy Spirit to protect the canon.

Revelation 22:18-19, this is an imprecatory curse, “For I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; [19] And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” Very clearly that is an imprecatory curse leveled against any member of the human race that would tamper with the text and canon of sacred Scripture. That is how God protects truth; you say isn’t that mean of God to do that? After all, going around cursing people; not at all, it’s because God loves you and He loves me and He loves the entire human race, that He pronounces His curse. That’s the only way He can protect us from falsehood; it’s His system of keeping the umbilical cord of grace unsevered, to keep the life pumping in our direction. Anybody that tampers with the umbilical cord of the Word of God is to be cursed; it’s divine protection upon your source of life because God loves you.

Now this curse that we see in Acts 13, it’s the same kind of thing. Verse 8 has prepared us for this kind of a curse because this man has deliberately obstructed another member of the human race from hearing the gospel, and cursed be the man who does this. In Acts 12 you saw Herod Agrippa cursed and killed by God for standing in the way of the Word. Now you say, we’ll that doesn’t operate today. Really, has it ever dawned upon you that one of the most powerful governments and one of the most rich governments in natural resources is a government that to this day, at this hour, is putting evangelical Christians to death by the droves—Soviet Russia. And has it ever occurred to you that with all the land of the Ukraine and all the resources of their minerals Soviet Russia cannot feed her people. Corollary? I believe it is because around the face of the earth particularly you have Christians praying damnation against the Soviets until they release our brethren from the jails. The United States Congress has recently passed a resolution [can’t understand phrase] against the Soviet Union for their persecution of evangelical Christians. And so damn them until they let our brethren go; let there be plagues and famine upon them until they learn that you do not tamper with the Church of God. As Jesus said, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church.” And so we enforce that promise by the imprecatory cursings.

And thus in verse 10, when Paul says, you, “O full of subtlety,” that’s the word deceit, that means sneakiness, it means that the man didn’t directly confront them, he went around his back. And he said “and all mischief,” it means he’s a slick operator, same kind of word, same kind of politician, “oh you child of the devil,” or son of diabalos,” literally in the Greek, “you enemy of all righteousness,” now that wasn’t nice, Dale Carnegie wouldn’t tell you to start off meeting someone with this kind of an introduction, but that’s the way Paul did it because Paul didn’t operate on the humanistic principles of Dale Carnegie; he operated on Biblical principles of righteousness. And when there was unrighteousness he’d label it as unrighteousness. You’re doing someone a favor to do this. “… wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?” It’s a quotation from Proverbs, “the right ways” are the truths of Scripture and that tells us why Paul cursed this man; cursed him because he opposed the Word.

Now in Acts 13:11 the man is given a physical coat of armor, so to speak, a sort of billboard, a sign. So everywhere this advisor to Paulus goes he may be seen for what he really is; he’s made blind. Now wouldn’t that be interesting; suppose a man of the stature of, say Mr. Henry Kissinger, was suddenly rendered blind because he would be in a situation like this, say. And wouldn’t it be a spectacle to have a key advisor to the President of the United States, a man who is supposed to perceive issues, being led around as a blind man. Do you see the sarcasm here; that’s what the Holy Spirit is using, sarcasm to ridicule the opponents of the gospel, look at this man whose the supposed autonomous authority; he’s blind, you have to help him see the door and he’s supposed to be the advisor that gives deep insight into the problems of the day and the man can’t even put his hand on the doorknob. So the irony of God’s judgment.

Now in verse 12 the result, “Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed,” but not because of the miracle, notice; the miracle happened but the reason he believed was “being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.” The emphasis again on the content of what was taught. It wasn’t the experience. Paul didn’t say now Paulus, all you have to do is raise your hand and you become a Christian. That may be fine under certain circumstances, that’s not absolutely wrong; we’re not saying that, but we’re saying in this place the emphasis wasn’t on the act of believing, it was on the communication of content and the man just believed while it was going on. A person can become a Christian driving a car down the street; a person can become a Christian in an airplane at 40,000 feet; a person can become a Christian in a mine a thousand feet below the surface of the earth; it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing. You can be in many, many different activities and become a Christian and most people, incidentally, throughout church history have not become Christians by being in a local church. Most people, including myself, were led to Christ, completely outside of a church, we couldn’t stand going inside a church, couldn’t stand the minister, couldn’t stand some of the Christians and so I wouldn’t be caught dead inside a local church. We became Christians outside and this is the way Paulus was; he wasn’t invited to the local evangelistic meeting at the first XYZ Church in Paphos. Paul went in to where he was in his business office and led him to Christ where he was, and then later on this man would identify himself with the local Christians.

Now verse 12 ends the sweep through Cyprus. Verse 14 begins the second sweep which will now go through southern Asia Minor. Next week we’ll deal with the second sweep in verse 14, but between verses 14 and the first sweep lies verse 13. So we can’t conclude without emphasizing the point of verse 13. Verse 13 gives us another great portrait of real men with dirt under their fingernails, of real men with sin natures and how they operated in the first century of the Church. These men ere not any different than we are; these men were the same, made of the same stuff, and they got in an argument and verse 13 gives us the argument. “Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia; and John,” that’s John Mark, “departing from them, returned to Jerusalem.”

Now if this is your first time to read this passage that doesn’t sound like anything, it just sounds like something happened until you turn the page to Acts 15:36 and you see it wasn’t a small thing at all. In Acts 15:36 we have Paul meeting with Barnabas again; this is a year or so later. “And after some days, Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the Word of God, and see how they do. [37] And Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose surname was Mark. [38] But Paul thought it not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work. [39] And the contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder one from the other; and so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed to Cyprus; [40 And Paul chose Silas, and departed, being recommended by the brethren unto the grace of God. [41] And he went through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches.”

There was an apostolic argument, and notice in the Holy Spirit context the Holy Spirit does not arbitrate and say Paul was right or Barnabas was right; you can guess later on but right here no one umpires this. And here you have a magnificent portrait of the early Church in which apostles who write inerrant Scripture can decide and argue between themselves. And this is a classic case of Christian disagreement and at that point watch how the Holy Spirit uses it; this is the first church split in history and it was used by God. You know the saying, divide and multiply, well often times the Holy Spirit has to use this in church splits. And so we’ve got two missions out of one.

Now here is Paul and here’s Barnabas. Now using what we already know about the background of these men, let’s try to reconstruct the fight they had. That’s what verse 39 is saying, by the way, that’s a fight, that’s not just gentlemen shaking hands and so on, they had a real donnybrook going between them over John Mark. Now why? All right, John Mark is whose cousin? Barnabas’. So does it strike you that in verse 39 who does Barnabas stick up for and who does he wind up with? His own cousin. So quite obviously there’s a family tie and you can almost hear Barnabas saying well, Paul, I know John Mark, so he dropped the ball once up there in Perga, but he won’t do it again, give the kid a break. And Paul is a very intense kind of person, it took him about ten years to cool off in this argument. Later on when he writes Romans he commends Mark, but it took him many years before he cooled off about this little episode, and he said no, John Mark is not my cousin, I have no family ties with the little brat, and so if he dropped the ball up there and screwed us up while we were in Pamphylia I’m not going to have him and I’m not going to risk having the little kid along with me again. So that was Paul’s position. Notice too in verse 39 and 40 where they go after the argument; where does Barnabas go? His home ground of Cyprus. Where does Paul go? Up northward in Syria, his home ground. So notice the natural factors; if you see these natural factors it will make these men much more human to you.

But there’s more to this; what did happen at that fateful time when John Mark quit, because that’s what the text says, he quit. The men had finished their sweep through Cyprus, again a map. They went over here, along this area is highland, and a place called Antioch. That place is 3,600 feet high; there’s a long narrow pass to get up to Antioch at Pisidia, and Paul and Barnabas had to move up into that pass. They were threatened with highwaymen and all sorts of people up along that pass, but even more, Dr. Ramsey when he began to travel along the routes of the apostles discovered something right here along the beach where they landed, malaria swamp, and so has come the scholarly speculation of what Paul’s thorn in the flesh was, that Paul may at this point have contracted malaria and he later on had periodic attacks of malarial fever. With malarial fever, one of its characteristics in some people is a splitting headache, just like a migraine headache, just an awful thing to have. And it’s interesting that the word that Hippocrates uses is the medical term for headache is used later on to describe Paul’s illness. And so periodically Paul may have had this recurrence from malarial fever.

Now in Galatians 4 there’s a notice about this little episode. We think that this probably was the situation, we can’t be dogmatic but I give you the background to help you in your imagination, in your head, when you think of the text and try to visualize the picture of this in your mind, you think of these men struggling with the same kind of things that you struggle with. In Galatians 4:13-14 Paul describes his entrance into Galatia. Now that’s the same area he’s going into in Acts 13, so if other things are assumed we can say that verses 13-14 refer to Acts 13. “You know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first.” So something happened to Paul in his body by the time he began to preach the Word of God in Galatia. He says, “And my temptation [trial] which was in my flesh, ye despised not,” and whatever this sickness was it must have been something that was despicable in the ordinary public eye and this was humiliating for Paul, apostle of the God-man who rules the universe and he sends this guy in to tells us?

That’s not quite the PR approach to use if Christ had thought in our terms of PR because the extra-Biblical forces we have to describe Paul describe him as short, stooped, bald, squeaky speech and a long beard. Now isn’t that a real impressive spokesman for the Christian faith. And yet on top of all that the man was periodically violently sick to the point of being despicable in people’s eyes. It shows you, by the way, about this business about healing, that everybody should be healed, isn’t it strange the apostle Paul was never healed. Isn’t it doubly strange that he had his own private physician with him, Dr. Luke, at all times. So obviously Paul’s healing ministry was quite limited, but he would suffer. The man is pictured as going into this malaria infested swamp, if that’s what he picked up, whatever it was, something happened, he came up, he climbed and hiked with Barnabas up dangerous roads, 3,600 feet up to Antioch. Somewhere along here John Mark peeled out. He’d had enough, and in Acts 13 it tells you where John went; he went back to Jerusalem, not back to Antioch. Guess who was in Jerusalem? Momma! Remember where his mother’s house was? Jerusalem; so John went home to momma and Paul did not like men who quit and go home to momma. And for that reason Paul would not let John Mark on another mission.

To see Paul’s attitude toward these adverse circumstances, let’s conclude by turning to Romans 8. As we get more biography on Paul it’ll be easier to understand some of his epistles. Before we’ve read his epistles but we haven’t been filled in what the man personally suffered. Paul suffered a great deal. He says in Romans 8:35, and keep in mind, here’s Paul, the man who believes in providence. We started off saying all these early Christians believed in providence, the guidance of God’s hand through the environment, but one little warning; John Mark apparently believed in providence too, but when the circumstances, that is providence, when the circumstances got too bad, John Mark chickened out. In other words, John Mark believed only in circumstances; he was guided only by the open door principle and when it was hard to open the door, well, God must have shut the door in my face, I’ll go home to momma, and that was how he ascertained God’s will. Not Paul, he’d go through the door; he might get two broken ribs going through but he’d go through the door because God said that this is what he should do. And his attitude toward circumstances is given in this passage in verse 35. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? [36] As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Paul’s identification with Christ in a fallen universe dominated by Satan meant that he would become the receiver of the attacks of satanic opposition. That’s why you can’t be guided entirely by providence, entirely by circumstances because in the final analysis if you walk out of here and something happens to you, some adversity, you can’t tell without Scripture and without prayer, you can’t tell whether that’s from Satan or from God. This is why circumstances cannot be the sole system of guidance; they are one great part of divine guidance.

Romans 8:37, the confidence, unlike the makers of The Omen and The Exorcist and Exorcist II or whatever it’s called, unlike those men Paul did not believe that Satan and Jesus were equal and opposite reaction. Rather he believed that Christ was over Satan; it wasn’t dualism, it was God as sovereign in Christ and Satan down here. All those movies give you the idea that Satan has the last word; that’s not true. Verse 37, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” Now look at the list in verse 38 and think of what I just said about hitting the coast of Pamphylia, with all the adversities and the malarial swamp, with the long agonizing climb 3,600 feet up through passes, subject to attacks, robberies and perils, and John Mark had seen so much of this that he ran home to Momma; this is what Paul says, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, [39] Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” Paul had that kind of superior attitude toward his circumstances. That is the basis of his divine guidance, he was led by the Spirit.

Shall we stand and sing….