1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
On Cyprus
4 The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. 5 When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper.
6 They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, 7 who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. 8 But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. 9 Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, 10 “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? 11 Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.”
Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. 12 When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.
Dig Deeper
The other day I was reading a book about biblical teaching. In that book, the author recounted a small story about an biblical teacher that he had met many years before. This influential teacher was observing with a tinge of disappointment and complaint in his voice that everywhere the apostle Paul went they started riots but everywhere he went, they served him tea. This man was wondering what the difference was and why he was politely served tea everywhere he went. The author of the book of that I was reading wondered the same thing without coming to much more of a conclusion than the idea that perhaps the content of Paul’s teaching was a bit more biting than what most biblical teachers would stomach today.
The author was on the right track. Why did they riot wherever Saul went and most biblical teachers, preachers, and Christians are treated as respectable members of their societies? The answer to that probably lies in the word “confront.” We might like to think that once the Messiah had arrived that the world quickly turned to the freeing beauty of the truth of the gospel and that the early church peacefully grew as a force of good and transformation in the world, but anyone who has spent more than ten seconds studying the Bible or early church history knows that that was not the case. The Messiah came into enemy territory to free those who were enslaved to the god of this age and the tyranny of doing their own will and living for themselves. But like an earthly kingdom, this kingdom will not go down without a bitter fight. The true gospel is unlikely to spread without confrontation with evil and the systems of the world. That’s just a reality that Paul and the early Christians understood. Saul didn’t try to make nice with the culture around him. He confronted it. He declared the subversive message of the gospel wherever he went. And make no mistake, the true gospel is deeply subversive because it challenges those in power and positions of authority. Not because it is a political movement that seeks to overthrow kingdoms but because it calls people to live by completely different values. That in itself becomes frightening and threatening to those who find the very source of their authority in the state of people living for themselves. The gospel calls people to lay down that life and those values and live an entirely different sort of life, one that gives allegiance to King Jesus and that is deeply committed to living with the best interests of others and the kingdom of God first. That will cause confrontation, guaranteed.
Wherever Saul went, confrontation was soon to follow. Saul took on the institutions that were opposed to God’s will and declared the kingship of Jesus the Messiah to a world that was not so eager to hear about it. Whether it was preaching the gospel in synagogues in each town or directly confronting pagan powers in a Gentile town, Paul knew that confrontation would be one of the primary vehicles through which the gospel was spread.
But none of this was blind confrontation. Saul and the other Christians weren’t just walking around looking for a fight. These were people that had been commissioned and gifted by God for specific roles and purposes and sent by the Holy Spirit to specific places. Luke describes Antioch as a mature church that had prophets and teachers and an entire church that was attending to the will of the Holy Spirit. They were engaged in regular worship and fasting and were humbly seeking guidance from the Lord. While they were doing that, Luke says that the Holy Spirit called for them to set apart Barnabas and Saul for a specific role. We aren’t told exactly what Luke meant by saying that the Spirit told them this, but he doesn’t give any indication that this was any sort of audible voice. More likely is that as the group was praying and fasting, the Spirit put a strong sense of resolve in the hearts of all of those present that Saul and Barnabas had been set apart for this job. It is typically through the gentle moving of the hearts of those that are deeply committed to finding God’s will that the Spirit “speaks,” and this was probably the case here. It does speak volumes about the church in Antioch, though, that they were so immediately willing to send out two of their most important leaders at the urging of the Spirit. The mission, after all, was God’s. The mission was to spread the gospel to the world, not build up the church in Antioch to ever-increasing strength and prominence. So after feeling that the Spirit had spoken to them and requested Saul and Barnabas, they prayed and fasted some more and then sent them out.
As they arrived in Salamis, they followed Saul’s usual custom of preaching first in the synagogue, before spreading out to the rest of the island. As the pair went around Cyprus preaching, they immediately found the confrontation that characterized the early preaching of the gospel. Before we consider that, however, it is important to note two small details that Luke slips into this section. The first is that John Mark had joined them in their work. That’s a detail that seems incidental here but will become important later. The other detail is that Luke tells us Saul was also called Paul. In fact, Luke uses the name Paul from here on out and so will we. Roman citizens typically had three names. Paul would have been his third name or what is called the “cognomen,” but we are never told his first two names. Saul was his Jewish name, a moniker that he would have proudly used as the name of Israel’s first king, but a name that would not have been helpful in a primarily Gentile setting (in fact some have asserted that the Latin form of “Saul” meant something like “effeminate”). Paul was adapting himself to the situations that the Holy Spirit led him into.
In Paphos, Paul and Barnabas came upon two men in particular. One was the local Jewish sorcerer and man of influence, who was known as Bar-Jesus (Jesus was a very common first-century name). Sorcery was outlawed in the Jewish religion but that didn’t stop many such men from plying their craft and influence nonetheless. The other man was the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. He had evidently already come under the influence of Bar-Jesus but was someone that Luke described as being intelligent, no doubt in part because he was willing to listen to the gospel.
Sergius Paulus wanted to hear Paul speak the word of God as he had surely heard much already of the power of the gospel, but Bar-Jesus immediately understood the threat. If Sergius Paulus were to listen to the word of God and become part of the Christian family it would destroy the influence that he had built up with the proconsul. Surely he tried to convince the proconsul that this man Paul was preaching nonsense. Perhaps he made the argument that the believers were dangerous or that they were a cult (to put it into today’s terminology). Surely Bar-Jesus said whatever he needed to say to convince Sergius Paulus that this man, Paul, was not worth listening to.
Bar-Jesus was filled with his own selfish ambition, but Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit. He understood that the gospel was not going to be spread by being nice. The gospel demands that the truth be boldly declared. There is no mincing or softening to be found in Paul’s words because he understood that Bar-Jesus was not a lost seeker but was one who had made his decision was not only an opponent of the gospel but was actively seeking to keep others from the truth. There was no room for compromise or niceties. So Paul declared him to be full of the devil, an enemy of what is right, a deceiver and one who perverted the ways of the Lord. God’s judgment had come upon him. In fact, his fierce opposition to God’s will was not even the cause of God’s judgment but a sign of it, just as in Romans 1, when Paul declares that the sin of nations is a sign that God had judged them and turned them over to their own sinful desires. The blindness that struck Bar-Jesus was simply a physical reality of the spiritual blindness that he had already been turned over to. The blindness would serve as a physical and tangible example to the proconsul and others of BarJesus’ true spiritual condition.
The proconsul immediately understood the point as well as the power of the gospel and believed. Despite all of his sorcery and claims, Bar-Jesus had never shown any power like this and his spiritual blindness had been exposed. Once again Jesus Christ had been shown to be the true King with the true power. Sergius Paulus was convinced by the combination of hearing the word of God and seeing the power of that word in action. The gospel doesn’t always require miracles like the one that took place here, but it is something designed to be put into action. When the truth of the word is combined with people seeing the word in action, it becomes a powerful evangelistic combination.
Devotional Thought
As Christians we are never called to create confrontation for confrontation’s sake but we are also called to preach the word of God wherever we find ourselves and not shrink back. How about you? Are willing to face the confrontation that truly sharing the gospel with others will inevitably bring or do you soften it up a bit so that you won’t have to deal with confrontation?
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