A Satanic Distraction

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:01
I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 13.
00:10
Make your way to verse 4.
00:17
Acts chapter 13 and verse 4 and we'll be standing to read that in just a moment.
00:32
The devil is in the business of creating distractions.
00:40
That's an interesting phrase to use because it seems as if today people don't even believe there is a devil.
00:46
They don't believe that Satan is at work in the world and they certainly don't believe that he has any influence over what's going on in their lives.
00:55
So it's sort of a bold way to start.
00:57
Say the devil is in the business of making distractions.
01:01
That's making a lot of assumptions right away.
01:03
We believe in the devil.
01:05
We believe that he's a real person, that he's a powerful person, that he is in fact a fallen angelic being and that he's at work in the world.
01:17
He is powerful but he is not omniscient.
01:21
Satan does not know all things.
01:24
As such, Satan does not know, in my opinion, the identity of God's elect, not perfectly as God does.
01:32
So he makes it his business to place distractions in the way of anyone who might come under the hearing of God's word.
01:42
I remember years ago we were having a fall carnival here at the church and the devil showed up.
01:49
Actually two of them did.
01:51
It was two young ladies dressed as devils came to our fall festival and during the event these two young ladies were dressed in such a way as to call attention to themselves.
02:04
And so I made my way to them, not of course, you know, barring them from the proceedings but wanting to have a conversation.
02:10
I approached them and I began to conversate with them about the gospel.
02:16
One of the girls who was there, it was again two young ladies, probably 15 years old, one of the girls seemed to have a heart that was softening to what I was saying but her partner the more devilish devil would continue to throw out distractions.
02:35
Every time I would say something that would seem to pierce the heart of the one girl, the other girl would have 15 questions that she would ask that were really highly irrelevant questions, things that didn't make hide nor hair of the truth.
02:48
But yet she wanted to be the distractor so that she would not lose this friend that was beginning to hear the gospel likely for the first time and to be influenced by it.
03:00
So she would, well how do you know the Bible is, you know, how do we know we have what it was written, you know, in the original language? I said, do you want me to go in and grab my Greek New Testament and come read it to you? Would that make you happy? Because that's not your problem.
03:11
But you think it's your problem because you've been watching the History Channel and other things, you've been convinced of these things but you were wrong.
03:18
But that was just a constant drum beating in her ear, the young girl who was hearing me and the young girl who was being an agent of the devil to be a voice to quiet my words as much as possible.
03:33
Ultimately, at the end of the night, you had one girl who was very confused and distracted and one very satisfied devil.
03:44
I'm reminded of the parable of the sower that Jesus tells us.
03:48
He says that a sower went out to sow his seed and it was sown on different soils.
03:52
But the first soil, if you'll remember, was the pathway.
03:56
And this represents those, Jesus would go on to tell us, who have heard the word.
04:00
But that the devil immediately comes and does what? Snatches it away.
04:09
That's what this girl was to the other girl.
04:11
She was the distraction.
04:12
She was the bird that came and snatched away the seed.
04:18
And anyone who's ever engaged in evangelism for any length of time has already experienced this.
04:23
You could probably all come and bear testimony to having seen the very same thing.
04:28
Hecklers scream when a man preaches the word in the open air.
04:31
They play loud music.
04:33
They spit.
04:34
They curse.
04:35
They throw items like tomatoes and eggs.
04:37
Anything that they can get their hands on.
04:40
I remember a video of an open air preacher at a college who was standing, you know, two foot above everyone else on one of the little ledges there, you know, the little gardening ledges.
04:49
He was standing up and he was simply reading the word of God and preaching the word of God in a very neutral voice.
04:53
He wasn't screaming or shouting or any of those things.
04:56
He was just simply reading the word of God and preaching.
04:58
And this other young man from the school came up and stood beside him and started doing all these things.
05:02
I don't know what they call them, twerking.
05:04
I don't know.
05:04
They were doing something to get the attention off of the man of God.
05:10
He was dancing.
05:11
He was shouting.
05:12
He was doing everything he could to be a distraction to the people so that the person who was preaching the word of God would be drowned out.
05:22
I bet you've never seen anything like that, have you Mike? Mike does open air preaching.
05:27
Never at all, right? Actually, we remember we went to preach at the Jehovah Witness Conference while we were there.
05:33
The Jehovah Witnesses were going in.
05:34
There was a sea of people who were lost right in front of us.
05:39
So Mike preached.
05:40
While Mike was preaching, I was simply standing there, you know, to kind of give support to him and what he was doing.
05:47
And this lady came up and started shouting, why are you doing this? My mother is in that crowd.
05:55
She is a Jehovah's Witness.
05:59
And I said, I said, well, what are, what, what, what are you? Are you? What do you? Well, I'm a Baptist and I drove her here.
06:11
I didn't say shame on you.
06:12
Maybe I should have.
06:15
I said, dear, we love your mother.
06:20
We want to reach her with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
06:23
She is lost in a system of faith which will lead her to hell.
06:28
We care about your mother.
06:31
What are you doing to reach your mother? And she got really mad.
06:36
You know why she got mad? Because she was doing nothing to reach her mother.
06:42
In fact, she was driving her mother to the killing fields.
06:51
She was seeking to be a distraction to what we were doing.
06:54
And that's what the devil does.
06:56
So, in our text today, we're going to look at a man named Bar-Jesus.
07:01
Saul and Barnabas are preaching on their first missionary journey.
07:05
They've come to their first major distraction.
07:10
A man who was a false prophet.
07:15
Can we stand to give honor to God's Word as we read it? And we'll read verses 4 to 12, following up from our message last week, which was on the first three verses, where Paul and Barnabas are set apart for ministry by the Holy Spirit.
07:31
It says in verse 4, So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
07:39
And when they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.
07:43
And they had John to assist them.
07:46
When they had gone through the whole isle as far as Paphos, they came upon a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus.
07:58
He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God.
08:05
But Elimas, the magician, for that is the meaning of his name, opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.
08:13
But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? Now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.
08:40
Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.
08:46
Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.
08:58
Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
09:01
I pray that you would give me grace to preach your word correctly, that you would keep me from error, and that you would glorify yourself.
09:11
I pray that your Holy Spirit would be the teacher and open hearts of unbelievers to the true and living God and faith in Jesus Christ, and for the believers that you would draw them closer in their understanding and closer in their conformity to the image of Jesus Christ.
09:30
And it's in his name we pray, amen.
09:39
We're continuing today in our study of Acts, and as I've already mentioned, we've come to the first missionary journey of the Apostle Paul.
09:51
He and Barnabas were set apart by the Holy Spirit to be missionaries.
09:56
They departed from the church in Antioch, where they had been co-pastoring there for over a year.
10:02
And verses 4 and 5 tell us how their journey begins.
10:05
It says, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
10:11
Cyprus is a large island country in the Mediterranean Sea.
10:15
According to chapter 4 of Acts, this is the birthplace of Barnabas, so it's likely that he knew people there.
10:21
It's likely that it was sort of a homecoming for him, an opportunity for him to go back and speak to people who possibly he knew from youth and was able to share the gospel with them.
10:30
This is a perfect place for him to start their missionary journey.
10:35
They took with them, according to this passage, John Mark.
10:39
It doesn't say John Mark, but we know from the rest of the text and from history this is speaking of John Mark.
10:45
That would have been the same person who was credited as having written the second gospel.
10:51
He would later be a cause of division between Saul and Barnabas, a reason for them to divide in ministry.
10:58
But at this point, he's a valuable helper for the two missionaries.
11:02
There is no indication, and this is really just kind of bringing out something in the text, there's no indication that John Mark is preaching.
11:10
Certainly we imagine he was an evangelistic hearted man, but the idea here is that he's going as a servant to these two men who are preaching.
11:19
They're the ones sent by the Holy Spirit to do this task of ministry, and John is the one they have brought with them to be their servant.
11:27
It's interesting, in the Greek, it does not call him diakonos, which is deacon, but later translators did change the text to include the word deacon, so what we call textual variation.
11:39
There were later variants that changed this word.
11:43
The word here, hupertane, simply means a person who is under authority, a person who is a servant.
11:51
But later, we see an invitation of a change into the text to call him a deacon, because the idea is that's what he was doing.
12:00
He was going along serving them and being basically, I like what one translator said.
12:07
He said that basically he probably was doing the cooking and the cleaning, the stuff that servants do.
12:14
And often we think of ministries like that as being less important, but they really aren't.
12:18
Those things have to be done, and so they took this man with them to do what was needed to be done so that they could be about the business of praying and preaching the word of God.
12:31
So John Stott points out that there is an intentional and inevitable selectability in Luke's recounting of the history here.
12:38
Paul and Barnabas were not the only missionaries at this time in history, and that's important for us to think about.
12:44
Luke says nothing about the church's expansion to the east or to the south and about the missionary adventures of the other apostles, for example, Thomas, who according to Syrian orthodoxy began the Martama churches in Kerala, and he traveled from Syria to India.
12:59
These are things we don't often think about, but these are all happening at the same time.
13:03
By the time of the second and third centuries, we have the Bible translated into Syrian, into Coptic, which is Egyptian language.
13:13
We see this expansion going out.
13:15
Why then do we focus so much on Saul and Barnabas? Because Saul, and it's in this story where he begins to adopt the name Paul, and that's simply his Roman name, and we see him becoming instrumental not just in the missionary endeavor of the church, but in the inscripturation of God's word.
13:38
The New Testament, the majority of the books of the New Testament are penned by the apostle Paul.
13:44
So this becomes at this point somewhat of an apologetic for the work of the apostle Paul.
13:51
It's defending the fact that this is a man who is being used of God to bring the gospel into the world like there were other missionaries, but his missionary endeavors had a specific purpose and that was to show us that this man would not only bring missionary work into the world, but he would bring the inscripturated word of God into the world.
14:09
And by the time we get to the writings of Peter, Peter will look to Paul's writings and call them scripture.
14:17
Still in his lifetime, he'll look to what Paul wrote and he will call it scripture.
14:23
So there's a reason why history tells us about what happened with Thomas and other missionaries, but the scriptures tell us what happened with Paul because of his position in the church.
14:34
Now, let us begin at verse six, and we're going to give an exposition of this situation which is happening.
14:43
Verse six says, when they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they came upon a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus.
14:53
We'll stop there for a moment.
14:55
The term magician here does not mean one who performs illusions.
15:00
Those of you who came to the spaghetti dinner last night got to watch me do a few magic tricks because when I was in high school, I actually worked as a magician.
15:08
You remember that, Richard? I imagine Richard is a school friend of mine.
15:12
And back then I worked as a strolling magician.
15:14
So I know a little bit about what it takes to fool the eye.
15:19
Bar-Jesus was not one who simply sought to fool the eye.
15:23
He was one who sought to fool the heart.
15:25
And that is the difference.
15:27
This is the same type of a person as Simon Magnus in Acts chapter eight.
15:33
The term for magician is Magon, and it's referencing a person who uses the stars to divine wisdom.
15:41
You might think of today as like an astrologer.
15:45
The practice of astrology in the Old Covenant, under the Old Covenant, was a sin.
15:51
It was considered sorcery.
15:53
It was something.
15:54
And what's interesting about the text is it tells us he's a Jewish false prophet, which is telling us he would have been brought up likely under the Jewish authority.
16:04
He knows what he's doing is wrong.
16:06
He knows what he's doing is an abandonment of his own teaching and that which was taught to him as a young man.
16:12
And he's identified as a false prophet, pseudo prophetain, pseudo being one who is not real.
16:19
Think of a pseudonym, someone who uses a false name.
16:21
He's a false prophet.
16:24
And I think about Ezekiel 13, if you want to just make a note of this and go back and read it later, says Ezekiel's preaching.
16:30
He says, The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are prophesying and say to those who prophesy from their own hearts, hear the word of the Lord.
16:43
Thus says the Lord God, woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing.
16:51
Woe to the false prophet, bar Jesus is a man who is already under the condemnation of his own upbringing, his own traditional understanding of God and his word.
17:03
This man is a man who already stands condemned.
17:06
For he is called a Jewish false prophet, and the name that he bears is notable, bar Jesus means son of Joshua.
17:21
We talked about this on Wednesday night.
17:23
Yeshua is the name of Jesus.
17:25
Jesus would have never been called Jesus.
17:27
That's a Germanic change.
17:28
The hard J sound is not something that's used in Hebrew.
17:31
It's not even used in Greek.
17:33
It's Yesus in Greek because the hard J sound does not exist there either.
17:37
Hard J's come in German language.
17:40
So Jesus is not the way Jesus would have been known.
17:45
Neither would have been bar Jesus or bar Yeshua.
17:49
And what this means, Jesus, they may know the meaning of the name Jesus, the Lord saves.
17:56
Bar at the beginning means son of.
17:58
You remember Simon bar Jonah meant Simon son of Jonah.
18:03
Bar Jesus means son of the Lord who saves.
18:08
Or you could simply say in a simplified version, son of salvation.
18:14
Now this will come back into very important prominence when Peter, I'm sorry, when Paul calls him son of the devil.
18:21
It's actually a reference to his name.
18:23
You're called a son of salvation, the Lord who saves your father.
18:28
No, you are not of him.
18:30
Similar to when Jesus told the Pharisees who said we have Abraham as our father.
18:33
What did Jesus say to them? If Abraham was your father, you would believe in me.
18:37
But you are not of Abraham.
18:38
You are of your father, the devil.
18:42
So verse 7 tells us that this man, bar Jesus, was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God.
18:56
A proconsul was an authoritative position in the Roman government.
18:59
He was essentially the governor of the area.
19:02
And one might wonder why a man of such high esteem would associate with a man of character like bar Jesus.
19:10
People say now, this guy, it says he's an intelligent man.
19:14
I've often thought that's interesting that Luke, who is the writer of Acts, points out the fact that he's a smart guy.
19:20
He's an intelligent man.
19:21
And yet he's spending time, he has in his court of leaders, if you will, this man who is essentially a false prophet.
19:29
He is a sorcerer.
19:30
He is a con man.
19:33
And we might ask the question, well, why would such, why would he do that? But I want to remind you that he's not alone.
19:41
Go back through history and look at leaders, biblical leaders, who surrounded themselves with these men who they considered to be wise men.
19:51
Nebuchadnezzar had his wise men.
19:53
Pharaoh had his magicians.
19:55
They surrounded themselves with these people because they were a superstitious lot and they wanted to know from the stars and from nature and from whatever magic these people could conjure, they wanted to know that they had power and light and authority in their lives.
20:14
They wanted to have this confidence.
20:17
And that's not old.
20:18
That's something that still happens today.
20:19
Do you know that the Reagan administration, and I like Ronald Reagan.
20:23
Don't anybody shoot me, you know, with a Reagan arrow.
20:26
I like Ronald Reagan.
20:27
You know, Nancy Reagan.
20:28
How many of you know the name Joan Quigley? Joan Quigley was Ronald or Nancy Reagan's astrologer.
20:36
She met her on a television show.
20:38
After that, Reagan was shot.
20:41
And what did she do? She went to this astrologer for what purpose? I want to know if somebody is going to try to hurt my husband.
20:47
And I, hey, I understand the fear of losing a spouse.
20:51
I mean, yeah, he was a president, but he was still her husband, you know.
20:54
But the fear didn't drive her to trusting in Christ.
20:57
What did the fear drive her to? I got to have somebody that can give me some assurance.
21:01
Right now, I need some flesh and blood person to tell me this isn't going to happen again or provide safety or protection.
21:07
So Nancy Reagan goes and seeks out this astrologer.
21:11
So this isn't something that's just 2,000-year-old tradition.
21:14
This is something that has its way even today.
21:17
Think about how many people...
21:18
Remember that guy, John Edwards? I don't think he's still on TV.
21:21
How many people, that guy who would tell you...
21:23
What was it, crossing over with John Edwards? He'd come and ask you 45 questions.
21:28
He'd get five right, and you'd think he was a magician.
21:32
And he would tell you all about your lost loved one, the one who's crossed over.
21:34
But we want this.
21:36
People want this.
21:37
They need somebody to tell them.
21:39
Because they can't trust God's Word.
21:41
They can't put their faith in Jesus Christ.
21:43
They have to put their faith in something else.
21:45
And what I've always said, and I believe it to be true, when a man abandons the truth of the Word of God, he'll believe any foolish thing you tell him.
21:54
I remember when Richard Dawkins, the great bastion of wisdom in the secular community, ha ha, he said, sarcastically.
22:03
Richard Dawkins, when asked, do you believe that God created the world? No, I don't believe God created the world.
22:08
Where do you think we came from? We don't know.
22:10
It could have been aliens.
22:11
But if it was aliens, they came about through Darwinian evolution.
22:14
Because that's what we know as a fact.
22:15
It's got to be...
22:15
They have to have evolved somehow.
22:17
It can't be God.
22:18
It can be aliens.
22:20
It can be some type of magical crystals that grew out of a rock.
22:24
But it can't be God.
22:27
It just can't be, because I won't allow it.
22:31
When a man abandons his faith in God, he'll believe any absurd thing.
22:38
So we see that's what has happened here with the proconsul.
22:42
He's believing simply what he thinks is right.
22:45
I need this magician in my court to tell me whether to go or stay, whether to turn left or right.
22:53
So verse 8 tells us, but Elimas the magician, and by the way, that can be kind of confusing, that is bar Jesus.
23:01
It's simply a title.
23:03
Elimas is a title.
23:04
It's not talking about a different person here.
23:08
Elimas simply is an Arabic word for skillful or expert.
23:11
That was the title he held.
23:12
He was the Elimas or the skillful one.
23:14
The wise man of the group.
23:17
And it tells us that for that is the meaning of his name.
23:22
Opposed them.
23:23
Opposed who? Opposed Saul and Barnabas.
23:25
They're preaching the gospel.
23:26
This guy, who has had the ear of the proconsul for a long time, opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.
23:34
Verse 9, But Saul, who was also called Paul, and by the way, from this point on, will continue to be called Paul.
23:41
This is the major turning point where we see Paul's name will be almost specifically Paul throughout, unless he's talking about what happened to him on the road to Damascus, he'll refer to himself as Saul, but only then.
23:54
And also, this will be the turning point where his name will come first.
23:56
Up until this point, it's been Barnabas and Saul, but now after this, it will be Paul and whoever.
24:03
This is a shifting point in the narrative.
24:06
It says, So Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him, and he said, You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? Think about what John the Baptist did.
24:24
He said, I have come to make straight the path of the Lord.
24:28
I have come to set the way for the Lord.
24:32
I have come to make the path for Him.
24:34
He's saying, You're the anti-John the Baptist.
24:38
You're the opposite of what a prophet is supposed to be.
24:41
John the Baptist, the greatest prophet in the history of man.
24:44
You are the worst.
24:48
You son of the devil.
24:56
Jesus and Paul had no tolerance for false teachers.
25:00
Jesus called men by all kinds of names, that if you called men that today, you would be called unloving.
25:06
You would be called intolerant.
25:08
You would be called bigoted.
25:10
You would be called, oh, shame on you for being mean.
25:14
Jesus didn't tolerate it.
25:17
Jesus said, You Pharisees, hypocrites, you whitewashed tombs.
25:22
You look good on the outside, but you're filled with dead men's bones.
25:25
Jesus didn't mince words.
25:26
Neither does Paul.
25:27
You son of the devil.
25:30
Enemy of all righteousness.
25:35
And so He pronounces judgment upon Him in verse 11.
25:38
It says, And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see for a time.
25:44
And immediately a midst of darkness fell upon Him, and He went about seeking people to lead Him by the hand.
25:51
Now there's an equity, which is accompanying the judgment here, that we ought not miss.
25:56
You see, Jesus' desire was to blind the eyes of the proconsul, His eyes of faith.
26:05
That He could not see the gospel being preached to Him.
26:08
He was trying to be a distraction and a blindfold to the truth.
26:12
So what does Paul say to Him? You, who seek to blind this man, will be blind.
26:23
But it was not a final condemnation.
26:27
Paul says, You'll be blind for a time.
26:31
There's grace in this judgment that we often miss.
26:35
Remember, this is something Paul himself had experienced.
26:38
Paul had experienced blindness on the road to Damascus, and he was blind for a time.
26:42
And it led to Paul's conversion, which is why Chrysostom would later write, the early father, if you're not familiar with Chrysostom, he would later argue, that Paul inflicted his own blindness on Elymas in the hope that this would lead him to the same conversion that he himself had experienced.
26:59
Now, we don't know that for certain.
27:01
We don't know his motivation, but we know that he certainly called down blindness upon this man.
27:06
But it was blindness with grace.
27:08
It will be but for a time.
27:14
And then in verse 12, The proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.
27:24
I find it interesting that Luke here says that Sergius Paulus was astonished at the teaching of the Lord, and that's why he believed.
27:32
Often times we read the story and we say, well, he believed because he sees this guy go blind.
27:36
Well, I'm sure that didn't hurt.
27:39
I'm sure that didn't make it worse.
27:42
I'm sure that made it better for him to understand what was being said.
27:45
But here's the thing, folks.
27:46
A miracle will never make anyone believe.
27:49
You go through the Old Testament.
27:50
You read through what happened, the plagues of Egypt.
27:52
If anyone should have been a believer, it was Pharaoh.
27:55
He saw it over and over and over again.
27:58
He saw the miracles from God, and yet he was obstinate.
28:02
Miracles do not make believers.
28:04
The Word of God is what changes hearts by the Spirit of God.
28:07
And that's what it says.
28:08
That's what changed him.
28:10
That he believed the Word of God.
28:13
And that is what astonished him.
28:15
The teaching of the Lord.
28:16
I'm sure he was amazed by the blind man who was just standing there shouting down the preachers.
28:21
But now he's more astonished at the Word of God.
28:26
It's the Word that changes hearts, not miracles.
28:30
Miracles simply bear testimony to what God is doing through His man and through His Word.
28:39
So we see what has happened.
28:40
We see that he has believed.
28:41
There are some who don't.
28:43
There are some commentators, and commentators sometimes can be kind of annoying.
28:47
There are some commentators who question whether or not Sergius Paulus was a real believer, or if this belief that is referenced here is similar to the belief that was given to Jesus by the 5,000.
28:57
If you remember, 5,000 people were fed, so they believed in Jesus, they followed after Jesus, but later he said, you really don't believe in me in John 6.
29:03
I referenced that earlier in our communion meditation.
29:05
He said, you really don't believe in me.
29:07
He preached a hard message in what they do.
29:09
They split.
29:10
The only people that were left were the disciples.
29:12
And they were like, whoa, whoa, this is a church growth movement.
29:15
No, this is the church diminishment movement.
29:17
We just went from 5,000 people to five, or twelve rather.
29:22
Why? Because he preached hard, and the people didn't want to believe that.
29:25
They wanted to be fed.
29:27
They didn't want to believe.
29:29
So people have said that about Sergius Paulus, but we don't know.
29:33
We have no reason to doubt his faith here.
29:35
The only thing that some of the arguers have said, well, it doesn't mention that he was baptized.
29:40
Well, there's a lot of people that it said they believed and their baptism is not mentioned.
29:43
You can't make an argument from silence that this guy wasn't a true believer simply because it doesn't reference the fact that he followed through with an obedient act.
29:51
Baptism doesn't save us.
29:53
We're not churches of Christ.
29:54
We're not the Campbellite movement.
29:56
We don't believe that nonsense.
29:58
By the way, if you're from the churches of Christ, talk to me later, and I'll explain to you why it's nonsense.
30:04
But baptism wouldn't have saved him one way or the other.
30:06
It would have been a demonstration of his faith and certainly something that a man of his position might have had a difficulty doing, but a man of true faith would have done.
30:14
So we simply say the text says he believed.
30:16
We have no doubt that he did believe.
30:19
And there is some evidence in history, not a lot, but some evidence that his children and grandchildren would go on to be a part of the faith.
30:27
So there is that.
30:29
And that lends us to believe that yes, he in fact did call upon the name of the Lord and was saved.
30:37
So now that we understand what has happened, we understand the text, I want to provide you with a few points of application.
30:43
This is normal for us as we examine the text and now we want to apply the text.
30:47
If you look at your bulletin, on the back, I give you some places to fill in some things.
30:52
If you are inclined to do that, if you don't want to write, you don't have to.
30:55
These will be some things that maybe you can take home with you if you'd like.
31:00
The first thing is this.
31:03
The Bible is intolerant of false teachers.
31:07
The word, the blank, is intolerant.
31:12
The Bible is intolerant of false teachers.
31:16
The modern world demands tolerance for everything.
31:20
Every type of sin must not only be tolerated, it must be celebrated.
31:26
You know what? I recently read on a thing that was talking about words that you shouldn't use anymore in regard to homosexuality.
31:35
You should not use the word accept it.
31:39
You know how we often say we're going to accept people who are homosexual, whatever? You can't use that word anymore.
31:45
Because to say you accept it indicates that you think they're doing something wrong that you have to accept.
31:51
So you can't use that anymore because that's offensive.
31:55
Well, I don't accept it as a biblical lifestyle.
32:00
Just so you know.
32:01
But also, that's where we've gone.
32:05
We've gone to full toleration of sin.
32:10
Absolute toleration.
32:11
The only thing the world will not tolerate is intolerance.
32:15
And thus it won't tolerate me.
32:17
And y'all, I'm often rebuffed when I speak against false teachers.
32:23
I've been told that I should be generic.
32:25
That I should never name names.
32:27
But the reality is my job as under-shepherd is to warn you, the people of God, that there are wolves out there.
32:33
And they're not generic wolves.
32:35
They are fully named wolves.
32:38
When I call out a false teacher, I'm not doing so so I can be a pulpit shock jock.
32:43
I'm not trying to be the Howard Stern of pulpit politics.
32:45
I'm not that guy.
32:50
I'm not intending to be controversial for controversy's sake because that's foolish and that's selfish.
32:56
But I do want to protect you from the poison which is out there.
32:59
If you were children and you were going to drink a glass of water that had been filled with poison, I would slap it out of your hand.
33:09
Brian Borgman, one of the preachers that I enjoy listening to, pointed out that Paul breaks a rule of homiletics in this sermon.
33:19
You know, homiletics is the art of preaching or the science of preaching, the giving of the message.
33:24
He says there's rules to homiletics.
33:25
Paul breaks every one.
33:28
Preachers are told don't point your finger.
33:29
You think when he said you son of the devil, not you Dale, but when you think when he said you son of the devil, you think he pointed his finger? I think he pointed his finger.
33:37
History tells us Saul or Paul was a short man with bow legs with a hooked nose and a unibrow and beady eyes.
33:46
It's how he's described.
33:49
I think he had a crooked finger too.
33:53
And he said, you son of the devil.
33:55
He pointed a man out specifically.
33:58
We're told not to identify individuals He said, you, bar Jesus, are a son of the devil.
34:03
He said, we're always told in preaching class, don't use specifics.
34:07
Talk about we.
34:08
Talk about us.
34:09
Talk in generalities.
34:10
Paul breaks all those rules and God bless him for it.
34:15
Because he's intolerant of false teachers.
34:18
He doesn't speak in generalities.
34:20
He speaks in specifics and so should we.
34:23
Paul did not believe in pluralism, which is the idea that all beliefs are valid.
34:28
He didn't believe in syncretism, which is that you should meld all beliefs together to make one sort of unified belief.
34:34
He didn't believe in ecumenicism, which believes that everybody's worshiping the same God just in their own way.
34:38
No, Paul was clear.
34:39
There's truth and there's error and you're on the wrong side.
34:44
Those who distract from the truth or propose error should be rebuked.
34:48
Not comforted, not coddled, not excused.
34:51
Rebuked.
34:54
That's the first thing.
34:55
The Bible's intolerant of false teachers.
34:56
Number two, it is dangerous to interfere with God's work.
35:01
When a man is hearing the Word of God and another man seeks to distract him, that is sinful and that is dangerous.
35:08
It's toying with the judgment of Almighty God and it's the spiritual equivalent of one blind man going and covering the eyes of another man.
35:16
I want you to be blind like me.
35:20
And some people think, well, it's just unbelievers who distract other people from hearing the Word of God.
35:25
No, it's not.
35:27
When we go, when people go preach in the open air, do you know who often is the people who are shouting them down? When people go preach in the open air, do you know who it is who often shouts them down? People who call themselves Christians.
35:38
Who told you not to preach when Joel Osteen was here? People who say they were Christians.
35:44
We're just like you.
35:45
Why are you here? Because you ain't like me.
35:51
I mean, it's not what you said.
35:52
I'm paraphrasing.
35:57
Sorry.
36:02
Happens in church too.
36:03
Man of God's preaching, somebody else is whispering to him.
36:06
Somebody else is texting him.
36:07
Somebody else is talking about lunch and where they want to go to barbecue, whatever.
36:10
Shut up and listen.
36:14
The Word of God is being preached.
36:16
Stop distracting other people from hearing it.
36:22
You never know what God is doing in someone's heart and you should never distract another person from hearing His Word.
36:28
It's dangerous.
36:29
It's not a good idea.
36:30
Third thing.
36:32
Finally.
36:33
I say finally.
36:34
I mean third.
36:37
I'm getting close.
36:39
Be confident in overcoming distractions in evangelism.
36:44
Be confident in overcoming distractions in evangelism.
36:47
This is the hardest thing that we are called to do.
36:51
But when we are evangelizing someone and the devil tries to bring a distraction of some sort into their conversation, we need to stay the course.
37:00
When people are bringing up meaningless questions, red herrings and chasing rabbits, you got to get off that nonsense.
37:08
You do.
37:10
People are going to argue you into the ground about dinosaurs and meteor rocks and all this stuff.
37:15
You got to quit.
37:16
You got to stay the course.
37:17
You got to stay on the gospel.
37:20
Purposeful misleading.
37:20
People try these purposeful things.
37:22
They'll say, well, the Bible is full of errors.
37:23
I had a conversation with a lady the other day online and she was saying, the Bible is full of errors.
37:28
Why do you believe the Bible is full of errors? I said, show me one.
37:32
And she starts cutting and pasting Scripture which says that wives should be submissive to their husbands.
37:39
She started cutting and pasting Scripture about the Old Testament and the relationship between slaves and masters.
37:46
And she said, see, this is error.
37:47
I said, it's not error.
37:49
You just don't like it.
37:50
I don't care what you like.
37:53
That doesn't make it error.
37:56
You're purposefully misleading the fact that I have called you to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
38:01
You don't like it so you're going to find a distraction.
38:08
Some of you are not used to dealing with distractions because you don't evangelize.
38:19
No one has ever tried to quiet you because you don't talk.
38:24
You can't say, oh man, maybe you should say, ouch, as old Vody says.
38:32
So if what I'm saying doesn't resonate with you, maybe it's because there's a serious reason for it.
38:43
The most serious and obvious distractions from the Gospel are those who, like Bar Jesus, lead people away from the true God to false religions.
38:56
In November 1978, U.S.
38:58
Representative Leo Ryan of California visited the People's Temple in Guyana.
39:05
His group went to investigate reports that some of the people there were being held against their will.
39:10
The congressman and his party were ambushed and killed.
39:14
How many of you are old enough to remember this? A few days later at Jonestown, Guyana, which is where it happened, soldiers were horrified to find hundreds of bodies of cult members who had been shot or committed suicide by drinking cyanide-based Kool-Aid.
39:30
Reverend Jones, 47 years old, lay near the altar with a bullet wound in his head and the death count of Guyana was 700, over 780 people.
39:43
A brief report of what happened during those final moments is this, and I quote, as Jones talked over a loudspeaker on the beauty of death and the certainty that everyone would meet again, several hundred cult members gathered around the pavilion.
39:56
They were surrounded by armed guards and a vat of Kool-Aid mixed with cyanide was brought out.
40:01
Most cult members drank it willingly but others were forced to.
40:05
They started with the babies.
40:08
At least 80 infants and children were fed the deadly potion and then the adults took it.
40:12
Everything was calm for a few minutes and then the cyanide-induced convulsions began and it all got out of order and children were screaming and there was mass confusion and shortly after everyone was dead.
40:27
You want to know why I get concerned about false teachers and distractions to the gospel? That's the reason.
40:37
What Jim Jones did to those people physically, men like Joel Osteen are doing to people spiritually.
40:45
Men like Creflo Dollar, Frederick Price, Benny Hinn, women like Paula White and Joyce Meyer preach a false gospel that is sending people to hell.
40:55
They are worthy of rebuke.
40:56
They are unworthy of our attention.
40:59
And Paul didn't play with false teachers and neither should we.
41:05
So I call you today, if you are entertaining this nonsense, repent.
41:14
Let's pray.
41:17
Father God, I thank You for Your Word.
41:20
I thank You for the truth.
41:22
I thank You that even though it is sometimes difficult to hear and even difficult to preach, it is the Word of the living God.
41:29
And You have no tolerance, O God, for the false teachers.
41:34
You have no tolerance for the false prophets.
41:37
And neither should we.
41:40
Father, thank You for the clarity of the Word.
41:43
Thank You for the passion of the Apostle Paul who so clearly rebuked the false teacher.
41:53
May it be that we do not fall into the same problem of listening to the false teachers, but rather we stand with Paul and say, you son of the devil, I will not listen to you.
42:10
I pray, O Lord, I thank You for the Gospel.
42:12
I thank You for salvation which comes in knowing Jesus Christ alone.
42:17
I know that that's what Paul preached to Sergius Paulus.
42:20
And I pray, Lord, that we would continue to stand on that same Gospel.
42:24
And Lord, if there are those here today who have been taught wrongly, who have been taught incorrectly and need to be converted to the Gospel, converted to Christ, I pray that they would understand their sin, that they would understand that they have broken God's law and are worthy of His punishment.
42:43
And I pray, Lord, that they would also understand that though our sins be like crimson, we can be washed whiter than snow in the blood of the Lamb.
42:51
And I pray for repentance to fall upon this place today.
42:55
In Jesus' name, Amen.