Satanic attack on the church, Acts 13: 1-12

Last week we looked at government’s attack upon the church as evidenced in chapter 12 when Herod imprisoned Peter.  And through that study we understood that though governors and rulers of government are granted their authority from God, yet at the same time they are often used by the ruler of this world, Satan, to bring persecution upon the church of God.

Now this week we are looking at another passage which illustrates the two pronged strategy of Satan’s attack on the church.  He uses external means, such as governments, to attack the church, but he also uses internal means to attack the church.  And I would have to say that from my perspective, which is also supported by Scripture, the internal attack is more effective. 

The internal attack against the church is more effective because it comes in disguise.  2Cor. 11:14 says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.  I just saw on the news that they are going to unveil a statue depicting Satan in Detroit before planning to move it to Arkansas where it will stand next to a monument of the 10 Commandments.  And this statue features a man’s figure topped with a goat’s head.  Satan is often portrayed in literature and art as a menacing figure.  But in reality the Bible teaches just the opposite.  It teaches that he was the most beautiful of all the angels that God created.  So these depictions that we often see are dramatic interpretations at best, and find an audience among the naïve and superstitious.

Satan is real though, no doubt about that.  But according to the Bible he would rather come in disguise than be seen as he really is.  The Bible says he is a thief, and what he steals is the truth.  He twists it and subverts it, yet all the while claiming that it is still the truth.  And as such he is very effective.  The Bible says that he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  That means that he is a ravening wolf that wants to destroy the church, while pretending to be a shepherd. 

Now in the new Gentile church they were seeing great ground being gained for Christ.  And the beachhead of this new Gentile church is in the town of Antioch, which was also one of the most depraved cities in Roman Empire.  But in spite of the depravity of that culture, there is a mighty work of God there.  That illustrates the principle that God often works most mightily in those who seem the least unlikely. 

And to that end, God had brought together in this church a group of men from various backgrounds and cultures to be the leadership of this new church.  Now this was a Spirit led, Spirit filled church.  And God presents this Gentile church to us as a template for our church today.  And in the process of looking at how Satan attacks this church, we will also note the characteristics of a godly church that will not only withstand but triumph over those satanic attacks.   As Jesus declared, “I will build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”  Yet we dare not take lightly Satan’s schemes.  They are a very present and real danger to the church, and many have fallen away from the truth because of Satan’s deceptions.  But if we follow the paradigm set forth here with the Antioch church, then we can be triumphant over Satan’s schemes.

The first thing we should notice about this church was that it was led by spiritually gifted men.  Vs.1 lists these men. “Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers: Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.”  It’ so obvious a point that it could easily be overlooked, but to be a church that triumphs over Satanic attacks, there needs to be the right kind of leadership.

Now though the text gives two titles, it is really just one position; prophets and teachers or you could say preachers and teachers.  But though it describes two different styles of discourse, it is speaking of only one position.  Today we would call that person a pastor. A pastor is a preacher/teacher.  Don’t be misled by the word prophet that is found here.  A prophet is simply one who proclaims the truth of God.  In the case where we have the scriptures which are the inspired word of God, then we are prophets in the sense that we proclaim what God has said.  In times past when there wasn’t the written word, then they spoke the words that they had been given by Christ when they followed Him as disciples, or they spoke the word of God which was being given to them directly through divine inspiration.  Today we have the complete, inspired word of God written down for us.  So there is no new revelation today being given through prophecy.  There are no new scriptures being given.  We proclaim and preach the written word of God which has been preserved for us in the Bible.  So we need to understand that prophecy is not just future telling, but primarily forth telling.  Proclaiming the truth of God.

That is job one of the pastor, by the way.  If the pastor is not preaching the whole counsel of God as it has been given, in it’s completeness, rightly dividing the word of truth, then he is abrogating his most important responsibility of leadership.   Ephesians 4 says that when Jesus ascended on high He gave to the church gifts and the first priority of those gifts were it’s leadership. Ephesians 4:11-13 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,  for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;  until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”  Ephesians says that these men are given to the church, to preach the word in order to build up the body, to equip the saints for the work of service, so that the church grows up to maturity and in unity of doctrine.

And we see that evidenced here in this church in Antioch.  These spiritual leaders were engaged in ministering to the Lord, vs. 2. “While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting…”  What does it mean to minister to the Lord?  Well, it means to serve the Lord.  The pastor’s job is to serve the Lord.  To faithfully proclaim the message that God has given them to the people.  And whoever serves in the church should do so as unto the Lord, don’t we?  When I explain to a man and woman the responsibilities of marriage, I tell them that according to Ephesians 5 they are to serve one another as unto the Lord.  When Ephesians 6 says to servants, or workers how they are to work for their employers, it says to do their work as unto the Lord.  Children are told to obey their parents as unto the Lord.  Whatever we do, we do it as unto the Lord.  That is how we serve the Lord in all we do.  And if you can’t do something as unto the Lord, then you need to stop doing what you’re doing. 

You know, in the armed services when a soldier leaves his unit and goes off on his own, it is called going AWOL.  Absent without leave.  And you can be court martialed for that.  And in the Christian life if you are not a part of a local body of believers, then you have gone AWOL as well.  When you became a Christian you were joined to the body of Christ, and your duty is to be a part of that local body.  There are no free agents in the Christian church.  All are called to submit to the local authority of a church and take responsibility for the role you are given there.  There is a dangerous practice emerging today of treating church like a smorgasbord, going here one week, and there another week, and failing to understand your responsibility to support a local, Bible teaching church.

But as a pastor, it’s important that we are focused on serving the Lord, not just serving the people.  It’s easy to become focused on pleasing the people, thinking that in order to win them to the Lord we need to concoct all sorts of programs and devices to try to please people.  But instead, we need to serve the Lord, preach and proclaim His word, and let God take care of the people’s response.  It’s His word, it’s His church, and our job is to declare His word, rightly interpreting it, and teaching it, knowing that as teachers we will receive a greater judgment for what we teach or fail to teach.

Now not all programs are bad.  There are some good programs that the church can do, but it may not be in the best interest of the pastor to do them if it deters him from the ministry of the word.  For instance, in the beginning of the church in Jerusalem the needs of the widows was being neglected.  Taking care of the widows was a good thing.  But the apostles said pick 7 godly men full of the Spirit to do that, as for us, we must not neglect prayer and the ministry of the Word. That is our calling, our responsibility, and without it the church cannot survive the attacks on it by Satan.

The word minister is an interesting word which comes from the Greek word litourgeo.  It was used to describe the duties of the priests that served the temple.  The temple was the place where God met with His people in the Holy of Holies.  It was the place where worshippers came to offer sacrifices and offerings. 

I think it’s part of the diabolical plot of Satan that the word worship has been co-opted today to mean something different than the Bible teaches.  Today in most churches, worship is merely singing, or listening to people sing, maybe raising or clapping your hands.  And that’s it.  But worship in the Bible is always pictured as coming to God in submission, bowing before Him, even prostrating oneself on the ground.  And worship is always pictured in conjunction with a sacrifice.  We’ve lost the sense of sacrifice today.  We’ve lost the sense of coming to God with an offering, with our gifts, and with our sacrifice. 

Yet these Old Testament worship rituals were not meant to be forgotten about in the new covenant, but were meant to be examples to us as pictures of how we are to worship.  Today we don’t slaughter a lamb for our sins.  But we should understand that Jesus was slaughtered for us on the cross so that His blood atoned for our sins.  We need to understand the principle that a sacrifice cost something.  Every sin in the old covenant required a sacrifice.  So if I lied, I would bring a sacrifice to the temple.  That dove, or that lamb cost me something.  I had to watch it die in front of my eyes, so that I might understand the significance of my sin.  I had to pay out of my pocket the cost of a lamb so that I might be redeemed from the penalty of that sin. 

Now the New Testament teaches that by one sacrifice of Jesus Christ all my sins have been atoned for.  But woe is me if I do not value the blood of Christ as much as the cost of a lamb. Heb. 10:29 “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?”

God still requires sacrifices from those who would worship Him.  David said in Psalm 51:16-17 “For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering.  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”

And Romans 12:1 describes another kind of sacrifice that God desires. “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”   How do you offer your body as a sacrifice to God, how do you worship God?  Vs. 2,  “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  We set ourselves apart from the world, and are transformed through renewing our mind as we are taught the scripture and apply them to our lives, so that we might do the will of God.

There is another aspect of their ministry, not only the preaching of the word, but the ministry of prayer.  They were fasting and praying.  Fasting is often misunderstood.  It’s not a means of twisting God’s arm.  I don’t think God cares if I eat chocolate for a month or not, or if I swear off ice cream for 40 days.  But what God does care about is my heart.  If the desire of my heart is to hear from God, to know the will of God, then God is pleased with that.  And one way that we manifest that desire is that we shun our physical needs for the sake of our greater spiritual need.  Our desire to hear from God is greater than our desire for food.  Fasting is an indication the fervency of your prayers.

I asked last week, how often do you pray intensely?  How many times have you prayed all night long for something or someone?  How many times in the last week or month have you prayed for a solid hour?  I’m not suggesting a legalistic approach to prayer or fasting.  I’m just suggesting that if you want to hear from God, then you need to become someone who is willing to forsake the world and even your physical needs in order to be able to pray effectively. We need to set aside time for prayer.

Well, these pastors were in the habit of praying and fasting.  They were in the habit of daily ministering to the Lord, of daily preaching and teaching in the church.  And in the process of doing that, God speaks to them.  We aren’t told if it was audible, or in a vision, or if He spoke to one or all of them.  But somehow, Luke tells us, the Holy Spirit said to them, “set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”  To set apart is to separate.  Church leadership should of all people be an example of being separate unto the Lord.  He’s not talking about joining a convent or going into a monastery.  He is talking about separating from the world to perform a particular work of God.  To be unique, set apart, for a specific task. It means to be consecrated to a holy purpose, as a chosen vessel for God’s use.  Whether you are called to be a pastor or whatever position God has called you to in the church, we are to be consecrated to that responsibility, holy as unto the Lord.

And then we see that the church supported them.  The church laid their hands on Barnabas and Saul to show solidarity with them.  Laying on hands did not somehow elevate them to another level or confer some gift to them.  But what it did was show affirmation with what the Holy Spirit had already indicated.  The Holy Spirit called them and set them apart.  The church simply confirmed the call of the Holy Spirit. 

Listen, this is important;  pastors are called by God, not by men.  Not by seminaries.  Not by denominational boards.  God calls a man to ministry, not a church board.  The worst thing possible for most churches is to convene a pastor search committee made up of  the most diverse members of the congregation and give them the authority to hire a pastor.  The pastor is not a hireling.  He is the undershepherd of Christ and called by Him, gifted by Him, and given to the church by Him. No wonder the church en large is in such disarray today.  Some poor guy was hired by a committee based on his looks, his personality and his wife’s wardrobe.  I can promise you this, in most evangelical churches today the Apostle Paul would never get the call from the pastor search committee.  He just wasn’t funny enough.  He didn’t make people laugh.  He didn’t look very cool on stage.  He was a bent over old Jewish guy with a bald head and a beak nose.  And on top of that he had this really sickening eye disease that caused his eyes to discharge corruption all the time.  Remember what the church at Corinth said about Paul? 2Cor. 10:10  "His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible."  Sounds like what they say about me.  “Oh yeah, Roy preaches the word of God, but he isn’t very uplifting.  I want someone who makes me feel good about myself.  I want someone to make me laugh.”   Well, take it up with God.  God wrote His word, I just declare it.

I want to say something else about the calling.  In the lineup of pastors in Antioch, Barnabas was listed first, and Saul was listed last.   But when God calls two men, he calls Barnabas and Saul.  Now Saul has been working with Barnabas for a while now, possibly several years.  And up to this point he did nothing noteworthy.  Nothing has been extraordinary about him.  Considering his background, he probably was not the sort of guy that you wanted to promote to a major position in the church.  After all, he used to persecute Christians.  And if you really wanted to attract the best people in society to the church, then you should really  consider Manaen.  He was the foster brother of King Herod.  Talk about connections.  He had a royal upbringing.  He knew people that could bankroll the church.  He was educated in the finest schools.  He would have been the most likely candidate. 

But God called Saul.  And this is the last time that he is called Saul.  From now on he will be called Paul.  I believe this is when Saul is elevated to the position of an Apostle by the Holy Spirit.  You know after Judas killed himself, the apostles promoted Matthais to his position.  Perhaps now that the Apostle James has been martyred as we saw in the last chapter, Paul has been promoted by the Spirit to take his place and to particularly be the apostle to the Gentiles.  But unfortunately, we get the sense from Paul’s epistles that he is always having to defend his apostleship.  The greater church at large did not seem to give him the respect that he deserved.  But at least from our standpoint in history we can be assured that Paul was perhaps the greatest of all the apostles, though at the time he was considered the least. God often uses the weak things to confound the mighty.

Now a lot of what we have covered concerning the church of Antioch has focused on the leadership of the church.  And leadership is important because as go the leaders, so go the church.  They are to be the examples to the flock under them.  Notice that the church sends Barnabas and Saul out in vs. 3, and then in vs. 4 it says the Spirit sent them out.  The Holy Spirit uses people to work His will.  We don’t just sit back and wait for the Spirit to do everything, but we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do what the Spirit tells us to do.  That’s the way the Spirit works.

But now let’s turn our attention to the satanic attack against the church and see how the leadership responds.  Barnabas and Paul start out at one end of the island of Cyprus and work their way across, going from synagogue to synagogue preaching the gospel. This is going to be the pattern for Paul as he goes on all subsequent missionary journeys.  He looks for Jews first, many times going to the local synagogue where God fearing Jews would gather and there he would preach the gospel.  Then from there he would branch out to the Gentiles.  But his pattern according to the pattern of scripture, is that the gospel would be given to the Jews first. 

So when they got to Pathos, word of their ministry had obviously spread and even the governor of the district had heard about them.  In fact, he wanted to hear more about the gospel.  So he invited Barnabas and Paul to come preach to him.  But there was a man with the proconsul or governor called Bar-Jesus who Luke tells us was a false prophet.  He was a Jew, but he practiced magic.  This indicates that he claimed to be able to foretell future events by means of the stars or some other form of divination.  And the text tells us that he was opposing Paul’s message to the governor, trying to turn him away from the faith.  To keep him from being saved.

Now let’s notice a couple of things about this guy Bar-Jesus.  That’s his Hebrew name, by the way.  His Roman name was Elymas.  But let’s focus on his Hebrew name, Bar-Jesus.  His name means son of Jesus, or son of salvation.  Now Luke tells us that he is a magician.  You know, I can’t help but see a parallel here between the man called Simon Magus who was rebuked by the Apostle Peter earlier in our study of Acts and this man.  Both were considered magicians.  And both had a reputation in the district as a man of wisdom, a man who could do wonderful things by some magic power which we are told was satanic in origin and both opposed the apostles teaching. And what that tells me is that Satan uses the same strategies in the church over and over again.  There is nothing new under the sun.  Satan just repackages the same deceiving strategies for each generation and passes them off as something new when it’s the same old tricks.

Remember the verse I quoted at the beginning that said Satan disguises himself as an angel of light?  Well, here he is in the person of this magician, this trickster, and yet he calls himself the son of salvation.   He pretends to be an angel of light.  A messenger of salvation but actually he is deceiving the people and trying to prevent this proconsul from becoming a Christian.

And here is another interesting principle.  As soon as an unsaved person seeks to hear the gospel, Satan has one of his false prophets right there to try to deceive and trick them.  I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this worked out in the church.  I’ve seen young men who couldn’t find a girl to save their life, one day start to show some interest in salvation and suddenly they are the like a contestant on the most eligible bachelor or something.  They suddenly get a girlfriend.  And off they go, forgetting all about the need to get right with God. 

Or I’ve seen someone come under conviction by the Holy Spirit, and before they can come to a place of confession they talk to someone else who convinces them that what they really need to do is go to Catechism class.  And so they spend six weeks in Catechism class and come out a better Catholic, but still unsaved.  However, now they feel a lot better about themselves. They got religion.

So here is this false prophet, opposing the witness of God’s true prophets Paul and Barnabas.  Trying to turn this man away from the truth.  Listen, this is the greatest danger to the church.  The greatest danger to the church is not the homosexual agenda.  Not the liberal media.  Not the abortion advocates.  Not the political liberals.  No, the biggest threat to the church is from within, from false prophets masquerading as angels of light, pretending to be shepherds, when in fact they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.  And their purpose is to ravage the church. 1Tim.  4:1 says, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.” 

I tell you, if I had no other witness that we were in the last days, it would be the fact that many have fallen away from the true faith, by paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons which run rampant in the church. 

God gave me a verse of scripture when He called me to be a preacher of the gospel.  It is found in 2Tim. 4:2,  “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.”  And so I have attempted to do that for the last 9 years.  But over that time I have seen many people who claimed to be saved turn away from the gospel I preach for another gospel.  And the next verse in 2Tim. 4, vs. 3 explains why that happens.  It says, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,  and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”   And I would not be so concerned if that was where it ended.  They go their way and I go mine.  But that is not the way it works.  Many of them go out of their way to try to keep others from coming to the knowledge of the truth.  They cause others to stumble by their rebellion and by deliberately trying to turn them away from the truth, just as Bar-Jesus did. 

I wish I was as bold as Paul was in confronting that sort of thing.  But then again, I’m not Paul.  But what Paul teaches us is that the way to deal with false prophets is to call them out. To unmask their hypocrisy.  To uncover their deceit.  See the devil loves to stay in disguise.  But Paul calls him out and he doesn’t mince any words. 

First of all Paul fixes his eyes on him.  I have to laugh at that one.  I have a bad habit of locking eyes with one person sometimes when I am preaching.  Especially on Wednesday nights.  And it’s not because I’m trying to give them the stink eye or something.   It’s usually because they are the only one in the congregation that is brave enough to look at me.  Everyone else tries to hide behind a lamp or something.  So the poor guy that is willing to look at me gets locked on like a laser beam and I stay on him all night.  But Paul isn’t doing that.  I think Paul just locks his gaze on him in order to make sure this false prophet gets the full intent of his message. 

And so Paul, full of the Holy Spirit, note that.  He’s not full of vitriol.  He is full of the Holy Spirit.  It’s the word of the Holy Spirit that condemns this man, not Paul.  He says, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?”  I love that.  Starts off by calling him a deceit and a fraud.  You promise people life but only bring about death.  You promise people truth and give them a lie. That is what false prophets do. 

And then he says he is the son of the devil.  Remember his name was son of Jesus, or son of salvation, but Paul says no, you are a son of the devil. The enemy of all righteousness.  Will you not stop making crooked the straight ways of the Lord?

And then notice the curse.  I don’t have the power to curse anyone.  I don’t think anyone does.  But God does.  And so filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking by the power of the Spirit the words of God, Paul pronounces a curse upon this man. “Now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and not see the sun for a time.” And immediately a mist and a darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking those who would lead him by the hand.” 

Now as I’ve said many times recently, very often a miracle in the physical realm is a picture of a spiritual reality.  This man was blinded in order to demonstrate the spiritual blindness that such false prophets cause.  I believe that is what is presented here.  False prophets cause spiritual blindness because they hide the light of the gospel. Satan wants to keep men in darkness. And so God blinds him that he might be seen as a leader of the blind, the blind leading the blind.

But that wasn’t the victory of the church.  Damning the lost is not the triumph of the church.  The triumph of the church is winning the lost.  The gates of hell, the minions of the devil, cannot stop the gospel from winning the lost.  We are in a war, but not against flesh and blood, but against angels, against angelic powers and principalities.  But we do not war with weapons of carnal warfare.  We war in the power of the Spirit, by the ministry of the word and with prayer.  And in that manner we see the victory in this passage.  “Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had happened, being amazed at the teaching of the Lord.”

That is how we triumph over Satan as a church. Winning one soul at a time.  Robbing hell of it’s citizens and making them disciples of Christ.  We faithfully follow godly pastors who preach the word of the Lord.  Who rightly divide the word of truth and who reveal false teaching for what it is.  We pray earnestly and intensely for the ministry and seek the Lord’s guidance and counsel in all that we do.  And in that manner we defeat the schemes of the devil.  Because greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world.  When the church is set apart unto Christ, worshipping and serving Him in Spirit and in truth, then we can be confident that He will preserve and defend His church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.