Acts 13:4-12
“You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?”
Sermon Transcript:
We’re gonna be looking at acts chapter 13 this morning. Continuing our series in the book of acts acts chapter 13 versus four through 12 invites you to turn there with me. We’re gonna be reading that passage in just a moment. John bunion, the famous author of the famous allegory, uh, Pilgrim’s progress wrote another book actually wrote another lot of books, but the second most famous book.
John bunion was entitled. The battle for man’s soul actually is called the holy war and the subtitle was the battle for man’s soul. It was the story, an alleg iCal story, uh, of this city that, uh, di Avalo and his forces had conquered. And then it is the story of Al Shai, which is a name for, for God in the old Testament scriptures, Al Shai comes in with his forces through the power of Christ.
Victoriously wins the city and is an ongoing conflict that takes place in the city of man’s soul. In the holy war, bunions allegorical master plea piece is actually being played out in real time. Here in acts chapter 13, there is a battle for a man’s soul, and I’d like to read verse four through 12 about that.
So being sent out by the holy spirit, they, this is Paul Barnabas went down to SI Lucia and there, they sailed to Cypress. When they arrived at Salam, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they had John to assist them when they had gone through the whole island, as far as Pathas, they came upon a certain magician, a Jewish, false prophet named bar Jesus.
He was with the PROCO Seus, Paul, a man of intelligence who summoned Barnabas and saw and sought to hear the word of God, but S the magician for that is the meaning of his name, opposed them seeking to turn the PROCO away from the faith. 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 Villa, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?
and now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you and you will be blind and unable to see the son for a time immediately missed and darkness fell upon him. And he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand, then the pro council believed when he saw what had occurred for, he was astonished by the teaching of the Lord.
Lord, we come to you this morning
and God is not one of us in this room or watching online this morning that has not experienced the twisting that is talked about in this passage, the twisting of truth Lord particular this morning, I pray for those that are in that state of their minds being influenced by the twistedness of the enemy’s lies, the deception, the false narratives.
It keep people from embracing Christ, his Lord and savior their lives. God teache us from this passage. As we see the battle for this governor’s soul in Jesus name, I pray. Amen. Amen. This morning, I’m gonna, this is gonna terrorize you. I’m gonna do two sermons. not actually going to, I, I feel a need of here at the beginning of the missionary journey.
We are starting the first missionary journey of Paul. It’s gonna be all chapter 13, all of chapter 14. And I just wanna give you a quick snapshot about what that’s going to be, because there are some unique things that are gonna take place in this. And there are some unique things that, that Luke. Shares with us in verse four and five about this missionary journey gives us some previews.
Then we’re gonna tie in, in verses six through 12 at this battle that takes place. So I’m giving you background and I’m giving you a battle this morning, verse four and five, just some things regarding the background for the first missionary journey. Paul and Barnabas have been sent out, uh, the first missionaries, uh, by the church at Antioch.
And we see four quick things regarding this. We see, first of all, it is going to be a journey of constant movement. The trip really is a journey it’s in contrast to the second and third journeys of Paul, which we’ll read about later, where in which those, those trips, they would continually, uh, go to places and settle there.
There are some places, some cities, some towns they went to and they spent weeks there. It in Corinth, they spent three months there, Inus. They spent two years there. That’s all on the second and third missionary journeys on this journey. They’re in constant motion. If you look at the, the map, you can see the location of it.
And over there to the right, ah, left my pointer, um, over there to the right is Antioch. And Antioch is where they start from. And this shows both the journey out and the journey back the next map, zeros in a little closer, as you can see it. And they’re going to the island of Cypress. This is interesting because Barnabas is from Cypress.
As a matter of fact, John mark is from Cypress and John mark and Barnabas are cousins. John being the younger cousin. As you look at this, you find also they’re going to go up in the region called S. That is the area where Tarsis is, that’s where Paul is from. They’re going to their home territory. If you will, even though they’re going outside of the regions where the Jews, uh, primarily live they’re on the Eastern border of the Mediterranean sea, it is a journey going to be filled with constant movement.
It’s a trip of about 895 miles. They are going to average 15 miles a day walking. So this is motion. Now that doesn’t mean every day they did 15 miles. Some days did more. Some days they stayed at a place a little longer, but it is, it is really a journey. When we talk about the first missionary journey, we’re talking about the first missionary journey, the others, they much more stayed in places, discipled people established churches.
This is really beginning the evangelistic enterprise of the, of the church. Secondly, we see the roles of the team. we learn in these first few verses that Paul and Barnabas are being joined by a young disciple. John John mark, who would write the gospel of, of mark later on, he is the young cousin of Barnabas.
We will also see a transition of leadership on this team up until this time, whenever Barnabas and Saul are going out doing ministry, they’re called Barnabas and Saul. It’s going to change soon in, right after this passage, actually at the end of this passage, it’s it’s Paul and Barnabas. We also see a name change.
He says, uh, Saul, who now is going to be called for the rest of the book of acts Paul. Now he, as, as Barnabas identifies here, both are his. Uh, when I go and speak in another country, when I speak first entrance, when I speak in Brazil, I am introduced as pastor marks for Brazilian speakers. I apologize. Uh, but the, I don’t, I don’t say, Hey, call me mark.
I’m mark. No, there I’m marks because that’s how you pronounce my name. And when Paul is going now, it’s not like he got a new name and we all do this. We say, well, you know, pre, pre Christ, Saul, and post Christ Paul. Well, that’s not really accurate. He’s always been Paul. He’s always been, Saul is a Jewish name.
Paul is his Greek name. Well now they’re going to the Greek world of the Roman empire and he is going to be continually known. He is also going to be, uh, identified first of all. Because of a couple of things. Number one, because he is the most, the more prominent one in terms of gifting, uh, he is obviously more of an evangelist than Barnas and this is an evangelistic ministry.
He is also more of, uh, an alpha dog. I mean, he is, he is a leader, he’s a stronger leader. He’s a, he’s a tougher leader and he’s going to, it’s gonna naturally be that. He takes the leadership in this way. We see first to the juice at statement is made right here in verse four and five. They immediately get on the island of Cypress and they’re going to the synagogues.
They start with the Jews, even though this is a ministry primarily to the Gentiles. And Paul is primarily called to the Gentiles. They go to the Jews first habitually and continually throughout the book of acts for two reasons, one it’s driven by promise. The Jews are the people of promise for 2200 years.
Since the time of Abraham, God has selected the, the, the descendants of Abraham to be his people. They are uniquely called sovereignly by God to be his own for 2200 years, they have been given the promises of God culminating. Ultimately in this individual called the anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ.
It is certainly natural to expect that they will be the ones that are first given the heralding of these promises being fulfilled in Christ that the Messiah has come, has brought the salvation, the kingdom of God on earth that has been promised. And basically the message to the Jews will be Jesus is the one you have been waiting for.
He has come and here’s what he’s done. It is driven also, not only by promise, but the Jews being spoken to first is driven by pragmatism. For the Jews, they already embrace the God that Paul is declaring. They already identify with Jehovah God, a one monotheistic religion, a one God faith. In contrast to that, of the Greeks and that of the, the Romans, they have the same religious book.
They believe the scriptures, they have the same description of righteous living. They have the same, uh, they, their whole sacrificial system has pointed towards Christ and it is now not negated by Christ. It is fulfilled by Christ. So naturally they go to the Jews first. And the fourth thing we see is there is influencing a world of pluralism on this first missionary journey.
Once out of the Eastern border of the Mediterranean, see the worldview and religious belief is dramatically different. It is a worldview that is dominated by two distinct things. Number one, what is historically known as paganism? It wasn’t a negative term. We, we tend to think of it negatively today. Uh, violent motorcycle gang or something, but paganism actually was it, it meant farmers and it just meant the rural folks.
The reason for that was in the early his centuries of the church, those that were outside of the cities. Tended to be the most, um, contrary to Christian faith and their beliefs. They held onto the ancient faith of their forefathers of their region, which was a belief that there is no one God who is, uh, superintendent creation.
There is no one God that is beyond all things. Transcendent gods are all a part of the cosmos. That’s what paganism is. Paganism is simply a, a, a belief that there is no one creator transcendent God, contrary to Judaism, contrary to Christian faith, which believes there is a God that is overall. He is sovereign.
He is transcend. He is Lord. He is king, and they were going to a world that did not embrace. That utterly was shocked. When Paul on Morris hill in acts chapter 17, stands up and starts talking about the unknown God, the guy you, you know, I see you have a statue here to an unknown. God, I wanna tell you about the unknown God.
And what does he do? He immediately starts talking about this unknown. God is the creator of the, of the heavens in the earth. He’s the creator of all the living. And like what, because it was contrary to the pagan view. Secondly, it was a belief system of pluralism. A multiplicity of God’s also allowed a multiplicity of religious faith.
Christianity was shockingly stark in their perspective that there was a God who was a creator one God who was judge one, God who was savior were all alien to the world in which they were going. And certainly the concept of one way to God through one God appointed deliver was not only confusing, but repugnant to the people, to which they were going.
Last comment I’m gonna make just about this first missionary journey as they are entering into this world in many ways, very similar to the worldviews of the day in which we live. It’s interesting that they go west and they go north. And we talk about the gospel going to the ends of the earth. Well, the interesting thing is that the gospel at the same time that it was going west and north was also going east and south.
For instance, we know one famous, uh, missionary in the early church was Thomas. One of the disciples and many records proved that Thomas went to India and was a missionary. So why does an act include the, the, the Indian missionary work. My belief is because the same paganism and pluralism that manifested itself in the Roman world manifested itself east and south as well.
And they’re focusing on the world with which, uh, Luke and, and the, the, the, the apostles were most familiar, but that doesn’t mean that the gospel didn’t go forth all over the world. And also it does not mean that it faced an entirely different world. Paganism and pluralism were what Israel, these, these formerly Israel Israelite now, Christian Jews are going to encounter wherever they go in the world.
Okay. I want to come now to verse six through 12, and I wanna read about a battle for soul. We’re gonna look first of all at the enemy’s method, and that’s, we’re gonna spend most of our time, and then focusing on what God does, the enemy’s method method. I wanna read. Just a couple of these verses to highlight again, they’ve gone now to Pathis, which is on the Western side of the island of Cypress.
And as they’ve gotten there, they have come to a man who is, is known as Sergius Paul. He is the PROCO, which means he’s the governor of the island. He’s the mucky muck of the whole place. And as they come to Seus Paulis they also encounter a man named Limus or bar Jesus. Both names are given to him who is a Jewish prophet in his own mind.
He is a magician. He works with the dark arts and he, but he is Jewish and he has great impact on Sergius PO. And so we find the first thing that is true of him in verse eight is that he is opposing the truth. Here’s what we read, but Elias the magician for that’s the meaning of his name, opposed them seeking to turn the PROCO away.
From the faith as their teaching began to gain inroads in the governor, a Limus attempts to oppose the messaging. We’ll see how in just a moment, but this opposition, it’s a term that Paul uses a number of times in his letters. One prominent place is in second Timothy chapter three, verse eight and nine, um, where it says this as he, Paul is talking, and this is Jan Jan, Janice, and jam Brees were the historic names, not recording the old Testament, but in, in Jewish writings of the magicians of Pharaoh.
And he says just as Janice and jam Brees opposed Moses. So these men, men he’s now facing in his ministry also opposed the truth. Men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith, but they will not get very far for their folly will be plain to all as. Was that of those two men, Paul wrote second Timothy saying I’ve faced many such opposers and they’re just like Janice and jam Brees that Moses had to contend with.
And Limus was one of those individuals. They opposed they stood, uh, against, as the word literally means in opposition to the truth. They’re opposing the truth, trying to keep the governor from believing the gospel. How, what was a Limus doing? What we’re told here, look at Versey actually the word is used twice.
Limus opposed them seeking to turn the PROCO away from the truth. The word turn is the same word that is used in verse 10, where Peter ad Paul addresses a Limus and says this you son of the devil you enemy of all righteousness. Full of all deceit in Villa, will you not stop? Here’s the word making crooked the PA the straight paths of the Lord.
He uses the same turd in acts chapter 20, verse 30, where he says this. And from among your own selves will arise. Men speaking, twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. In other words, this word, he was trying to turn the PROCO. He was, he was trying to make crooked the straight path of the Lord in acts 20.
You’re trying to twist it. The idea is he didn’t oppose by saying, let’s have a public debate. You know, Paul, you on one side, I’ll be on the other side. And let’s just look at the facts of the matter. That’s not what he’s doing. What a Limus is doing is twisting what has been said. He is trying to reshape it.
He is reconfiguring the messaging. It is a very subtle, it is a very influential, it is a very effective methodology, so much so that this PROCO, that is very interested in the presentation of Paul and Barnabas does not believe until this guy is utterly shut up. It was an effective methodology. And as you read this, you see what he’s doing.
They’re twisting the straight paths of the Lord in verse 10, those things that make sense, they’re making sense to the, to the religious leader. It’s, he’s starting to buy in, he’s starting to IBI the gospel, but the, the reli, this, this guy in Limus is, is twisting it, he’s turning and he is making it different than it actually is.
You know, the, the amazing thing. And of course, there’s an amazing thing about the gospel. I mean, the gospel, honestly, when you listen to the simple gospel, it actually isn’t that profound, right? I mean, here’s the gospel, our lives have something wrong. They’re not the way they ought to be. The Bible tells us that we, that what’s wrong is we have chosen to live life as we wanted to not according to the will of God and we’ve lived our own lives.
We’ve gone our own way. We’ve put ourselves in the throne of our own lives. And the Bible says that is what sin is. Sin is not doing the will of God. It is living. Sinfully doing my own choices. It is making me the Lord of life. That’s why things are wrong. The gospel says that that God in his mercy sent his own son to this world to bear the punishment that we had earned through that rebellion.
He bore the punishment and the cross for our sins, that we could be forgiven and we could enter into a eternal relationship with him. This is the simple gospel. That’s what it is that things are wrong. That life isn’t, as it ought to be. We sense it. I mean, who doesn’t sense that in ourselves and that we, we, we learned that it’s because I’m not letting God lead my life.
I’m not letting God direct me. I’m choosing to do it, which is what sin is, but God wanted me and he’s come after me at the cost of his own son. He’s given me the chance to be forgiven and brought back into eternal relationship with him. That’s the gospel. My wife, uh, had a girlfriend. She grew up with named Francis and both of them were professor’s daughter.
and Francis. And she were like joined at the hip growing up and they were at a Christian college and neither of the girls were believers at the time they were younger. And, but the Christian ed majors at the college always tried to practice their teaching and they’re they, their Bible club stuff on the professor’s kids.
So one time they got a bunch of professor’s kids in there and a number of them were believers. A number of them were not believers. Marion doesn’t think she was a saved at the time, but they end, they ended it. And they said anybody that wants to ask Jesus to be their savior. They, they presented the plan of salvation.
Anybody that wants to ask Jesus to be their savior, please stay. And everybody else can go. And Francis watched as everybody left the room and France is a very straight talking person and, and she, everybody left and she prayed and received Christ as her savior. And she got with Marion outside and she said, I guess everybody else has done that already because, and this was her quote.
Why would anybody turn down such a great offer?
don’t we all feel that way. I mean, when you hear the gospel, really? Yeah. We life isn’t right. It’s because we’ve chosen to do it our own and not to follow God yet. God wanted us. He came after us. He provides a way to be forgiven and live with him. Eternal. I. What a great offer, who wouldn’t want this? It’s a straight path.
It’s not crooked. It’s not twisty. It’s not saying, well, you know, maybe for you, but not for you. Maybe you got, you know, you’re probably not gonna be holy enough. No, it just says everybody’s in need. Everybody’s broken. Everybody can respond to this gospel. That’s been provided by Chris. So what happens? It’s such a deal.
Why doesn’t everybody believe?
One of the prominent reasons is because there is a twister, there is an influence. Certainly our sin works with it, but there is an individual. There is a, a, there is a, a massive multitude of ambassadors for him that is working to twist the message. If you have not embraced Jesus Christ as your savior, I would suggest to you that that twisting work is going on right now saying, yeah, it’s too simple or, or no, I don’t want it or I’d have to give up too much or yeah,
Limus came alongside Sirus Paulis and Paul and Barnabas shared the gospel simply freely, openly passionately. And every time it started to make a little bit of sense Limus would start twisting, twisting, twisting if you’re a Lord of the rings fan, you know, a scene in one of the movies, uh, the second movie where it’s in the land of Rowan and there’s this creepy looking guy actually look, both look kind of creepy, I guess.
Um, the one, the, the, the, the king. With the crown there, it’s gonna look a lot better in a little bit after this scene, but groom, a warm worm tongue is speaking to Theoden the king and he’s whispering in his ear. He’s constantly twisting things. As a matter of fact, this particular scene is where Gandolph has come and brought an entourage of, of, of heroes.
And they have come to help Rohan and he’s come to warn them of what’s taking place and come to, to aid them. And grim is whispering into the ears of, of Theo and things like these are quote showing Gand off the grace here. He’s a Herald of wo. Then he says this, he always brings ill news. My Lord, he goes on to argue that this guy, this, this Gandolph don’t listen to him.
He’s always negative. We, this is a hard time. We don’t need a negative voice. Gandolph of course does bring ill news, but he does. So to help the Oden be prepared, he also brings himself and others to bring aid, but Grimma is twisting it. He’s he’s arguing against it. He he’s making crooked the very meaning that, and just as
Gandolph will act toward Grimma in casting him to the ground to silence his message. Paul is no less violent in his treatment towards Limus in taking his sight for a time. Why? Because the twisting of truth is so tragically effective. They’re making crooked. It says in verse 10, the messaging to Seus Polish, the word is in the present tense.
it kept going on. There’s a narrative that kept twisting it and distorting it. I’ve really thought about this, cuz I’ve tried to imagine this. What would, what would be the messaging? And again, he’s not just, he’s not saying this is, this is, this is a lie. This is, this is, you know, I can show you where this isn’t the no, he’s, he’s distorting it.
How might that have happened? I’d suggest three things. I think he might have distorted the view of God that Paul and Barnabas are sharing. He says, I, he Sergius, I’m a Jewish prophet myself and they are presenting a view. of God. That is a sick God is God of judgment, a God of, of, of, of, of wrath, a God of punishment, a God of, of sin.
They are making God sound angry, hateful, cruel, emphasizing sin and forgiveness. Perhaps that’s one of the ways he just sort of twisted the messaging of grace. One eye would be positive. He did because one of the things that’s true in human nature, your nature, my nature is that we tend to ascribe to other people, our own motives I can imagine, uh, Amus saying something like this, as he, as he distorted the motivation of the evangelists, these guys are just trying to be influential and get a name for themselves.
Getting a PROCO to, to believe in their faith would be a great notation on their resume. Of course we know Amus at this time is threatened by the, the influence of Paul and Barnabas. He loves being in the orb of Sergi. As Paul, you can imagine he’s, he’s questioning, you know, why are they doing this? I mean, think about these guys.
Get the attention of why are they really here? What’s really going on. Or he might have distorted the impact on his life. You know, I know about Messiah, Messiah’s supposed to come as a righteous king, certainly not a disgraced criminal that experienced the crucifixion from your government. I can imagine him presenting to.
SEIUs Paulis in subtle ways. This isn’t worth it. I mean, this is your career. You buy into a, a, a, the, the Lordship of a criminal that, that Rome has allowed to be executed. I mean, really is the price worth it to you? Is it really gonna give you what you hope to gain? There’s just twisting. This is what twisting always does.
It takes elements of truth. I’m sure there were things he says, well, it is true. You know this, and, but why are they really doing this? Yeah. They’re giving you part of the story, but what will you really get? What will you really loose? Yeah. They’re talking about, you know, grace, but, you know, look at the view of God, just twisting, twisting, twisting what twisting the narrative does.
it makes the teller having to defend each step of the way, you know, Paul and Barnas gotta defend their nature, their, their character. And Paul just says, I’ve had it with this guy. I’m gonna Muslim him by the grace of God. And he has the enablement of the spirit to blind him temporarily because Paul saw the power behind the power.
He says it this way in these verses, he says, you are in verse 10, you are full of deceit. You are the son of the devil. He recognized he was the mouthpiece for darkness. That ultimately it is the dark one who is the twister and just keeps confusing things and keeps reiterating distorted messaging. The fascinating thing is that Sergius, Paul seems to be really taken by the works of Paul and Barnabas, the teaching of Paul and Barnabas.
But it’s all being reinterpreted and twisted in the messaging to him. One of the great twistings of the devil toward in, in, in, and I believe in our day is toward people that have been raised in Christian backgrounds. The enemy twists the view of God. All I experienced was a God who was requiring me to be better.
Be more, be good. There’s a twisting about the Bible. It’s all about rules. I know I’m not perfect. I know the stories, you know, I’ve heard it, but, but the Bible just makes me feel bad about myself. And I have enough negativity in my life. It just adds extra layers of guilt. This twisted views of Christianity.
It just keeps me from being me who I really am. I need freedom to be myself. Find love where I want. Have it look like what I think I need. the enemy twist the view of our lives. I never had happiness, never felt safe, never felt really happy. All the memories are terrible, but were they really were they really,
in our church, we have an overwhelmingly active group of people in their twenties and thirties, young marrieds. We have a large, we have over 160 of them. That’ll be here Wednesday night for a young married ministry. And there are many others that are not involved in that ministry. Young singles, young, young marrieds, young families and older and overwhelming number of them have started coming to ministries like, uh, F fi F or him with the story.
You know, I, I had some Christian background, but I bagged it. I bagged in college, I bagged in a young adulthood and, and I had all these reasons and all this, you know, it was restricting me. It wasn’t fulfilling me. And, and many of them, if you hear their stories or they’re saying, but I’m realizing I had a jaded perspective, I’ve tried other places to try to find it.
And I’ve found that Christ is it. And now my, my spouse and I, or me as a single adult, I, I I’m realizing, I want Christian friends. I wanna do life with people that have found the same reality, but so many of their stories are saying, I just, I just bought into this whole perspective, you know, that I’d had a restrictive background that, you know, that it was just my parents thing.
and I get it. We’ve all got a journey that, but there is an active twisting that goes on and I don’t know where you are today. I’m not saying you need to be a young adult at this message. It relates to, we can twist it way all the way through to the grave. We can be twisted all the way to the grave, but there is a twisting and cheating and, and, and say, well, now this was true.
And, and, and takes away my freedom. And, and it takes away, uh, my, my capacity to, to really be myself, all those lies were going into Sergius false. Limus was taking. Yeah. You know, they’re talking about this, but you know, what about this? Or you look at how restricted you’ll be, look at how it’ll hurt your career.
If, if you really IBI, who knows, oh, but this is what if he does he twists? And he turns, and he changes the memories in a couple of ways. I think specifically he does this.
He twists memories. We are far more influenceable than we realize. We often think our memories like a GoPro, you know, just sort of capturing things that we can, we can look at later on accurately as they were, but in a recent podcast, revisionist history, Malcolm Gladwell, very popular author today addressed the topic of memory and in his, his, his series in one episode, he talked about Brian Williams.
You remember maybe remember Brian Williams. Brian Williams was the host of the NBC news nightly news. When his whole career came tumbling down with a preposterous lie on March 23rd, 2013, he told David Letterman in an interview that he had been on a chink. Chinook helicopter that was fired on by enemy troops in Iraq, 10 years later.
Now that seems like the kind of thing you would remember, right? I mean, I’m, I’m, I know that I have not been on a military helicopter being fired on by rockets attached to grenades. My guess is, you know that about you as well, but how did he get that wrong? How did he manufacture that memory? And in the, in the podcast, uh, excuse me, in the, in the broadcast, um, Malcolm Gladwell interviewed lots and lots of, of people that, that specialized in memory and found that the memory experts.
Regularly expressed some empathy for Brian Williams, they cited one of the studies that was cited to him by many of these memory experts was a, a, a, um, study that was done by William Hurst and a team of expert researchers who did a 10 year study into the memories people have of nine 11. They evaluated these memories and they had records of things that these people had said years before.
And they found that 60% of the memories of people about the specific events of nine 11 had changed nothing changed except their memories changed. They gave all kinds of studies that he, he did Malcolm Gladwell did in this article and was just trying to present that our memories get twisted. We, we, we, we miss, remember if you will.
another thing that is done is we are influenced by twisted messaging. Psychologists, John bark at New York university did a, a famous what’s become a famous study. Now it was a bunch of researchers got together and they’re trying to see the influence of, of just words. And they got together, uh, a bunch of students 19 to 22 years old, and they had two different groups and they gave ’em both the same assignment.
And the assignment was that they were to take a bunch of words that they gave them and to make, uh, four words sentences, approximately out of the words. And so they all the first group diligently worked with their words and then they, they left the room and they did not know it, but actually that’s when the study actually began.
They left the room and they had to go to their next research, uh, location. And on this walk, as they went along long quarter, they went upstairs and they went to the next location. They, they, uh, tracked their time. How long, how fast they walked as a group, the next group they brought. And they had a lot of students.
So, you know, they had all different speed walkers and all those things. They got the next group in, they did the exact same assignment, but with this one, they threw into the list of words that they were making sentences out of, or phrases out of words, like bald, Florida, forgetful wrinkles, things that were associated with those of us that are more seasoned they found the difference in walking speed was monumental.
The second group walked slower and they were arguing, the whole treatise was, and there’s been lots of articles made out of this and research. And basically they were saying, we are so influenced by messaging that it influenced even the speed we walk. It’s how we view ourselves. They’re. Now, they’re now thinking old as they’re walking these 19 to 22 year old kids,
if you’ve ever tried to share the gospel with someone, especially if you’ve tried to share the gospel with people that you know, and love, it’s very hard to understand why they don’t get it. There’s twisting there’s there’s impact. And you look and say, ah, there’s so many narratives. They’ve got about Christianity, about God, about themselves, about how they can be happy.
There’s so many narratives and, and there’s and messaging gets twisted. Memories even are twisted. How in the world are twisted minds ever gonna really embrace Christ. I’m just gonna show you this here and we’re gonna stop. The answer is very simple. God has to intervene. You’ll notice what happens here in verse 10 and 11.
First of all, God silences the false messaging. Paul steps in, and he said, the hand of the Lord is upon you. And he takes away their sight. The hand of the Lord is a old and new Testament expression that always refers to the power of God. It said here, let me share the ones in acts, acts chapter four, verse 30, God, you stretch out your hand to heal acts seven 50.
God says did not. My hand make all these things acts 1121. And the hand of the Lord was with them. And a great number believed God’s hand God’s power has to be engaged. You’re not gonna talk them out of it. You’re not gonna ultimately be able Paul recognized, I’m not gonna debate this guy. I’m not gonna be able to, to, to, to shut him up myself by just trying to overwhelm him with dog dogma.
The devil is too smart. He’s got too many, too much experience. He is too masterful. God must do it. and what God did in verse in the second thing is God gave an alternative playlist. That’s gonna be going through the mind of this individual. This man, the PROCO was astonished. It says in verse 21 in verse 12, with the actions now, but most beautifully he believed
this is my final statement.
Many of you have people you dearly love who you just say. I don’t know why. Why won’t they believe? Why won’t they embrace? It’s it’s a straight path. It’s not a hard messaging. Yes. It, it needs humbling. We acknowledge our need. But the things they’re filling their life and the things they’re going after and, and, and the things they’re trying to find satisfaction.
I mean, anybody could see just looking, it’s not gonna work. It’s not working.
There’s a twister,
any influences, and he’s playing over and over and over a playlist that twists and twist. And the only answer we have is God, God, of the great hand, God of power is a P people. We should be crying out to God. He silenced this guy. He freed this man to become virtually. Everyone believes the belief here is genuine saving faith.
I’d like to pray this morning as we close Lord, I wanna pray this morning for every child, regardless of age 15, 25, 35, 45, 55, whom sadden has planted twisted memories and twisted messages in that are represented by families here this morning, deliver them, oh, God work in their lives. As only you can, that they might see the glorious light of the gospel for every person in this room.
Lord listening to this sermon, God silence, the twisted messaging of the enemy. Silence, the human messengers that are influencing their thinking mayor mighty hand. Be upon them. Lord do the work that only you can do in the lives of those. We love those. We long to see the straight paths of the gospel. And I pray this Lord, not only for those that were praying would embrace the gospel and be saved and born again.
But also for those that were praying would absorb the gospel would let it be that vending machine just rattling it down into the very heart of their lives. So it would change the way they live and the way they do life. Lord be active among us to your glory. I pray we face the great twisting fall, but we believe you’re greater.
And we look to you. In Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Now go on peace to love and serve and enjoy the Lord.