SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/12/2018 11:03 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-1
“Spiritual Opposition”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 13:6 8-13
Message of the verses: “6 When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they found a magician, a Jewish false prophet whose name was Bar-Jesus, 7 who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence. This man summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. 8 But Elymas the magician (for so his name is translated) was opposing them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith…13 Now Paul and his companions put out to sea from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia; but John left them and returned to Jerusalem.”
We pick up the story of this first mission’s trip in
verse six which reveals that they had gone through the whole island and they
ended up in Paphos. John MacArthur
quotes from the Wycliffe Historical Geography of Bible Lands the following
about Paphos. “It was a great center for
the worship of Aphrodite [Venus]…The greatest festival in Cyprus in honor of
Aphrodite was the Aphrodisia, held for three days each spring. It was attended by great crowds not only from
all parts of Cyprus but also from surrounding countries.” MacArthur adds “It was a city ripe with
immorality: ‘Extensive religious
prostitution accompanied [Aphrodite’s] rites at Paphos.”
Remembering that this was the capital of Cyprus we move
on to talk about the fact that the missions team “found a certain
magician.” The word for magician in the
Greek is Magos: “1a) the name given by the Babylonians
(Chaldeans), Medes, Persians, and others, to the wise men, teachers, priests, physicians,
astrologers, seers, interpreters of dreams, augers, soothsayers, sorcerers etc.
1b) the oriental wise men (astrologers) who, having discovered by the rising of
a remarkable star that the Messiah had just been born, came to Jerusalem to
worship him 1c) a false prophet and sorcerer.”
This word, as we see does not always mean something that is wicked, but
also as we see it can. In Matthew 2:1 we
see the word used of the men who came from the East to worship the Lord. John MacArthur writes “Later, however, the
term magician was used to describe all sorts of practitioners of magic and
dabblers in the occult. Bar-Jesus being
Jewish obviously was not one of the Medo-Persian magi. Like Simon (Acts 8:9-11), he was a deceiver
who put his knowledge to evil use.”
It is rather ironic that this false prophet as Luke later
describes him means “son of salvation.”
This is rather strange indeed for him to have this name since we see he
is a false prophet. We find that it was
no accident for this man to attach himself to the “proconsul,” for I have to
believe that this proconsul was using his abilities to get information to help
his cause. We know that the kingdom of
darkness is eager to influence those who rule as all we have to do is look
around at our world today in places like North Korea, or in most of the
countries of the Middle East or any other country that has many Muslins in it.
John MacArthur adds “Much of the evil in this world can be traced ultimately to
such baleful influences by ‘the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly
places (Eph. 6:12; cf. Dan. 10:13-11:1).”
(We will continue looking at these verses in our next SD.)
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I think that what
I can learn from this part of these verses is that I have to make sure to be on
guard as the Spiritual Darkness can be tricky.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Keep my Spiritual armor on.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Moses” (Exodus 14:21-22).
Today’s Bible
question: “Which Gospel tells of Jesus
raising Lazarus from the dead?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/12/2018 11:40 AM
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