"Spiritual Victory" (Acts 13:9-12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/14/2018 8:26 AM

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  Spiritual Victory

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Acts 13:9-12

            Message of the verses:  “9 But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze on him, 10  and said, "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? 11 “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. 12 Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had happened, being amazed at the teaching of the Lord.”

            We mentioned in an earlier SD that there was a battle going on for the soul of Sergius Paulus, and as we open this SD we see that that battle comes to a climax.  Another thing we see is that Luke notes that Saul was also called Paul which was his Roman name, and all through the rest of the book of Acts Luke uses Paul instead of Saul.  Next we see that Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit to do what he does next which is fixing his eyes upon this false prophet.  It is not good to dabble in the occult which is what Bar-Jesus was doing and we see because that was what he was doing for Luke goes on to write that Paul tells Bar-Jesus that he was “full of all deceit and fraud.”  John MacArthur writes: “Dolos (‘deceit’) is the Greek word for ‘a snare.’  Like a cleverly disguised snare, Bar-Jesus was not what he appeared to be to his unsuspecting victims.  Radiourgias (‘fraud’) appears only here in the New Testament.  It meant originally, ‘ease or facility in doing hence readiness in turning the hand of anything, bad or good; and so recklessness, unscrupulousness, wickedness’ (Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament).’”  We mentioned earlier that the name Bar-Jesus means “son of salvation,” and in this case that we are looking at here Paul calls him a “son of the devil.”  He was not a righteous prophet like he thought he was for Paul denounced him as the “enemy of all righteousness” as he constantly twisted and perverted God’s truth, which lead Paul to ask the question “will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?”

            Bar-Jesus was not to get away with just a good talking to by Paul because he had made others spiritually blind, so now he will suffer physically blindness.  Paul tells him next “the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and not see the sun for a time.”  It was only because God is merciful that this blindness was temporary.  Perhaps this physical blindness caused him to understand his spiritual blindness and afterwards sought the Lord to save him.

            Next we read about this spiritual victory that came about as the battle for Sergius Paulus’s soul is now over as we read “Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had happened, being amazed at the teaching of the Lord.”  As we have been studying the book of Acts since last June we have seen many different times that a miracle was used to call a person to the Lord and that is what happened here.  John MacArthur writes “Significantly, it was ‘the teaching of the Lord, not the stunning miracle he had just witnessed, that prompted the proconsul to believe.  He was ‘amazed at the teaching of the Lord, not at the miracle.’”

            MacArthur concludes his first chapter on the 13^th chapter of Acts by writing “The church at Antioch stands for all time as an example of an effective church.  The successful mission to evangelize the Gentile world that it initiated was a turning point in history.  The true church of Jesus Christ on earth today is the spiritual legacy of that outreach.”

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  As I look at this last quote from John MacArthur I never put together the importance of the church at Antioch and for that I praise the Lord and desire to do similar things by telling others about how they too can be saved like Sergius Paulus.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust the Lord to be with me in a special way for these next few days as there are a lot of things on my plate.

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “To wash seven times in the Jordan River” (2 Kings 5:10).

Today’s Bible question:  “What had Paul done to Titus that he hoped to find true?”

Answer in our next SD

2/14/2018 9:03 AM