This morning, our scripture reading comes from various chapters in the book of Acts as well as into Galatians. Again, I will pause as I transition between the two, so you may keep up, but we will begin in Acts chapter 13 at verse 1.
Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a long friend of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then, after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. 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. He was with the pro-counsel Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. But Elimus the magician (for that is the meaning of his name) opposed them, seeking to turn the pro-counsel 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 villainy, 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 sun for a time.” Immediately, mist 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 at the teaching of the Lord. Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia, and John left them and returned to Jerusalem. But they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia.
From there, we turn to chapter 14, beginning at verse 21. When they had preached the gospel to that city, Derby, and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.
And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia, and when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Atalia, and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.
And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. They remained no little time with the disciples.
But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.
From there, we turn to Galatians chapter 2, beginning in the 11th verse. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.
So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray: Heavenly Father, we pray that you open our ears to hear and our hearts to understand, and that you fill our spirits with the remembrance, knowledge, and love that you gave your Son for us, that he became sin, him who knew no sin, so that we might enjoy his righteousness. That his life and his death were for the purpose of saving us and all those whom you have called—a salvation that we cannot receive on our own or earn or deserve by any merits of our own. Help us to understand how this message has been preached and taught across the lands, taken to the ends of the earth, and that we might receive it with willing ears, just like all those who have ever heard you.
In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
The Apostle Paul, having now had his apostolic calling and mission fully and publicly affirmed and recognized by the other apostles in Jerusalem, returned to his ministerial base camp in Syrian Antioch to continue his evangelizing of the Gentiles.
Now, something which we often forget about or gloss over as we read our New Testaments is that the places which are often named or referenced were actually real places, and that each city had its own important civic and cultural context. While these place names are quite familiar to us in light of their history in Scripture and throughout church history, we sometimes miss just why they were such important destinations and locations to the early church fathers.
Consider Syrian Antioch. During the days of the apostles, Syrian Antioch was the capital of the Roman province and military district of Syria, but before this, it was the capital and center of the Seleucid Kingdom, one of the three kingdoms that Alexander the Great’s empire fractured into after his death. It was established by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander’s generals, and it stood alongside the Ptolemaic Empire down in Egypt and the other remaining relatively independent and free city-states across Greece and northern Macedonia.
Then, during the inter-testamental period between the Old and New Testaments, before the Seleucid Kingdom was annexed by Rome, the region of Judea and Israel was under their control and rule, up until the Maccabean revolution, which occurred following the abomination which brings desolation caused by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, who sacrificed a pig in the holy place in the Jerusalem temple.
So, in the days of Paul and Barnabas, Syrian Antioch was a Greek city, a Roman city, and very much a Gentile and pagan place. Although there were Jews residing there, it certainly was not pro-Israel or even very Jew-friendly. Yet it was the ideal place from which to launch the gospel to the Gentiles.
Seleucus had established the city of Antioch here so that it could become the crossroads of the world. It was located at the perfect geographical juncture from which to control all land trade between Persia in the East, Europe in the West, and Africa in the South. This is also the same reason why every great nation in history fought over Israel’s territory—it was simply in the middle of everywhere.
Furthermore, by the apostolic age, Roman roads were very well established, crisscrossing across the empire and running through this very important city. Now we shall see how the Lord used the civic and empiric designs, plans, and works of sinful men to more easily spread His gospel and the apostolic witness to the ends of the earth.
We concluded last time with Paul writing to the Galatians: “On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised; and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.”
So Paul’s existing apostolic ministry to the Gentiles was recognized and endorsed because it was so clearly evident to the earlier apostles that God was already using him for this express purpose—preaching and debating with the Hellenists in Jerusalem, preaching to the Gentiles up in Cilicia to such a degree that it was heard about down in Jerusalem. This caused Barnabas to bring him over to Syrian Antioch from his hometown of Tarsus, preaching Christ to the Gentile pagans—people completely unfamiliar and ignorant of the Lord, the God of Israel, or His teachings and promises.
They didn’t know anything. Was Paul’s a special, ironic, and unique gift—the Jewish of Jews becoming the foremost evangelist to all the peoples of the world, the Gentiles—those people whom the Jews had been set apart from and set against from ancient times?
Now last time, I said that Paul would demonstrate how he had been defending Christ’s gospel of grace from any and all who would attempt to corrupt it, whether it be by evil intent or by error. It is true, because this is what he had already been showing and doing over and over again in Damascus, Arabia, Jerusalem, Cilicia, and Tarsus up to this point.
So it was that now, as Paul was enjoying a fruitful ministry in Antioch, with a revival growing up among the Gentiles and Jews worshipping Christ, the Holy Spirit spoke to the disciples, commanding that Paul and Barnabas be sent off on their first missionary trip. First, they sailed to the island of Cyprus, a Roman senatorial province—a place so very Roman that they had little to no military presence there. They preached and taught all across the island until they reached the provincial capital of Paphos.
There, Paul contended against the Jewish false prophet Elimus Bar-Jesus for the faith of the Roman pro-council Sergius Paulus. After the pro-council saw Elimus blinded by the prophetic word of Paul, he became their first recorded prominent Gentile convert to faith in Jesus Christ. This pro-council possessed the civic authority of Rome and so lent a degree of social legitimacy to their faith.
Then, after leaving Cyprus, the evangelists sailed north to the region of Pamphylia and the city of Perga. Here, Luke records them traveling around the region until they eventually came to Pisidian Antioch. However, as there was no direct route for travel to that city, they must have either traveled through some remote villages and towns and across a steep mountain range or, more likely, they followed the well-traveled and established and safe Roman roads westward and north around the lakes, passing through town after town after town until they finally reached Antioch, which itself was a very important city located also at the crossroads of trade and travel.
Here, they were welcomed into the Jewish synagogue. Paul was likely considered to be a visiting rabbi of note due to his credentials as a Pharisee since he was actually invited to speak. Whereupon, he immediately began preaching Jesus. Following the service, Paul and Barnabas were invited to return the following week as many of the Jews and Gentile converts, or God-fearers, sought to be discipled by them.
But the next week, the orthodox Jews were so incensed at what Paul was teaching and the positive response of the people to the gospel that they spoke against them. So Paul replied to the rejection, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.” Thus, the Gentiles there began to believe while the Jews ran Paul and Barnabas out of town.
Next, the evangelists traveled to Iconium, where they were again accepted into the synagogue, and there saw Jews and Gentiles alike come to faith in Christ. But the Jews who rejected the gospel rallied the other Gentiles against them. Regardless, Paul and Barnabas boldly preached Christ and performed numerous signs and miracles confirming their witness in the same manner as the prophets of old.
Until the populace was so stirred up against them to stone them for blasphemy, forcing them to flee. After Iconium, they traveled to Lystra, where at a word and by the Holy Spirit, Paul commanded a man born lame to be miraculously healed. This miracle, with their preaching, inspired the people to try and worship Paul and Barnabas as if they were the Greek gods, Zeus and Hermes.
But after these attempts at worship were rejected, Jews came down from Antioch and Iconium and turned the folks there against them, resulting in Paul actually being stoned this time within the city limits and then dragged outside the city walls. But when the disciples gathered together around his battered body, Paul rose again and returned into the city until they left the next day for Derby.
After spending an unrecorded amount of time in Derby and after winning many disciples for Christ there, the evangelists returned by the way they came, retracing their steps and installing elders (pastors) wherever a church had taken root, committing them to the Lord. Then, after leaving from Atalia, they sailed back across the Mediterranean, returning to where they had begun in Syrian Antioch, and declared all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.
Now some time after this, some men came up from Judea and began to teach the individual and personal necessity of a person to keep the whole law of Moses, including the oral Torah or the traditions of the elders, as being an additional requirement for salvation alongside faith in Jesus Christ. These teachers set themselves at odds with Paul and Barnabas and the gospel of grace being preached to the Gentiles.
This inspired the disciples here at Antioch to send Paul and Barnabas down to Jerusalem in order to put the question to the apostles and elders there to settle this story. It is presumed that these false teachers had arrived fairly soon after the evangelists returned from Antioch, and then they began to stir up their trouble.
Furthermore, it’s also presumed that during this time, additional messages concerning similar issues being raised back in Galatia reached the apostle at this time, prompting the writing of this epistle.
Now, the debates and concerns raised during the Jerusalem council of Acts 15 are so relevant to the issues which Paul addresses in this letter that if the letter was written after the council, then the determination of the council should have been mentioned and given the full weight of authority, but no mention of it is made in this letter.
Furthermore, as the council sent communications to the various churches with this Gentile-impacting decision, this epistle to the Galatians cannot be that letter, since it does not instruct them concerning the other issues raised of sexual immorality, food being sacrificed to idols, or eating blood and the meat of strangled animals, which were all commonly understood as being divine prohibitions that predated the giving of Torah and so were applicable to all humanity.
Nor might this letter have been a companion letter because it makes no mention of or reference to the other, as Paul does when he writes to the church of Colossi concerning Onesimus, which he also sends a letter to Philemon.
Now, considering Paul’s rebuke of Peter in Antioch, this also stands as evidence for the letter being written before the Jerusalem council. After the local ethnic Jewish Christians began to change their habits and practices regarding fellowship and communion with the Gentile Christians by separating from them, Paul declared that he publicly demanded of Peter, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Which really was the core question answered at the council with James, the brother of Jesus, resolving: “Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood.”
It is reasonably certain to us that Paul’s letter to the Galatians must predate the first council of elders. With what the Galatian church had already known of the apostle Paul concerning his ministry and by his written biographical testimony we’ve been studying the past two weeks to fill in the gaps, he has now established that his ministerial calling was by a revelation of Jesus Christ himself.
That since his apostolic authority was given to him by Jesus, his was not subordinate to the apostles in Jerusalem, but equal to theirs. That his understanding of the gospel of grace came independently from the apostles in Jerusalem by virtue of his prior education and by a changed understanding, from being mentally transformed in his regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
That the gospel which Paul had always preached was independently affirmed and confirmed as being true and correct by the other apostles, principally Peter, James, and John, and secondarily by the willing and helpful evangelistic participation of Barnabas, a confirmed entrusted agent of the Jerusalem apostles and himself a Levite.
That his particular calling and personal mission was to be the apostle to the Gentiles, as affirmed by the Jerusalem apostles and by the Holy Spirit who spoke through the church in Antioch.
And that wherever Paul went and with whomever he was, he was always contending for the faith, standing up for the truth of Jesus and his gracious gospel of salvation, taking Christ to all the chosen elect of God.
Now Paul’s mission to the Gentiles was such a spiritual driving force for him that he began preaching immediately upon his conversion by going down to Arabia, the nearby Nabataean kingdom. Three years later, when he returned to Jerusalem, Paul disputed with the Hellenists, the Gentiles there in Jerusalem, concerning the Lord Jesus, so much so that they sought to kill him.
Both Paul’s hometown of Tarsus up in Cilicia and in Syrian Antioch were under full Roman authority, yet were still governed according to their local laws. They were heavily cosmopolitan and so influenced by all of the many different peoples passing through there for trade or travel. These were obviously Gentile cities, yet these were the first places where Paul spent much of his early ministry.
Although there was some local Jewish presence, Paul was always evangelizing the pagans from the very beginning. Then every place he traveled to during his first missionary journey was to a center of major Roman influence. The province of Cyprus was so heavily Romanized that its governor was appointed by the Senate, not Caesar, because it posed no threat to the emperor.
Yet this was where Paul received his first significant Gentile convert to Christ. The cities of Antioch, Pisidia, Iconium, and Lystra were coloniae civium Romanorum—colonies of Roman citizens. These were places where retired Roman legionnaires—the veterans of Roman wars—were given land, exempted from taxation, and also granted the very real luxury and privilege of Roman citizenship.
These were places that could be not more Roman than if they were in Rome themselves. Every city also had its own patron deity. Presiding Antioch had Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths; Iconium had Sibeli, the Phrygian mother of the gods; and Lystra principally had Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, whom the imperial cult portrayed Caesar as.
These local deities were considered to have the greatest amount of power and influence in and over these places, and everybody was required to offer sacrifice to these patrons. As long as they did that, then they could also worship whomever, whatever, and however they wished.
Sounds kind of like our modern circumstances, doesn’t it? Where our own contemporary culture might leave us orthodox Christians alone if we would only just deny the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Bible, and bow down and conform to the new cultural social orthodoxy. Or at least if we would only stay silent and not speak against it.
Now the primary loyalty of the residents of these cities was first and foremost to Rome because of all that Rome had provided them. They were loyal because they were well compensated for being loyal and so they continued to benefit from all that Rome had to offer. The Roman Empire answered their question of ‘what’s in it for me?’ Rome had purchased them their lunch, and since we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch, Rome expected nothing but absolute and perfect loyalty and obedience without question.
And these Romans were happy to comply. Rome had the greatest display of power and strength. Their culture emphasized personal and corporate strength—might makes right. That was what they all knew and had seen working.
So traveling throughout the pagan Roman world, Paul could not take the gospel to any locations that were less Jewish and less expected to be receptive to our necessity for a Savior, much less one who was a convicted and executed crucified criminal, yet who is also God and the king of all creation—a Savior who died so that we would not perish and who was raised from the dead so that we would be assured of living eternally with him.
Paul, as the apostle to the Gentiles, certainly had his work cut out for him when he shared the gospel of grace. And we know that Paul was not afraid of confrontation. In fact, the narrative of the whole New Testament strongly suggests that he sought it out. He was so all in for Christ that when he traveled, he was always looking for a fight, ready to prove that Jesus Christ had lived and died to rescue us from our sins and our enslavement to Satan and the world.
While in Damascus, the former Pharisee and zealous hunter of Christians upset the local Jews so much by proving that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah and by his preaching the message of salvation to everyone that they sought to kill him for it. He was also so riled up and upset the authorities in Arabia that their king, Aretas IV, made common cause against Paul with the Jews, a people he had a very negative relationship with because the wife that Herod Antipas divorced, so that he could instead marry his brother’s wife, Herodias, was his daughter.
Paul did not fear to go to the Hellenists in Jerusalem, nor the Hellenists in Syrian Antioch, nor to the other Gentiles in Tarsus and Cilicia. Paul contested against false prophets—the magician Elimus Bar-Jesus—for the soul of the Cyprian pro-council Sergius Paulus.
Whenever Paul and Barnabas entered the city, they first went into the local synagogue, preaching Christ, for there were proselytes and converts and God-fearers present, and these Gentiles were surely the most receptive to the gospel because they were already familiar with Judaism, but not necessarily as fully committed to the religion as an ethnic Jew would be.
So, when the evangelists were eventually kicked out of the synagogues after preaching Jesus Christ with such spirit-driven authority, these Gentiles often followed, forming the core group of each new body of believers. Standing up and calling out Peter’s error, contending against this lead apostle, demonstrated not only their equal status as apostles, but that the truth of the gospel will always triumph against any and all errors or falsehoods, no matter who is offering them.
Paul debated and argued with the Jews convincingly, contending for this gospel against the experts who should have recognized the truth but were willfully blind. He was censured, banished, persecuted, and stoned for this gospel that he preached, yet he still refused to back down or surrender an inch of spiritual ground.
He was a theological legionnaire, assaulting the strongholds of Satan by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Roman Gentiles were being drawn to him—to this kindred spirit and the knowledge of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ alone, instead of salvation by any action on their part or by any works of religion, or by them trying to keep a law which no ordinary person could ever keep.
They had received salvation by earnestly believing that Jesus Christ had lived the life of perfect obedience on their behalf, died so that they might live, and was raised from the dead, now reigning with everything in heaven and earth subject to him and his authority—all so that they might possess the promise of eternal life.
Paul charged up the enemy lines. He assaulted the high places, the fortifications, the bastions of Satan’s pagan power again and again, and these Gentiles witnessed and experienced the Holy Spirit’s triumph over their local pagan and false deities and also over the power and influence that Rome wielded upon their sinful hearts.
The Gentiles were being conquered by the power of God. They were taken captive by the Holy Spirit, forsaking their absolute loyalty to Rome and the emperor to instead gain an eternal inheritance, one far better than property in a distant land or freedom from taxation. They were now set free from their prior service to Satan and had gained an eternal citizenship in heaven.
Truly, Paul preached Christ crucified—a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles—which was, for those with the spiritual ears to hear, to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Nothing less than this, nothing less than the power of the Holy Spirit, would conquer their hearts, annexing them into the kingdom of God. So, in his argument to the Galatian believers, Paul is very confident that the truth of Christ’s gospel of grace will triumph over the Judaizers and all other false teachers.
He is confident that the Galatians will listen to his reminders that we will listen and so be encouraged in the faith and remember the peace which passes all understanding that we all first felt when we accepted Christ—when we realized that all of our burdens, the weight of all of our sin and guilt, have been dropped at the foot of the cross, where Jesus died for our sake.
Paul expected that we who hear Jesus calling us will accept his free gift of grace, will trust in his works alone instead of our own, will have faith that his righteousness is being shared and given to us, and will believe that his grace is greater than all of our sin.
We know that it is by the will of God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and through the work and merciful grace of Jesus Christ, that we are saved from the penalty of our sins, are being saved and sanctified from their corruptions, and will ultimately be saved on the day of judgment when Christ returns.
Then we shall receive the eternal reward which we have been chosen and predestined for from before the foundation of the world. Praise God. Amen.