Outlines the book of Acts by dividing it into two main sections: the ministry of Peter (chapters 1-12) and the ministry of Paul (chapters 13-28), as evidenced by the frequency of their names in the text. It highlights key events and figures within each section, such as Peter's leadership in the early church and Paul's pivotal role in evangelizing the Gentiles. The sermon emphasizes Barnabas's transitional role in bridging Peter's and Paul's ministries and concludes that the book's narrative flow is best understood through the prominence of these two apostles. The core lesson is that God uses individuals with distinct gifts to advance His kingdom, moving from the initial spread of the gospel among Jews to its global reach.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.20 → restored 4.45
Acts chapter thirteen four. This morning we read to verse three. I want to start with the fourth verse. Acts thirteen four. So they being sent forth by the Holy Spirit departed into Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and they had also John as their helper. And when they had gone through the aisle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, who was with the deputy of the country, Sergius Paulus, a prudent man, who called for Barnabas and Saul and desired to hear the word of God.
But Elemas, the sorcerer, or so is his name by interpretation, withstood them. seeking to turn away the deputy from the face. Then Saul, who also is called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, set his eyes on him, and said, O full of all deceit and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.
Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia, and John departing from them returned to Jerusalem. May the Lord bless his word. The book of Acts, of course, was written by Luke. Luke was a very careful, accurate historian. And it's surprising how many little things are contained in his words. And if you don't read the words with the care that he wrote them with, you miss a lot. And often we're not quite that careful with the Word of God as we study it. In verse nine, Paul, who also is called Paul, is spoken of.
Now it was customary in those days for people in the Roman Empire to have two names. One was the name that went with their own native tongue and their own native culture. And Saul was a Hebrew and Saul was a Hebrew name. Saul was also a citizen of the Roman Empire. And his Greek name was Paul. And Paul was the name that a person like that would have used in Greek circles. Well, amongst the Jews, he would ordinarily go by Saul. Or perhaps instead of just using both names at once, the man might use the name that most fitted the character that he wanted to emphasize in himself.
The names were not joined together like we have today where you have a first name and a last name. It was either or. Either name was the full legal name of the man. And he could use either name. So here you have them both in one verse. Now we've come to the end of a week, to the end of twelve messages. on the book of Acts. And I suppose now that we've got the end, to the end, it would be a very suitable time to give you an outline of the book. Usually, you know, that comes at the beginning. And I didn't give you an outline of the book of Acts when you started out. I'm going to give you one tonight. And I want you to memorize it. And you don't need to write it down now because I want you to trust your memory here.
And I'm just going to give it to you. I'm going to recite it to you. And you just put it in your mind and you memorize it, all right? You know, I worked for a long time to find an outline of the book of Acts. I had a bunch of them in my notes. Every time I heard a preacher preach on it, he'd give an outline, three or four, five, six, seven points. Big long sentences usually on Acts. Some books, the outlines come out rather nice. But on the book of Acts, outlines don't work out well. It's not an easy book to outline. It's not an easy book to come up with a simple outline. I like simple outlines. And so I never did find in all my notes and commentary that I find an outline that I thought was simple enough for a fellow like me with a poor memory to memorize.
But I was searching. And I'm a great concordance searcher. A lot of my Bible study I do in a concordance. I start looking for words that might characterize a book. If I can possibly make an outline using the words that are in the Bible book, that's my favorite way of doing it. And so I was thinking, and I'd think through the chapters, and I'd look at the doctrinal structure, and look at the historical structure. I thought about Acts one eight, which is the key verse, and I thought, well, I'll outline it, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and under the uttermost parts of the earth, four points. But the book just doesn't divide up that way into an outline. That's the key sentence, but it doesn't outline that way. So one day I got searching in my concordance and tracing through various words, and I was working on, at this point, names of people in the book.
Names of different apostles, James and Peter and John and Stephen and Philip and Barnabas and so forth. And I came on an outline that satisfies me as being a pretty accurate outline of the book and very simple. Now put it in your mind, Roman numeral one, Peter. Roman numeral two, Paul. That's it. Have you got it memorized? Now that's not too complicated, is it? Peter, the chapters, well, they're not so easy to remember. One to twelve, Paul, thirteen to twenty-eight. One to twelve, and for Peter and thirteen to twenty-eight for Paul. And you know, this outline seems almost too simple, but it really does express the flow of the book of Acts.
Now, what I did was I, finally, being an engineer by training, and I always liked making graphs, I decided I would graph these names. I would lay out a graph in which the baseline were the chapters in the book. Now, you probably can't read the numbers from there, but they're one, two, three, and so forth, all the way up to twenty-eighth. number five and ten and fifteen I've put in red just to make it a little easier to read but that's all it says across this line here just one to twenty eight that's the baseline and above every chapter I made a vertical bar and I've plotted the number of times the word Peter appeared not the not the person himself but the word in the first chapter for instance twice in the second chapter three times in the next six times and so forth, a little break that didn't appear at all in chapter six and seven, then an eight two times, a six and nine, sixteen in chapter ten, down to four, up to ten in chapter twelve.
Then it disappeared, except for once in chapter fifteen. A very sharp cutoff point after chapter twelve, the name of Peter never appears after chapter twelve in the book of Acts except once. in the Jerusalem Council his name appears there let's just notice how how this flows let's turn the pages go back to the beginning the book of Acts and I want you to notice that this is not strictly the fact that his name is there but that he is the central character of the first twelve chapters of the book he is the dominant character and as the dominant character of the book His name expresses the fact that this was a period when the gospel was going out amongst the Jews and beginning to spread in his ministry of opening the door, of turning the key, opening the door of the kingdom to Samaritans and Gentiles as well as Jews was being fulfilled.
Chapter one, verse fifteen. Here they are gathered together in the upper room, and in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and then he began to talk about how they needed a replacement for Judas. And he led that. Chapter two, the day of Pentecost. They all began to speak, preach the gospel in these foreign languages. And then verse fourteen. But Peter standing up. And then the rest of the chapter is Peter preaching. So he's the dominant figure in chapter two. Chapter three, verse one. Peter and John went up to the temple to pray. And there's the lame man. And he asked for help. Verse four. Peter fastening his eyes upon him with John John is there but John is not the dominant figure here Peter with John said look on us then verse six then Peter said silver and gold have I none but such as I have give I thee in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk and so Peter performs the miracle and raises a man and then down in verse twelve and when Peter saw he answered the people and now you have Peter's second sermon and the rest of chapter And they go into chapter four.
Chapter four, verse eight. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said unto them, ye rulers of the people and so forth. And now Peter addresses the Sanhedrin. Verse thirteen. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled and took notice. And then Peter and John here are before the Sanhedrin. Chapter five, verse three. Ananias and his wife had committed their sins, Sapphira. And Peter said, Ananias, why is Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? He's the leader. He's the one who is the spokesman here in connection with the sin of Ananias.
That's verse three. Verse twenty nine. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, we ought to obey God rather than men. They're in persecution here. They're on trial. And Peter is the spokesman. Now we have a little break in chapter six. Chapter six and seven are all about Stephen. Well, chapter six about the choosing of these men to serve the tables, and then Stephen preaches his sermon at the end of chapter seven he's put to death. Chapter eight is about Philip. But in chapter eight, Peter is called to Samaria with John and lays hands on the Samaritan so that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Chapter nine.
Still in the break period where Peter is not much on the scene. In chapter nine you have the conversion of Saul. But then you get to the end, toward the end of chapter nine, down to verse thirty-two and we're back to Peter again. Verse thirty-two. He came to pass as Peter, passed throughout all quarters. He came down also to the saints who dwelt at Lydda. And you have Aeneas being healed, Dorcas being raised from the dead by Peter. See the prominence of Peter through these chapters. All right, now we come to chapter ten. Now we spent a whole meeting on chapter ten. A whole session on chapter ten, Peter being sent to the house of Cornelius. Pass over that. That's the time, that's the chapter in which his name appears sixteen times.
The highest by far of any chapter. Chapter eleven, he's in Jerusalem explaining this to the apostles at Jerusalem, why he went there. The last part of the chapter, we have the founding of the church at Antioch in which Peter's name does not appear, as I recall. Chapter twelve, Peter again is dominant. He is miraculously released from prison, and he goes to the house where the people are praying for them and knocks on the door and Rota is too nervous to admit him, but goes in telling the people that Peter's been released. Now verse eighteen, chapter twelve. Now as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers concerning what was become of Peter.
Now that's the last occurrence in the book of the name Peter, except for the one mention of his name in the fifteenth chapter of Acts. It's a very, very sharp cutoff there. After all this over and over and over again, he almost virtually almost totally disappears from the scene. And he does appear in the fifteenth chapter when Paul goes up to Jerusalem. Now we go into chapter thirteen and we read, we noted verse nine, Saul who also is called Paul. Now verse nine is the first time the name Paul appears in the book of Acts. Up to this time he's been called Saul.
You probably can't see the little dotted lines that I've got on this chart plotting the name of Saul. It's not the significant part. Remember the outline is not Peter and Saul but Peter and Paul. Remember I said that I'm not outlining the... I'm not counting the appearances of the men. I'm counting the appearances of their names. And so as soon as the name of Peter virtually disappears, the name of Paul appears for the first time. And then the red bars, starting with chapter thirteen, are the appearances of the name Paul in the book of Acts. And you'll notice that there's not a single chapter that's missed. And the smallest number... is chapter twenty-two with three times.
And then there's two chapters with five, and everything else is six or more times the name of Paul appears in every chapter after this. Well, there's no need to turn the pages of those chapters because the chart itself makes it obvious that he is the dominant character in the book from that point on. And the real cutoff point is right here, when the name is changed from Saul to Paul, when he assumes his Roman name or his Greek name, and he sets aside his Jewish name, and he becomes from then on Paul. Now, the name Saul, by the way, disappears at this point. He is no longer called Saul.
He is not called Saul again in the book of Acts with one exception. that when he tells about his conversion later on, when he gives his testimony later on, and he tells how he was on the Damascus road, he says, I heard a voice from heaven saying, Saul, Saul, why persecute thou me? Now, obviously, he can't change that to Paul. Paul, that happened back in chapter nine, and he has to leave the original quote the way God said it. So there he refers back to chapter nine and he was addressed as Saul and he quotes it that way. But other than that, the name Saul totally disappears at verse nine here from the book. Isn't that interesting how these names are laid out like this?
And it is, I believe, a suitable outline of the book because it expresses the dominant characters in the book. Now, one of the things down below the main line, you notice the plot of the name of Barnabas. And it appears... through the central chapter, sort of like rises up and then disappears. And Barnabas serves in the Book of Acts as the man who makes the transition from Peter to Paul. He's the one who steps into the picture and sort of is used like a catalyst in chemistry to take the movement of the book away from Peter and over to Paul, from the apostles, the old original group of apostles, to the new apostle called for the Gentiles.
And so you'll see that the plot of the name of Barnabas overlaps the two sections, the Peter section, one to twelve, and the Paul section, thirteen to twenty-eight, and Barnabas comes along and it just sort of humps up there and soon disappears, but it's the transition name in the book. Okay, now let's go back to where we left off on Friday night. We had been talking about four streams that converge on Antioch, And we said two of these streams were the stream of missionary advance, and the second stream, the stream of an opening to the Gentiles. Two lines of thought, two rivers of thought that go along in the book, rather parallel.
One is missionary advance, and by that I mean geographically, to the uttermost parts of the earth. And the other is the fact that God was starting to save Gentiles. And then... There goes my saying, if you hook the wrong hook, you're in trouble. Well, all right, let's leave it there. Then I said there's two more rivers, Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas and Saul. And these are rivers in the sense that God is tracing the story of these two men. Now Barnabas, go back to chapter four. I'm not going to treat them separately. I'm going to trace them along side by side here.
And you will note that Barnabas is the man who has the ministry of bringing Saul into the picture. Acts four, verse thirty-three. Acts four, thirty-three. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. Neither were there any among them that lacked, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down to the apostles' feet. Now, this was the practice in the Jerusalem church, as we mentioned this morning, that people brought what they stole their possessions, they brought the money from the real estate, and they just turned it into the apostles.
Now, they didn't have to. This becomes evident in chapter five. It wasn't necessary, but they did it. Verse thirty-six. and Joseph, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, which is being interpreted as a son of consolation or the son of comfort, a Levite of the country of Cyprus, Barnabas comes from Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet. Now, why does this come in here? Why is this mentioned that Barnabas did it when we are told that other people did it as well? Well, the implication is, that the offering that Barnabas made was a rather substantial one, probably exceeded what most people brought.
And maybe a lot of people didn't bring everything, but just brought part of their goods, and Barnabas evidently turned everything in. And now if you think in terms of chapter five, what immediately followed was that Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property of theirs, and they brought part of the money, but not all, and they pretended that they had brought it all, And Peter challenged them, and he challenged them by saying that they were lying to the Holy Spirit. And he said, you know that you didn't have to bring it all. And the result was that these people were struck down dead.
Both the husband and the wife fell dead at the feet of the Apostle Peter. You notice in verse four, he says, while it remained, was it not thine own? That is, you didn't have to sell it. This was not compulsory. And after it was sold, was it not in my power? That is, you didn't have to bring the money in. You didn't have, you could have brought part of it, you could have brought all of it. But what they did was they pretended to bring it all, and they didn't. Now, the only thing I can see here is that these people saw the honor that went to Barnabas And they said, we want to be honored like he is. We want to be held in the esteem of saints like he is. We want people to say that we're as devoted as Barnabas.
And so we're going to pretend that we've given everything to. And this is hypocrisy, pretending to be more spiritual and more devoted than they really were. Now going back to chapter four again, putting these two together, you see the picture that comes out is that Barnabas was held in high esteem in the church for his generosity. and his godliness now chapter seven verse fifty eight now here's the death of Stephen and in verse fifty eight when Stephen was being stoned to death the people who stoned them to death laid his clothes at a young man's feet whose name was Saul Saul was a young man, probably a good bit younger than Barnabas at this point.
And chapter eight, verse one, Saul has entered the picture now. Chapter eight, verse one, he was consenting to his death. And Saul himself launched a great persecution of the saints. Verse three, as for Saul, he made havoc to the church. I can go quickly here because you know this story. Chapter nine, the conversion of Saul. And when he was converted, we have already seen during the week that God told him, even before he got up on his feet, that he was to be a missionary to the Gentiles. And we also saw that God told Ananias, that's verses thirteen to sixteen, God told the man who was sent to baptize him.
In verse fifteen, go thy way, that is Ananias, you go and do what I say, because he's a chosen vessel unto me to bear my name before the Gentiles. So the calling of Paul was known to the early church through Ananias, even if Paul himself didn't say anything about it. Now verse nineteen, Saul in Damascus immediately starts preaching Christ. As soon as his blindness is gone, he's with the disciples there in verse nineteen, verse twenty. Immediately he preached Christ, making him known. Now he soon ran into opposition. Verse twenty three. After many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to kill him.
Apparently it was during that time that he went off into Arabia and came back again. But sooner or later he ran into this persecution in Damascus. Verse twenty five. Then the disciples took him by night and let him down by the wall in a basket. Now, this to me as a Sunday school child was always a, you know, sort of a glamorous adventure. I'd like to go to the moon if NASA would give me a birth on one of those moon ships. I'd take it. I'd like to go. And, you know, most kids would say, I want to be lowered over the wall in a basket. And now when we assume that it's that way, we miss, we don't understand Saul. Saul was a proud Pharisee of the Pharisee. And this was one of the most humiliating experiences of his life.
put down a reference here second Corinthians eleven thirty to thirty three second Corinthians eleven just put it down there and someday when you come to that story again you'll turn to that and and you'll remember what I said about this man here I want to read you those verses if I must needs glory I will glory the things which concern my infirmities In Damascus, the governor under Aretas, the king, kept the city of Damascus with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me. And I threw a window in the basket. Was I let down by the wall and escaped his hands. Now Paul is saying this, not in respect of boasting.
He says, if I've got a glory, I've got a glory in my weaknesses. That was the day of his weakness. That to him was one of the most humiliating days of his life. Apparently he ranked it. with being shipwrecked and being whipped and being jailed and all those other humiliating experiences and this was a tremendously humiliating thing to the Apostle Paul in verse twenty six we'll go back to Acts nine now verse twenty six he comes to Jerusalem and in Jerusalem this is three years after his conversion according to Galatians one he tries to join the disciples he tries to get to the Apostles and they were in hiding because of the persecution. And he was not able to contact them.
And they didn't believe that he was a disciple. They'd heard the reports from Damascus, but they thought it was a trick. Now, how does he finally get through? Barnabas. Barnabas, the man who takes him into the presence of the apostles, verse twenty-seven. Barnabas, the man who believes in people. Barnabas, the man who sees the good in other people. Saul and brings him to the apostles he the ministry of Barnabas first time now he is being used to bring Saul into the picture in the book of Acts now we go we oh wait a minute now let's go on to verse twenty eight here and so Saul was there and he was with them in Jerusalem he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and the end of verse twenty nine they wanted to kill him and when the brother knew that his life was in danger now he was accepted by them and his life was in danger They brought him down to Caesarea and sent him forth to Tarsus.
He took Paul and they sent him to Tarsus and then had the church's rest throughout all Judea and Galilee. Now he was gone over to Tarsus for some, well, seven or eight years. He disappears off the scene here. I want to pick this chart up here and see if I can show you that. Here's a map of the turkey here, and Tarsus was right up in here. Antioch was around the corner. And they weren't too far apart across the sea, maybe a little more distance if you went around by land. And Saul is sent up there to Tarsus. That was his hometown. They just sent him home, so he'd be safe. And for seven or eight years, he is gone.
Now we move on to chapter eleven. Verse twenty-five. Remember how we saw that... Barnabas, verse twenty-two, isn't it? Barnabas was sent to Antioch to look into this new assembly that had started out among Gentiles. Verse twenty-three, when he got there and saw the grace of God, he was glad and exhorted them to cling to the Lord. Verse twenty-five, then departed Barnabas to Tarsus to seek Saul. Now here's the key here, you see. How did Saul get back into the Lord's work into the stream of the book of Acts.
Now, he might have been doing the Lord's work in Tarsus, but nothing is known of it at all. Seven or eight years is nothing known. And Barnabas over here in Antioch says, I know who we need in Antioch. We need the man who is called to the Gentiles, and he goes over to Tarsus. He doesn't know his address. You notice it says he goes over to seek him. He said, I'll try to find him. eight years gone by. He looked for him. He found him. And he brought him back, and for a year they ministered together there in Antioch. Now, this again shows something of the character of Barnabas. We mentioned before that the apostles at Jerusalem had chosen a man who would be favorable to the new work in Antioch.
He came from Cyprus over here. He would be favorable to the new work, so they didn't send somebody who would be prejudiced against it. Now, Barnabas decides that the man that's needed for the new work is Saul. And I like his attitude. I think it's expressed in another man, F.B. Meyer, who was a famous preacher in London, and evident, I don't know much about London, but apparently not too far from his church, where it was Spurgeon's church, and in the other direction was Campbell Morgan's church. And this is what F.B. Meyer said, If I pray, God bless me, God fill my fuse, I miss the blessing.
But if I pray for my big brother, Mr. Spurgeon, to the right of my church, and my big brother, Campbell Morgan, to the left, God bless them, I get a blessing without praying for it. And the overflow of their cups fills my little bucket. Isn't that nice attitude? See, that was like Barnabas. Well, say I don't need to be the big shot in Antioch. I'll go over to Tarsus and get the right man for the job, and I'll share it with him. Maybe he'll do most of it, but I'll go and get him anyway. I think that when I studied this some years ago and saw Mr. Meyer's comment, I said, I'd like to apply this in my own life. And I was preaching in Charlottetown, and in our assembly there wasn't large as churches go.
And there was a big Baptist church in the town, which had a... a congregation that was very mixed, some born again people in it and others who had no sympathy with the gospel at all. But it so happened the minister was a man who was really trying to win soul. He was a God-fearing, born again Christian at the time and really trying to win soul. And I said to myself, if that Baptist church could really get on fire for God, what a witness it could have in Prince Edward Island, far more than our little Bible chapel could have. And I set myself to start praying, Lord, make that Baptist church a lighthouse for Jesus Christ here in this province of Prince Edward Island. We were in the capital city.
Make that Baptist church a lighthouse for Christ. Well, I can't say that the Lord answered that prayer. In course of time, a new minister came who wouldn't commit himself even where he stood. And many of the evangelicals in the church became very disillusioned. And I don't know what the history of it has since been. Maybe God will answer it someday. But I know this. that praying like that was good for me. It was good for me to pray for somebody else and pray that God would bless their work and prosper it. And so it's not a bad idea that we learn a lesson from Barnabas and learn a lesson from F.B. Meyer and apply some of these things in our own lives and pray for the ministry of other Christians even when we can't always agree with everything they do or even when We might not, even in that case, I wouldn't have been happy in the fellowship of that church because of the many people that weren't sympathetic to the gospel.
But I could pray for the people who were there that God would bless them and use them for himself. Now there we have the picture of Barnabas. Now look what happened. At the last of chapter eleven, there was a prophecy of a famine coming, and this prophecy was made by Agabus. probably in the winter of forty-three and forty-four. And the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says that the famine came to Judea from forty-four to forty-eight, with the climax in forty-six AD, a couple years off. And the elders in Antioch decided to send relief to the church in Jerusalem, and they sent it by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.
That's the last verse, verse thirty. Please notice the order of the names here. Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas' name is first. He's the older man. He's the leader. He's the one who's helping Saul get trained for the work. He's the one that was sent from Jerusalem. He has certainly the highest position of the two in every respect. And so his name is first. Now we skip on to the end of chapter twelve, twelve, twenty-five. And Barnabas and Saul returned. After they'd finished their ministry in Jerusalem, notice the order of the names again, Barnabas and Saul. They returned from Jerusalem. Then in chapter thirteen, verse one, verse we looked at this morning, there were five men mentioned as preaching in Antioch.
Barnabas is the first one named, and Saul is the last. In verse two, as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul. Notice the order of the name. Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work unto which I have called them. Now they were going to go out on their first missionary journey, which is chapter thirteen and fourteen. And so the assembly at Antioch sent them out. They prayed for them, they laid their hands on them, and they sent them forth into the work. Verse four. So they being sent away or sent forth by the Holy Spirit departed into Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. Now notice here, here's Antioch and the map.
Cyprus, not too far across the water. Why did they go to Cyprus? Rather obvious, I suppose. Barnabas is the leader of the group, and he's got a burden for his own home country. Where to start out? You're going to be a missionary. Go home and tell the people where you came from. And so they go off to Cyprus. And they go through the Isle of Cyprus. Verse six. When they had gone through the aisle, I think the Greek says through the whole aisle, through the whole aisle, under Paphos. Paphos is way over here on the west side. And they started off at the east side and they went right across it, not just straight across, but apparently they evangelized as they went, in and out of most of the city. And they really covered the whole island.
And Luke doesn't give us any details of what happened, because historically it's not important, until they get the path up. And that's the place where the Roman governor of the island is, way over on the far side. a place called Paphos. Look at it here because I'm going to drop the map now. Later on they went up to Pergon, Antioch up here, Coney and Lister and Derby. We'll see one mention I think of a place in Listera perhaps before we're done here. But I'll have to put that down because my stand collapsed. I don't want to hold it all the time here. Now let's see what happened when they got to this place called Paphos. They met a man named Bar Jesus, verse six.
Now, they met him because they were invited by the governor to the governor's mansion or to the governor's office to interview the governor. The governor wanted to interview them. He was a, he's a pro-counsel is the Greek word here, deputy pro-counsel, and that means he's the governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus. Now, if you were writing this, and if I was writing it, we would say, That when they got the path off, they were invited to meet the governor. We would put the governor's name first. We would say that was what was important. Because if the governor got converted, what a blessing that would be to the gospel work throughout the whole country. And we would put that first, and then we would say, and while they were at the governor's office, they were opposed by this sorcerer named Bar Jesus.
Now Luke does not do it that way. He put bar Jesus' name first because as far as history is concerned, bar Jesus was the important man here, not the governor. As far as eternity goes, when we get to heaven, we'll see the governor and we won't see the sorcerer. So as far as eternity goes, it's the conversion of the governor is most important. But as far as history, the history of the church goes, it's bar Jesus, that's the key man here, because this bar Jesus, or elements as he was called, opposed the conversion of the governor. He tried to hinder. He was a magician, maybe an astrologer, something like that. He was a Jew, but he represented the Eastern religion that's opposed to God or to the things of God, and he was trying to hinder the conversion of this governor.
And verse nine says, Then Saul, who is called Paul, now here is the change of name. Now why here? Why at this point does the name change? It's at this point that there is a great stepping out in Paul's life, Saul's life. Saul, otherwise Paul, the Greek says here. He steps out at this point as a Roman citizen. You know among Jews he was a Jew, but among Greeks he was a Greek. And so here he moves into the role, no longer a Jew to evangelize the Jew, but a citizen of the Roman Empire, going to the people of the Roman Empire to win them for Jesus Christ.
And in order to do that, he takes on the use of his Roman name instead of his Hebrew name. But there's more to it than that. Because it's at this point that Paul, as I shall now call him, proves to be the man who had what was needed for the missionary work. Now Barnabas with all his traits is a lovely character, and he had what was needed to do the job he had to do. But when it came to contending with the power of Satan, Barnabas wasn't the man. Saul was more the one who could get into a fight to stand up. In a local church, you need both men like that. You need a Barnabas who's a peacemaker who can always see the good of another brother.
But you also need a Paul or Saul who can say, that's wrong and we can't do that, you know, who will get some backbone and refuse that which is wrong. So you need both. You need men who will stand up and fight. You need men who will join hands and bring peace. And these two men make a nice combination. But at this particular crisis, part of us is helpless. And it's Saul who now steps forward as Paul, and he says to that sorcerer, Oh, you full of deceit, you child of the devil, why are you seeking to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind for a season. And Elamus, the sorcerer, is struck with blindness by this man, Paul, who really now steps forward as the leader of of the missionary growth as the man who really has the calling of God to be the apostle of the Gentiles.
Barnabas is older, but Paul has the particular gift for the need. Now Luke, in order to doubly demonstrate this to us, just make it extra clear after saying Barnabas and Saul, as he does even in verse seven, Barnabas and Saul, notice the order, Barnabas and Saul were sent out, Barnabas and Saul came to Cyprus, Barnabas and Saul stand before Sergius Paulus, and now in verse thirteen he says, now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, I almost feel sorry for poor Barnabas, he really got demoted that time, didn't he? Not really demoted, but maybe at this point Luke tells it that way to make it doubly clear that now Paul is the leader of the pair and the dominant missionary of the two.
And from now on, it's Paul and Barnabas. Verse forty-three. Middle of the verse. Paul and Barnabas. Names have been reversed. Verse forty-six. Paul and Barnabas. See how it goes? Chapter fourteen. There are two exceptions to this reversed order of names. One of them comes in chapter fourteen, verse fourteen. We'll look at verse twelve first. At Listra, the people called Barnabas Jupiter or the Greek word is Zeus the chief God and they called Paul Mercury or Hermes the messenger they said they said these men are God Barnabas he must be the head God and and the younger man Paul he must be the spokesman it was Paul that was doing the speaking so again we see that Paul is the spokesman of the group now and so because they rate them that way then in verse fourteen Luke says Barnabas and Paul Barnabas, who had been ascribed to be the head of the group, but Paul, who was the spokesman.
And in their eyes, that was the order. Then you get to chapter fifteen, verse two. They're back in Antioch. There's a problem there, and they have to go to Jerusalem. And it's Paul and Barnabas. Paul's first. Twice in verse two, Paul and Barnabas. When they get up to Jerusalem, what do you think happens in Jerusalem? Do you think that the apostles and elders in Jerusalem are going to accept this young upstart Saul or Paul and consider him to be the leader? No. In their eyes, their man Barnabas is still the leader of the group. And so in verse twelve, when they're in Jerusalem, it's Barnabas and Paul.
Those are the two exceptions. Verse fourteen of chapter fourteen and in chapter fifteen, I think it's twice here. verse twelve and the twenty-two. No, I mean, twelve and twenty-five. In twenty-two, Paul's name is first. And then after that, you get down to verse thirty-five of chapter fifteen, and we're back to Paul and Barnabas. So, in the advancement of the gospel work, you see Barnabas' ministry is pretty well done. He drops out of the picture very shortly after this. He has been the catalyst to move the book of Acts from Peter to Paul and from then on it's the ministry of Paul just one closing verse now in chapter fifteen verse eleven I just want to close on this note Peter this is his last appearance when he talks about the Gentiles being converted and in chapter fifteen they have the big missionary discussion do the Gentiles have to become Jews Peter makes this interesting statement we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved even as they I think Peter's a little ahead of James here in that he doesn't say they shall be saved even as we he says
we Jews proud as we are we've discovered that we have to be saved the same way as the Gentiles simply by the grace of God and this traces the themes in the book of Acts that we've talked so much about Gentile salvation and the recognition of Gentile salvation by the apostles and the Jewish disciples. They're both characterized here. But it also hits that little note of personal appreciation. Peter came to the place where he says, I believe we've been saved just like they are saved simply by faith. And for me, this is the personal element that makes me rejoice when I study the book of Acts, that I too, Gentile in background, have been saved simply by the grace of God.
And you and I, all together, we've been saved by the grace of God. That's what has knit us together. We've been over a lot of the book of Acts this past week. We started out by talking about four meanings of Pentecost. One of those meanings was salvation for the Gentiles. We traced that through in Acts eight and Acts chapter ten. We saw how these streams converge on Antioch and how the church in Antioch grew. But I think that we ought to go away with the thought of rejoicing. that there's a tie that binds us all together, not only Jew and Gentile, but each one of us, from whatever part of the country, this country or Canada we've come, from whatever our nationalities and backgrounds have come, we have all been saved by the grace of God.
As we come to the close of the conference, I'd like to ask you to sing together tonight, blessed be the tie that binds our hearts and Christian love. We'll sing it and we'll ask Brother Willie, the conference director, to come and close the conference in prayer. Christian love, the fellow disobeyed with my heart before I come and know before our
ardent prayer. Our kin, our hope, our aid, our love, our comforts, and our pain. May air our mutual good pray, and often for each other, for the children of the rising king. When we are thunderborn, it gives up its protection.
Will we tell to rejoin God? You may be seated. I think I'd like to say before Mr. Willie prays that I want to thank you all for the invitation to come and speak at Park of the Palm. I've enjoyed it here. I'm glad to have my wife and daughter here the last couple of days. Mr. Willie told me last week, a week ago today, he said that you're going to enjoy preaching to these people. And today I said to him, Mr. Willie, you made a prophecy a week ago, and it came true.
I have enjoyed preaching to these people. So now we'll ask Prophet Willie to come and close in prayer. Well, we all say thank you to our beloved brother. It's so nice to have Mrs. Star and Mrs. Star with us. And we hope before long to see all the family as well. Shall we pray? Blessed God, our Father, our hearts unite. With full hearts we come to thee tonight to say thank you to thyself, blessed Lord, for what thou hast done for us. Our conference comes to an end in these moments, long, long weeks, but how quickly they have gone.
Speaker after speaker has come and gone on to serve thee in other places. But we thank you that messages live in our hearts. and as we have occasion to listen to them on the tape and the cassettes over and over and we learn these lessons again and again we pray Lord that the result of this winter's conference at Park of the Palm might bring great glory to thine own precious name we look back over the years Lord this is eight years and some of us came here eight years of wonderful conference ministry what men and women we ought to be.
We pray, Lord, that thy word might bear fruit in our lives and our hearts. We ask that our lives might be more godly life. We ask, Lord, that as we deal with one another, that we might be more forbearance and meekness and long-suffering and love toward one another. And we ask, Lord, that as the great Apostle Paul, of whom we've been hearing, that he exhorts in Colossians, if any one have a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave, so do ye. Help us, Lord, to do this, that thy word might bear fruit in our lives, and we might go on in peace and happiness, pulling together for thy glory in this place.
Lord, we don't know what the future has in store, or any of us, We ask thee, Lord, that thou lead in all the planning and arranging and the building program that we hope to do here at Park and the Pound, that in the whole thing thy name might be glorified. And as our various conference speakers from time to time come back and see us and speak to us again, we pray that they might come to see real progress in the things of God. We thank thee now, Lord, for these characters whom thou hast been bringing before us. We thank you for Peter. How like ourselves poor Peter was.
How quickly, Lord, he lost heart and lost his courage and denied thee. And yet we thank thee. He was a great, fearless man of God. We thank you for these messages, the day of Pentecost and the other messages in the Acts. We thank you for Paul, Saul of Tarsus, whom thou didst change right about faith. and make such a great servant of God. We thank you for Barnabas, the son of consolation, the man of love who joined these two together and helped thy work to go forward. Help us, Lord, to do that work here for thy glory. Now we commit to thee some of our number who are sick. We especially remember our beloved brother, Morris Anderson, how we missed him all through the company.
Be near him, Lord, and touch him, thou art able to raise him up again and bring him back to this platform to lead our scene, and commit him to thee. Commit our dear sister, Mrs. Stratton, to thee for full recovery. All the others, our brother Backman, thou out of action just now, will thou bless him and build him up again. Now we pray for our brother Star, Mrs. Star,