“Referring to God as the “Enemy” Screwtape goes on to provide Wormwood with an insightful and surprising elucidation of genuine humility: The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another.” C.S. Lewis

What is the worst sin?

“If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual. The pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and backbiting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me competing with the human self which I must try to become; they are the animal self, and the diabolical self; and the diabolical self is the worst of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig, who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it’s better to be neither.” C. S. Lewis

What we call bad things are good things perverted. This perversion arises when a conscious creature becomes more interested in itself than in God, and wishes to exist “on its own.” This is the sin of Pride.
C.S. Lewis indicates: “Pride is essentially competitive, is competitive by its very nature—while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good looking, there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”

The Gospel Will Bring Trouble and Divide

Acts 13:42 And as they went out, they besought that these words might be spoken to them the next sabbath. 43Now when the synagogue broke up, many of the Jews and of the devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas; who, speaking to them, urged them to continue in the grace of God. 44And the next sabbath almost the whole city was gathered together to hear the word of God. 45But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with jealousy, and contradicted the things which were spoken by Paul, and blasphemed. 46And Paul and Barnabas spake out boldly, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to you. Seeing ye thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. 47For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles, That thou shouldest be for salvation unto the uttermost part of the earth. 48And as the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of God: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. 49And the word of the Lord was spread abroad throughout all the region. 50But the Jews urged on the devout women of honorable estate, and the chief men of the city, and stirred up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and cast them out of their borders. 51But they shook off the dust of their feet against them, and came unto Iconium. 52And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

Coming to the 13th chapter of Acts, Paul and Barnabas in the city of Antioch. Antioch was in a region called Pisidia which was in a larger area called Galatia. This is the first missionary journey.

Arriving in the city of Antioch, Paul preached in the Jewish synagogue.

When he arrived at the synagogue, he was invited to preach and his sermon blew the city wide open. It was the most devastating, shattering thing that perhaps had ever happened in the city of Antioch.

The Jews were characterized by an anti-Gentile feeling which was equally as evil, as is anti-Semitism.

Now as the good news of Jesus Christ reaches into the city of Antioch, a Gentile community, it has the same devastating effect.

In the early church, in most cases the chaos and the persecution came directly from Israel and it’s a sad because, Christ was the Messiah of Israel and Israel were the people of the promises and the covenants.

Well, Paul had arrived in this town there were many Jews in the area. There were Greeks. There were Romans and there were the native Phrygians.

Now Paul preached and he preached about Jesus, obviously. He announced that Jesus was the culmination of history, the fulfillment of prophesy and the justifier of sinners and he wrapped it up with a warning and an invitation and today we’re going to see the response.

What did they do?

How did they react to his sermon?

There are always both negative and positive reactions to the gospel.
Now anytime the gospel is preached, you’re bound sooner or later to have a split in reactions. The gospel always creates trouble.

We expect this to happen if the gospel is clear cut and defined. It has to fraction. Christ said, “I came not to bring peace but a sword,” and what He meant was the preaching of Christ doesn’t bring everybody together in a big, lovey-dovey toleration.

It fractures things.

A person gets saved and all of a sudden it severs something in that family. That’s what the gospel does, particularly in a Jewish context. Now the gospel then is a shattering thing. It always creates trouble when it’s clearly presented.

All of the Ecumenicals and the liberals who are getting everybody together are just proving that they’re not preaching the true gospel because the gospel splits. It doesn’t get everybody together under the same umbrella, tolerant of everything.

The gospel automatically divides between the saved and the unsaved, the people who accept it, the people who reject it, and so it’s a shattering thing.

Now part of the reason this happens is because, we usually try to figure out a rather comfortable philosophy. If we’re not Christian we have to try to figure out some kind of rational reason for living, right. We’ve got to come to a philosophy. Now if you don’t wind up with one, you become a drug addict, an alcoholic or you might kill yourself.

They are the ones who never got comfortable, they never figure anything out. He never found a philosophy he could live with so he either drowns his sorrows or kills himself because he can’t find something comfortable to live with, but most people, they get a rather comfortable philosophy.

Then when they hear the true gospel their world is shattered.

It is sort of like dropping a boulder in a little pond. That’s what happens when the gospel hits somebody’s faulty philosophy.
People struggle to find a comfortable philosophy and we invade their lives with the gospel and it disturbs them.

The First Response to the Gospel

verses 42–44 You could say at that point that it was a revival.

The people were really pleased. When they were gone out of the synagogue, and the “they” refers most likely to Paul and Barnabas, when Paul and Barnabas were gone out of the synagogue, they referring most likely to the Jews who were in the synagogue, asked that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.” The Jews said, Would you come back next week? We want to hear this again.

Paul had that ability to make people interested. Act 17:10,

verse 43, “When the congregation was broken up … they were dismissed … many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas.”

The term “religious proselytes” embodies both the full proselyte who had been circumcised and the one who was just a God-fearer who had attached himself to the synagogue but never gone fully for circumcision and Judaism.

There were Jews and Gentiles and they followed them, but they were all those who had adapted themselves to Judaism, who had been there that day in the synagogue, and so they taught them. Paul and Barnabas speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. To continue assumes that they are in the right place. In some way, they had professed to believe this and so Paul and Barnabas were saying, “Now you people, you continue in the grace of God.

Were these that wanted to hear more saved?

First John 2:19, “They went out from us that it might be made manifest … what?… that they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they no doubt would have continued with us.” Jesus said in John 8:30, “Many believed on His name,” but He said to them, If you continue in My Word, then are you My disciples. How do you tell a real disciple from a false one?

Paul and Barnabas apparently acknowledged that they had made a profession of believing and he says, in effect, “Validate the genuineness of your confession by continuing in the grace of God.”

You cannot accept Jesus Christ admitting that you cannot save yourself and that you have nothing to offer and purely by faith take Him as Savior and then turn right around and try to maintain your salvation by your works.

“Indicate the true character of your faith by continuing in the grace of God.” That’s what Colossians 1 says. Continue, thus validating your faith.

“And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the Word of God.”

The Holy Spirit does a little publicity work and the Holy Spirit’s moving around and Paul and Barnabas loose in any town for a week could stir up enough interest but there also were Gentiles who were there that day who invited all their Gentile friends, so, the whole city is there.

The Negative Response to the Gospel

Verse 45, “But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled, jealousy, and envy.
If there was anything a Jew couldn’t tolerate, it was Gentiles coming in on their salvation.

They couldn’t take it in the Old Testament. That’s why they never did the job back there either. They were envious “and they spoke against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.” This is the same group that were pleased.

They were very Prejudice.

They did not like Gentiles belonging and receiving the same salvation and blessing of God and Messiah that they had. It was personal privilege, Jewish superiority. That was the issue and so they got furious.

The same word is used in Acts 5:17 of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. They were jealous, so jealous for the purity and the selfishness and the self-centeredness and the isolation and the nationalism of their religion that they couldn’t stand anybody else getting blessed.

What a sad state and when they saw the whole city full of Gentiles come to hear the gospel, they just went crazy. Nothing infuriated them more than the privileges of God extended to uncircumcised Gentiles.

They spoke against the things which were spoken by Paul, but they went a step further. They were blaspheming and blasphemy is the worst sin. is the same that they had heard of and thought maybe this is our Messiah and then they rejected their Messiah, forfeited everything for now and eternity, purely on the basis of prejudice.

If you were to study why people reject the gospel, I don’t think you will ever find many people who would say, “I rejected the gospel because I pursued the facts fully, came to the intellectual conclusion that it’s not true.” People reject the gospel for many reasons but they’re always the same. They are always related to sin.

That’s the umbrella that covers it all. Now that sin may have different things, but they are not willing to sacrifice the ego and the established patterns that satisfy self and here, a whole group of people lost out on eternal heaven.

They lost their chance for eternal life because of prejudice against Gentiles, blind to the truth and blaspheming God.
When this happened verse 46 says, “Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold.” As the fury got great, so did their courage. Paul and Barnabas weren’t afraid of anyone and the thing gets stirred up and they just grew bold. They said, “It was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you. We spoke it to you first because that was the plan.” Paul said in Romans 1:16, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it’s the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, to the Jew first.” You see, that was God’s people, God’s beloved, and God wanted them to be His priest nation and His witness nation and so God said, “I’ll send the gospel to you first and then you’ll believe it, if you’ll believe it, and spread it.”

Paul says, “It was necessary to go to you first.” In Jerusalem and even when they arrived in town, he went to the Jew first. He had a priority of Jewish evangelism. It was necessary but he says this: “Seeing you put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” The Messiah’s people pushing the Messiah away after hundreds of years of waiting for Him.

“And you judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.”

What a shattering statement, You judge yourself. A person who rejects Jesus Christ judges himself.

The bible teaches human responsibility. I believe if a man dies and goes to hell, he goes there just because he himself chose to go there. God is not willing that any should perish. If a man dies without Christ, that’s because he wanted to, he made a choice to reject Christ.

“You judge yourselves,” he says. “You have pronounced your own sentence.” In John 3:18, Jesus says, “You’re condemned already because you believe not.” You judge yourself. Whatever you do with Jesus Christ, you pronounce your own sentence.
Paul says to them, “You have pronounced yourselves unfit for everlasting life.”

You will never find any place in the Bible that God sends people to hell. You will never find any place in the Bible that God damns people. The Bible teaches that God has prepared hell but He prepared it for the devil and his angels and if men choose to go there, they go there because they pronounced their own sentence in rejecting Jesus Christ.

When they did that, Paul turned to the Gentiles. God’s going to have His vehicle.” And then to justify what he said, he quoted their own prophet. Verse 47, he quoted right out of Isaiah. “For so hath the Lord commanded us … Isaiah 49:6, he quotes an Old Testament prophesy … I have sent Thee to be a light of the nations.”

Jesus was the light of the nations, Simeon in the temple when the Baby Jesus was there, said “I have seen the salvation of the Lord. I have seen the light of the nations,” Simeon said Jesus was the Messiah.

The Positive Response to the Gospel

The Gentiles were positive. “And when the Gentiles heard this, that salvation was for them and Messiah was for them, they were glad and they glorified the Word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.”

That’s election. Are you saying everybody who’s saved is saved because God ordained them and wrote their name?” Yes. But you just said in verse 46 that if a man goes to hell, it’s his own fault. That is correct. But you say, Those two don’t go together. No they don’t, from our perspective. The Bible teaches both, that is God’s problem, not mine.

If a man comes to Jesus Christ, it’s all God’s doing. When you are saved, God gets all the credit. When you are lost, you get all the blame. Now that is difficult for us to understand, and we probably don’t. But I believe it, I just believe it, both of them in the same passage. As many as were written on the roll believed but everybody who disbelieved was pronouncing sentence on himself. You have two doctrines in the Bible. Human responsibility, a man dies without Christ, it’s his own fault; divine sovereignty, a man comes to Christ, it’s only and simply because the Father drew him. Romans 3:10

One thing always follows legitimate salvation.. “And the Word of the Lord was published throughout all the region,” when people get saved, they share.

“They all came together to hear the Word of God.” Verse 46, “It was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken.” Verse 48, “And they glorified the Word of the Lord.” Verse 49, “And the Word of the Lord was published.”

The key to everything is the Word.

Antioch was turned upside down, not because Paul spoke on human relations, poverty programs, social problems, or cultural issues. It was because he spoke the Word of the Lord.

Persecution Comes

v 50, they were so mad when the Gentiles got saved, it says, “The Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women.” Apparently, Judaism had a very good effect on pagan women. Evidently, many honorable and devout women and many of the wives of the chief people in the city had become God-fearers or proselytes and so the Jews went to these Gentile women who were the wives of the leaders and they got them to turn against Paul and Barnabas.

They got to these chief men through these women. “And they raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas.”
2 Timothy 3:11, Paul talks about his persecution in Antioch and in 2 Corinthians 11, he says he was beaten with rods and with whips and that’s probably what happened there.

They shook off the dust of their feet against them, and came to Iconium, that was a very important symbolic statement.
Jesus had said in Luke 10, when you go to evangelize, sent out His disciples, when they don’t hear your message and they don’t believe the Messiah, you shake the dust off your feet and leave that town.
What He meant was this: No Jew would ever bring Gentile dirt into Israel because the Jews believed that Gentile soil was defiled and so when a Jew arrived at the border of Israel, he would shake the dust off his feet because they didn’t want even Gentile dirt in Israel.

They thought it was soiled and Jesus accommodated Himself to that particular view and when He said, “Shake the dust off your feet,” He meant treat those Jews like they were Gentiles. You don’t want a thing to do with them.
They’re just as if they were pagan and when Paul and Barnabas shook the dust off their feet in the face of the Jews of Antioch, they were saying in effect, “We consider you heathen.” That in itself was the greatest disclaimer, the most volatile rebuke that anyone could ever give to a Jew was to assign him a place with pagans and they did it to them.

Good Still Came from Sharing the Gospel

“And the disciples were filled with joy, with the Holy Spirit.” Paul and Barnabas left town, took off for Iconium and left two different groups behind. You either live life separated from God, a heathen without God, without the knowledge of God, or you live your life with God’s Holy Spirit inside. There’s no middle ground. You either take Jesus or reject Him.

Jesus said, “He that is not with Me is against Me.”

Where are you? What is keeping you from Jesus?