Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
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Captain Eo
Do you remember the old school 3-d movies and shows?
Not the ones with light polarity, but the ones with one red and one green eye?
I remember sitting in Captain Eo, the 3-d show at Disneyland starring Michael Jackson.
Captain Eo and his ragtag crew of badly CGI’d puppet-creatures fly his spaceship but are captured by the Supreme Leader.
She sentences Captain Eo and his crew to 100 years of torture.
And then Captain Eo saves them all with the power of “dance”.
Looking without the glasses… absolute confusion.
Slip the glasses back on and it all snaps into focus.
Off.
On.
Off.
On.
I wish I had those glasses for real life!
Have you had those moments of total confusion?
Life is chaos, things are crazy, people are confusing, the future is uncertain...
Slip on the glasses and everything becomes clear.
First Missionary Journey
The Holy Spirit called them.
The church responded by setting them apart and sending them off.
Where to?
On a missionary journey, a tour de force that would last 2 years.
First stop: Cypress.
An island just off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Again, we see that they are “sent by the Holy Spirit.”
Who is the main star in the book of Acts?
It is the Holy Spirit, over and over again.
Cypress
Lots of great reasons to head to Cyprus.
There is evidence of Jewish community there for hundreds of years prior.
And Barnabus is from there.
Great place to start!
This is the pattern they will use throughout their mission trips.
As Paul later puts it in Romans 1, “first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles.”
Paphos
Center of the Cult of Venus / Aphrodite, the Goddess of sexual love and beauty.
She was allegedly born on the foam of the sea, and floated on a shell to the shore of Cyprus near Paphos.
So, closely tied to her origin story, the temple to Aphrodite was famous.
I will leave it to your imagination how the goddess of sex and fertility was worshipped.
This is a heathen place.
And into that heathen place walks Jesus.
Oh, wait.
Bar-Jesus.
Jewish sorcerer - Bar-Jesus
Oxymoron.
More then just that, it is clear he is a false prophet.
Doubly doomed.
Now we are used to “Judaism” so we don’t think of it as something exotic, but that isn’t how it would appear to a Roman.
The Romans are used to many gods and deities, they adopted the Greek pantheon which itself was famous for adopting or co-opting the “gods” of whatever cultures they conquered.
Judaism was, to them, a somewhat obscure Near-Eastern cult, its monotheism a novelty act.
And here comes a man who fuses Jewish beliefs with sorcerous power, either real and demonic or a convincing fake.
His prophetic utterances and, presumably, his demonstrations of power get him a seat next to power.
And he calls himself “Bar-Jesus.”
Literally Son-of-Jesus.
(Or Son of Yeshua/Joshua).
It is entirely possible that is his name, though it would be uncommon.
He could have a Dad named Joshua, though unless his dad was famous it would be odd to go by that name.
Calling yourself “Son of” someone is also a way of claiming the authority or mantle of someone.
As “Bar-nabus” is the Son-of-Encouragement, I think it likely that this “Bar-Jesus” is grabbing onto the hottest new trend from Judaism - the new cult around a man named “Jesus”.
Wherever his name comes from, he has obtained a position of influence next to the man in power.
Sergius Paulus is the heathen here.
A heathen in charge of a truly ungodly city (or a very godly city chasing after the god of sex).
This is head of the playboy mansion, here.
(almost literally).
Yet he is “a man of intelligence”.
Open-minded… and he wants to hear what Barnabas and Saul have to say.
What an incredible opportunity!
To step into the seat of political power and influence, this is a mission opportunity of a lifetime.
Elymas means “wise” in Aramaic.
What his name was taken to mean?
Elymas sees his cushy position next to power threatened.
I am the mysterious Jewish sorcerer, back off guys!
Or even, I am the expert on this “Jesus” guy as far as Paulus is concerned.
But Saul, who was also called Paul.
And right here, in a side-note, we see the identity and focus of Paul’s focus and mission change.
Saul vs. Paul.
He “looks intently” at this pretender.
This man.
And “filled with the Holy Spirit” he hugs him?
He turns the other cheek?
When faced with a pretender to the name of Jesus, when faced with a false prophet, when faced with either a pretender to spiritual power or someone pretending to spiritual power to manipulate others...
When faced with this bar-Jesus, son-of-Jesus… Paul smotes him:
Son of the Devil
If this conversation was in Hebrew it would be “Bar-Satan”.
Son of diabolos, a devil, or the devil.
Satan (Hebrew) or Devil (Greek) means adversary or slanderer.
So Paul could be saying “You aren’t a Son of Jesus, you are an enemy of him, and adversary.”
Or he could be making a reference to exactly what we think of when we hear “Son of Satan” or Son of the Devil”, that this Elymas is connected to, empowered by powers of evil.
Either way, he is an “enemy of all righteousness” with the effect of “making crooked the straight paths of the Lord.”
Pastor Rod used to talk about two types of encounters in spiritual warfare.
Truth Encounter.
Power Encounter.
And this moment is kind of both.
If Bar-Jesus is a fraud, a charlatan peddling Jewish sounding prophetic nonsense… Paul calls him on it.
You are making the straight things of God crooked!
This is some Biblical imagery.
God has made the way to him straight, clear, it may be narrow… but it isn’t complicated!
At the least you are twisting the things of God for your own gain.
Truth encounter.
But if Bar-Jesus is a real sorcerer and there is real spiritual/demonic activity going on here, Paul confronts him full of the superior power of the Holy Spirit.
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