Acts 13:6-7

They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God.

From Background Notes [BN] for June 23rd & 24th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

No doubt wanting to speak in a Jewish synagogue, Saul and Barnabas encounter yet another anomaly of Judaism in the diaspora: "a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet." Luke uses the words magos and…

…pseudoprophētēs without the intervening "and" to connect them. Stringing these nouns together he tells us that they found a certain man: "a Jewish magician false prophet." He was called Bariēsous, that is, "son of Yeshua" ― "Jesus" in the Greek transliteration. Nothing is made of this seeming imitation of Jesus' name or that this man intentionally adopted it knowing its more recent notoriety in Israel. After all, this man has an important patron: the Roman proconsul! Painfully, no doubt, for Saul and Barnabas (who himself was from Cyprus, Acts 4:36), the thought of having Judaism represented outside of national Israel by such a man was odious in the least. The idea of "magicians" holding sway over countless souls in a quasi-religious climate is nothing new to Luke's account. In Acts 8:9ff he told the story of Simon the Magos who transfixed his Samaritan audience and had them nearly believing he was the promised Taheb. However, in the case of Barjesus, the offence against God becomes greater, since all forms of magic and false prophecy provoked strong censure in the Torah (see Leviticus 20:27; Deuteronomy 13:1ff; 18:11; 20-22) and elsewhere throughout Scripture (Lamentations 2:14; Ezekiel 13:9; 22:28; Matthew 24:11, 24; Mark 13:22; Luke 6:26; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 4:1; Revelation 16:13; 19:20; 20:10). As some of these texts indicate, Jesus warned about the coming of such persons, and the apostles wrote about "many false prophets" who "have gone out into the world." [BN, 5-6]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm