6 Now when they had gone through the island to Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, 7 who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man. This man called for Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. 8 But Elymas the sorcerer (for so his name is translated) withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.
Acts 13:6-8, NKJV.
How did such a terrible man manage to secure such a prime place by the side of such a noble man, a lofty political leader? What was a sorcerer looking for in such a stately place that was not his typical dark altar?
Sergius Paulus, the proconsul (or governor), was “an intelligent man” – so said the report about him. To be intelligent means to be sensible, wise, sagacious, careful, learned. What happened to that intelligence and sagacity that seemed inactivated when it came to that sorcerer and soul-enemy? Where was Sergius Paulus’s wisdom and carefulness when such a dark man began to position himself so close? Some Bible translations say that he was an “assistant” to the governor; a PA (Personal Assistant), we would say. That was how close, yet the intelligent ruler seemed blinded and fooled – by a sorcerer.
A Roman governor was no mean man, yet this one appeared to have been blindsided where it mattered most to him. Human wisdom and political skill seemed to have been numbed by subtle bewitchment. Natural endowment could not help where spiritual discernment was needed. A school certificate was great, but it had its limits when it came to dealing with sorcerers. Roman soldiers were great bodyguards, but not in matters metaphysical, where the adversaries were spirits and their arrows invisible to the naked eye.
Despite his desire to know the truth, something and someone seemed determined that Sergius Paulus would ever seek but never see the light that his soul sought solemnly. So close once more to spiritual help, but something in his environment seemed to resist it again. Ever so close, ever so far! Alas …
Can a person so intelligent and so high be so spiritually fooled? Can someone admired by so many be the pawn of just one person? Can the leader of all be the captive of one? Can someone so powerful be so helpless? Can there be such a disconnect between public image and private battles? Can a person be so close to power, yet they are working strenuously and silently against whom they seem to be publicly supporting? Can one hail their boss so loudly in public, yet they are their clandestine killers? Can there be such a disconnect between a glamorous image and hideous secret manoeuvres? Bar-Jesus did not carry “SORCERY” on his forehead, nor did the governor carry “FOOLED” on his, but they were.
2. The Clash of Powers
Mercy saw the governor’s helplessness and was moved. Providence stepped in to set that palace captive free. Barnabas and Paul were dispatched to the scene. The sorcerer’s spell for long over the governor, and consequently over the sphere that he ruled, was going to be broken, but Bar-Jesus wasn’t going to allow it without a fight. He was going to do everything in his occult power to prevent his captive from the freedom and light that Barnabas and Paul had brought.
In the public palace encounter between light and darkness, Paul openly challenged the sorcerer as “full of all subtilty and all mischief,” a “child of the devil,” an “enemy of all righteousness,” who sought to “pervert the right ways of the Lord” (v.10). Wow! There, we see how such an “enemy” managed to secure his choice place in the palace. It was through “subtilty” and “mischief” combined with sorcery. Bar-Jesus was no mere citizen or staff member, like everyone else who went about their affairs in the palace.
Elymas was a “pervert” and a perverter, a “child of the devil,” a hater of whatever was right, especially “the right ways of the Lord.” He preferred the wrong ways of the devil and worked to sustain them – in governance, economy, religion, and private life. He truly was an “enemy of all righteousness,” meaning that he preferred wickedness, as an opposite of the Christ. He was an antichrist (Hebrews 1:9). He lived true to his title as the “child of the devil.” Some Bible translations call him the “son of the devil,” and “son of the Evil One.” The blood that flowed in his veins was not the same as flowed in others; it was the black blood of the devil his father. While he apparently served the governor, his allegiance was to a different father, a different kingdom. His office was a lie.
Elymas reminds one of the vampirical village mice that bit your foot at night while you were deeply asleep. If you cringed, it blew you a sorcerous breeze, and you were seduced to give up resistance, abandoning the sore foot to the same cannibal that ate you up, a little at a time, until you woke up in the morning with the sole of your foot surgically scrapped by the nocturnal rogue, the rough grooves on your sole your sad rebuke for all the forbidden places trodden barefoot during the careless daytime before the hurried bedtime.
Sergius Paulus was into politics to serve, but not Elymas, who had a different agenda, with allegiance to his dark kingdom and his father “the devil.” He carried the official badge of PA – Personal Assistant, but that was only a clever cover. He was PA of a different kind – Poisonous Assistant, Pernicious Agent. His political designation was a spiritual lie.
While Elymas attended daytime meetings with his boss the governor, like Judas, he also attended nighttime meetings with enemies of his boss (Mark 14:6, 10). Double agency. He was at the palace meetings where Paul preached, and he was also at nocturnal meetings where Lucifer sat. As darkness does not have forever to rule, according to Psalm 30:5 and Luke 22:52, the sorcerer’s days in the palace were numbered. Light was coming – Barnabas and Paul.
3. Unmasking the Sorcerer
Sergius Paulus was a victim of sorcery and subterfuge. The sorcerer’s subtilty reminds us of the Serpent in the Garden – the first character in the Bible to be described by that adjective; in both cases, the exploitation of proximity and the deadly pretence of great care (Genesis 3:1).
The serpentine “subtilty” of the sorcerer must have involved flatteries and lies disguised as love and commitment; and his “mischief” must have involved brutal manoeuvrings, the assassination of men and/or their noble character. Whoever threatened his place, or promised freedom to his choice captive, was an enemy to be resisted with “all” kinds of wicked stratagems combined with the black art. After all, the devil was his father. Displacing such a man needed more than a protest with placards along the streets of Paphos. It needed superior spiritual force. Paul, “filled with the Holy Ghost,” was ready to take him on (v.9).
That sorcerer was intent on keeping a whole governor (and government) in his perpetual enslavement, so he often stayed close like a leech, monitoring (and in some cases deciding) who came and who did not, who was allowed to see the governor, and who was not. He stayed close enough to hear or overhear many conversations of the governor, even private conversations. He often intervened, subtly or otherwise, if he felt threatened.
Being often found “with the proconsul,” there must have been a couple of videos and photos of them together, by which many assumed how friendly and connected they were. It was part of the game. The governor was never to know where his troubles were coming from, because he could never suspect anyone so close, as the source of his woes. It was part of the bewitchment: to see enemies as friends, and friends as enemies; to woo his foes but shun his helpers; to hail his killers but curse his healers.
When bad things happened in the land, the governor got blamed, nobody knowing that someone else was pulling the diabolical strings. Sergius Paulus must have sobbed secretly many nights, sometimes taking his problems to the ‘prophet’ “with” him, not knowing that that was the very source of all his woes. Thus, he blindly confided in an enemy. Alas, how like many today, who thoughtlessly seek help from their killers, who run for cover to those waiting to smite them, who call their haters their doctors, who dine at tables they should since have fled!
Elymas was reputed as a prophet, or so he claimed, but he was “false.” “False Prophet” was certainly not what anyone called that exalted palace assistant. They hailed him as a prophet, as a helper; but Paul and Barnabas were not going to be fooled, like the blinded populace. They discerned that he was not of their holy camp, even though he claimed one of their holy titles: “Prophet.” By discernment, and as a warning to the others fooled, they prefixed the title of “False” before his acclaimed title of “Prophet”: he was “False Prophet.” No one in all of bewitched Paphos had been so bold to call him out so bluntly. Blinded by sorcery or with bribes, even good men there hailed him with the holy name of “Prophet.” He had his kind in Samaria – Simon the sorcerer, until the unbribable Peter of Pentecost arrived, with fire in his eyes and his voice (Acts 8:9-24). Fire does not compromise with wood.
Bar-Jesus was not what he claimed. He was not who the people called him, but he liked it. Deceit was part of his game, and sometimes that deceit was in the frame of religion, taking advantage of the religious gullibility of the people. It helped his purpose. He was a Jew, but he was false. He was acclaimed a prophet, but he was false. He stood close to the government, as a helper, but his agenda was different. His public image was contrary to his secret personality. Elymas meant “a wise man,” but in this sorcerer, it was wisdom inverted; dark wisdom; a good name merely to fool the ignorant. Paul was there to unmask him in front of the good man he so long had hypnotised and fooled.
Elymas listened to the preaching of Paul, but only for so long as it did not threaten his secret mission in the palace. If you took a photo of all who had been at the meeting of Pastor Barnabas and Apostle Paul with Sergius Paulus the governor, you were sure to see the smiling face of Elymas the palace ‘prophet.’ With that, the paid headlines must have screamed that he was a ‘member’ of the Good People’s Association, a supporter of religious freedom, a good man. Deceived. He stayed quiet in any meeting only so long as the preacher was compliant and conducive. Barnabas and Paul were a different breed.
Knowing that the only key to freedom for his captive was the light of God, the sorcerer resisted every bringer of light. If he couldn’t bribe them, he challenged them. He published a bad image of them in the hearing of the governor. He had succeeded in the past. It emboldened him. So, this time also, with Paul and his team, he “withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith” (v.8). Sorcerers can be tricky. They oppose you when they cannot join you, and they try to join you when it is riskier to oppose you (Acts 8:18-20; 16:16-18; 13:8).
Of course, turning the governor away from the faith was not the reason he gave for his actions. He gave it every conceivable ‘official’ colouration, and couched it in the most diplomatic language. He was a master of “deceit.” That was part of his tools. Elymas’ very close position in relation to the political ‘high priest’ at Paphos reminds us of his master who once stood at the right hand of Joshua the high priest of the Lord: “and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him” (Zechariah 3:1). Elymas stood to withstand Paul; Satan stood to resist Joshua – all exploiters of proximity, actors against “righteousness,” perverters of “the right ways of the Lord.”
4. Discerning Your Foes
No true friend hinders their friend from help, from good things, from light. In Mark 2:3-4, four good friends had to tear open a roof, removing every obstacle to getting their bedridden friend to the emergency help he needed at the crowded clinic of Jesus. Only evil resists the good. That is one way to know the enemies of righteousness, no matter how high they sit, how finely they speak, or their apparent ‘Jewish’ ancestry, with a name that sounds like that of the Messiah. According to Psalm 41:5 and 71:10, enemies would usually speak “against” you, not for you; they would speak the “evil” of you, not the good. So, we know them by their fruits, by how they resist and obstruct good things from getting to you, even though they will never agree that that is what they do, until you can see them through the inspired apostolic eyes of Paul.
Bar-Jesus stayed close to his victim, not because he cared for his soul (although he claimed that he cared), but because he wished to protect ‘his territory.’ His apparent care had a selfish, devilish agenda. If you judged only by the photos on social media, of him standing and smiling “with” the governor, you would say that he stayed “with” him to help; but Paul saw through his closeness to power. Sorcerers in the palace.
5. Freedom to the Captive
To all such agents, who have strategically positioned themselves in our palaces, to advance their mischief and darkness, we bring the word of the Lord by the mouth of Paul: “And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season.” Amen (v.13).
When Paul fired those words, “immediately a dark mist fell on him, and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand” (v.11, NKJV). The next verse says, “Then the proconsul believed” (v.12). Mark the word “then.” Only after the sorcerer was removed did the good governor see the light that his soul sought. The canopy of darkness had been cast off, the light shone upon him.
Remove the wicked from the king’s presence and his throne will be established through righteousness (Proverbs 25:5, NIV).
Imagine a territory with a bewitched governor, progress and peace would so long have been stalled, for no scientific explanation. Shirt-him, ah! Imagine the same territory with the sorcerer removed, and a New Governor with the light of the Gospel in his soul … it certainly was not going to be the same for the people under that New Man. The Light in him was sure to shine through to them in the form of various welfares, peace, and prosperity.
O Lord, this day, we take the mask off the face of all sorcerers in our palaces, our homes, our offices, our sanctuaries. May the mist they so long have cast upon the land invade them now, and may they be led reproachfully out of our space, that Your light shall shine again upon us. And, Lord, like Sergius Paulus, despite our social prominence, grant us the wisdom and discipline to withdraw from battles that we are not equipped to engage, and send us our helpers for the season. Amen.
From The Preacher’s diary,
June 9, 2025.
Amen like thunder