| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 15 |
Page 5 |
Saul — “who is also called Paul” — rebuked him, and said, “The hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind … for a season.” It was the Lord, and not Paul, who had inflicted this judgment, for we are told that Paul was specially “filled with the Holy Spirit” when he said this. The punishment itself was To Elymas an outward emblem of his actual spiritual condition. He was only a blind man professing to be a guide to others. So his natural eyes were darkened that he might be made to realize his inner blindness. There was also in his punishment a disclosure of the kind of doom those bring on themselves who shut their eyes to the holy light of truth. He is here warned that the result of such perverse refusal to see, if persisted in, will be total inability to see at all. Dr. William T. Taylor mentions in illustration the account given in Roman history of one who had been proscribed, and who, to save his life, disguised himself by wearing a patch over one eye. A good while after, when there was no longer any danger, he removed the patch, but in vain, for the sight was gone. So, if men stubbornly shut their hearts against the truth, the light that is in them, will become darkness. It is a terrible thing to resist the truth of God; it is still worse to try to lead other souls in false paths.
Paul’s word was fulfilled. Immediately the sorcerer was stricken with blindness. Seeing this, the proconsul believed. So after all, good came out of the apparition of the sorcerer. It was the manifestation of the divine power through the missionaries, in the punishment of Elymas, that led Paulus to believe. This power would not have been manifested had not the sorcerer resisted Paul and Barnabas. Thus God overruled the evil effort of this “son of the devil.” He sought to keep the proconsul from believing; but became the means of compelling him to believe. Thus God is always overruling the evil of the world, and makes even the wrath of Satan glorify Him. It is better sometimes to have opposition when we try to be good. Serguis Paulus probably would not have believed at all had it not been for the sorcerer’s rage and punishment.
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