Introduction
We’ve been studying through the book of Acts, the exciting story of the early days of the Christian Church in Jerusalem. Luke, Dr. Luke, has been writing this account for us, and he shared with us the successes, but also some of the setbacks and some of the problems that this early Christian community was running into. We saw, with horror, in Acts 7 as godly Stephen was killed at the hands of an angry mob, which then triggered an attack on the church in Jerusalem. A persecution broke out that was very intense, and that persecution was spear-headed by a very powerful, religious leader named Saul.
Luke also shared some positive stories of successes in Acts 8, some good things that resulted from that attack on the Christians in Jerusalem. And yet, before we get too excited, Luke takes the camera and puts it back on the biggest visible threat to the church of God at this point in its history by uttering two menacing words to start Acts chapter 9,
Meanwhile, Saul
Just in case you are starting to get your hopes up, just in case you thought they would move forward unhindered. Do those words strike fear into your heart? If not, then maybe we need to get to know Saul of Tarsus a little bit better.
Who was this Saul of Tarsus? He was born in a city called Tarsus, that’s about 350 miles north of Jerusalem, in what is modern day Turkey. South- Central Turkey. He was born to a family that must have been very influential and wealthy because of some of the characteristics we know about him. Saul says later in this book that he is the son of Pharisees. That means that his dad and probably his grandfather, and who knows how many generations before them, were part of this elite sect of Judaism known as the Pharisees. This was a group of about 6,000 of the holiest men in all of Judaism. We saw a number of Jesus’s run-ins with the Pharisees in the book of Luke. These guys were so holy that it was said that if only two people get into heaven surely one of them will be a Pharisee. And so, Saul was raised in a household that was very religious, it would’ve been very law abiding. He would’ve had the scriptures pounded into his head from day one of his life.
We also know that not only was he born to Pharisees, but he was also born into a family where, even though they were Jewish, they were Roman citizens. Roman citizenship was only something that you get by paying a huge sum of money or by doing some tremendous favor or some tremendous service to a very very very high-ranking Roman official. And yet, Saul was born into a family where they had somehow acquired Roman citizenship. He didn’t have to buy his way into Roman citizenship, he was born one and that carries with it the greatest status in that society. Legal protection and other benefits that are going to come in handy later in the book of Acts. And so, as Pharisees, as Roman citizens, they must have been pretty wealthy. They must also have been pretty wealthy to afford his education. We learn that he studied under a Rabbi named Gamaliel in Jerusalem. Now, Gamaliel is a Rabbi we know about even from sources outside the Bible, from ancient Jewish sources. This guy was the grandson of the Great famous Rabbi Hillel, the one who the Hillel center right over there on campus is named after. Gamaliel was so amazing that they came up with a new title for him, called Rabban. He was the first one ever to get that title, one of only 7 to ever get it. This guy was big time, and so, for Saul when he would’ve been probably in his early teens, his family would’ve paid to send him to Jerusalem to buy for him the finest education that they could’ve gotten. To have studied under Gamaliel, this would be equivalent of a PhD from Harvard. This would be the equivalent of studying physics under Albert Einstein. There was no higher status that you could get.
Not only was he a Pharisee but it looks like he was also a member of the Sanhedrin, according to Acts 26:10. Now that would’ve been pretty unheard of for a man of his age. He was probably in his early 30’s at this point. But Saul, I guess he didn’t follow the normal career path. I guess he was one of those few in every generation that just seems to break all the rules, to shoot right past the normal things that people can accomplish, and to be in positions of very high power at a very early age. And so, the Sanhedrin, this was the ruling counsel in Jerusalem and Saul was a part of it. He says he was more zealous than his peers surpassing all of his fellow countrymen, his colleagues, his competition. And you know, his intellect, he was brilliant.
His intellect may have been why he took a different position on this Christian movement than his mentor Gamaliel did. Remember what Gamaliel said in Acts 5, when they were trying to figure out what to do with this fledgling Christian movement? Gamaliel was like, ‘look, why don’t you just let them go because God might be in this, and if God’s in it and we fight against it then we might find ourselves fighting against God.’ Gamaliel urged for a conservative position. Saul wanted nothing to do with that conservatism. He was sharp enough to realize what a threat this was. He saw that this new way was incompatible with the right way. He didn’t see this as a sect that could co-exist right alongside of Judaism as it had been handed down from the forefathers. No, he was intent on stamping this out. He was so zealous to keep the law, and so zealous to serve God faithfully and righteously. And we see that he persecuted and killed Christians. Yes, it is in Acts 7, at the end of the chapter as the mob throws their coats to the ground to rush to stone Stephen that they’re laying their coats at the feet of Saul. We see that he’s standing there giving his hearty approval. In fact, Saul and Stephen, it looks like they ran in the same circles. The fact that they’re laying their coats at the foot of Saul means probably that he was the one that brought the charges or was involved in this plot to get Stephen. He was also like Stephen in that Stephen saw that the old and the new way couldn’t exist together either. He maybe saw that clearer than the other apostles did. And then they both landed on different sides of that issue.
We read in Acts 8:3 that,
Saul began ravaging the church.
That’s a verb that’s used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament,
used… of wild boars devastating a vineyard; and it especially refers to ‘the ravaging of a body by a wild beast’.
Stott, The Message of Acts, 168
Luke says, ‘you want to think about what Saul is doing to the church at this point? Think wild beasts with a dead body.’ That’s Saul and the church at this point in history. Think wild boars running over a helpless vineyard. Luke tells us he was
entering house after house dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison.
He would not discriminate according to gender. He wouldn’t just go for the guys and leave the ladies alone. No, he did not, he would arrest and persecute, even torture, both mom and dad. Men and women. He says later on,
I cast my vote against them when they were condemned to death. Many times I had them punished in the synagogues to get them to curse Jesus. (Acts 26:10-11).
Yes, Saul would actually take people down to the Friday night gathering at the synagogue. You’d show up for a bible reading and there would be a Christian chained up, and Saul would demand that the guy would curse Jesus and if he wouldn’t he would flog them right there in front of everybody. A beating which could be fatal or at least debilitating for the rest of your life. Imagine showing up to home church and seeing something like that. Think how horrifying that would be and yet this was Saul’s job. He was to take down and stamp out this Christian movement. I really like how John Pollock describes the reality of this situation in his biography on the apostle Paul. He says.
Paul charged like an animal tearing its prey. This was not the sad efficiency of an officer obeying distasteful orders; the heart was engaged, and the mind too, with the thoroughness of an inquisitor unmasking treason. Paul went from house to house, then held formal inquires at the synagogues when the congregation assembled. Every suspect, man or woman, had to stand before the elders, [the rulers of that synagogue] while Paul, as the high priest’s representative, put to them the demand that they should curse Jesus… Thus Paul heard the stories and beliefs of a cross-section of those who called Jesus “Lord.”…
He got first hand testimony from martyr after martyr, sufferer after sufferer, as to why they believe Jesus is Lord.
‘The majority were punished by public flogging, the ‘forty stripes save on,’, which was no sight for the squeamish.’
You ever seen the Passion of the Christ? Gross, Savage beatings. Granted,
‘The courage of a few collapsed [probably]. About to be lashed, or after a few strokes, or when forced to watch a wife’s or husband’s torture, they screamed a curse on Jesus as Paul required.’
Imagine going back to face your brothers and sisters in Christ after that.
‘He remained unmoved as men and women staggered away with backs a mass of weals and blood.’
Pollock, John. The Apostle: The Life of Paul (pp. 28-30). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.
You just have to imagine this scene. Here stands Saul, having just administered another torture saying, ‘Do you have anything else to say for yourself?’ But then imagine how many times the Christian would then look up and say, “just this, that Jesus loves you, and even though you’re his enemy Saul, he died for you. And I pray that you will one day find forgiveness of sins.” Imagine how aggravating that must have been to Saul. There was something about these Christians, they wouldn’t break. And yet, it seems like his efforts in Jerusalem were somewhat successful at scattering, demoralizing, causing the church to have to flee or to go underground. And so it says,
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.
Murderous threats, again, this image of the wild beast. You know Saul is really pictured as more beast than man up to this point in Acts. And so,
he went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus.
Things are going so well locally he decides to launch an attack on a major city about 135 miles northeast of Jerusalem where there was a sizeable Jewish community, and apparently, a sizeable Christian community as well. He’s going to go and he’s going to get some of them too. Maybe catch them off guard.
So that if he found there any men, any who belong to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
And so, he heads off on this seven-day journey up to Damascus and Luke tells us,
As he neared Damascus on his journey
Something very unexpected happened. One of the most eternity changing events in the history of the human race. He tells us,
suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” ““Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.”
He calls him Lord here. That could mean either ‘sir’ or it could mean something much stronger like it came later to mean in Paul’s writings, it was the term he reserved for Jesus. Here, it’s probably somewhere between ‘sir’ and creator God. He doesn’t know who’s talking to him though. ‘Who am I persecuting that would have this kind of power?’ Well,
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.””
Sounds a little ominous. I remember when my parents were really mad, they would send me to my room so they could figure out what to do with me, I wonder if he felt a little bit like this. Well,
The men traveling with Saul [just] stood there speechless; they heard the sound [they didn’t understand what it said but they heard the sound] but they did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus”.
A far cry from the beginning of this chapter. He was breathing threats and murder, and now he’s led like an invalid into the city. And they led him into Damascus, and we learned a little bit later they took him to the home of a guy named Judas who lived on a street called Straight Street. A street that we still know of today, still the major East-West road through Damascus, about 1,500 meters long, built by the Romans. He would’ve been in a little house off the side of the road. And it says,
For three days (in this house) he was blind and did not eat or drink anything.
He’s completely in the zone here after this vision from Christ, this visit from the risen Christ. Different people have tried to explain what this was. Was Paul dehydrated? Was he having a seizure? Was this a hallucination? I don’t know how that would explain the fact that all the other people with him heard the voice. I don’t know how it explains the blindness that came after that, he must’ve been pretty dehydrated if he went blind. No, I think the best explanation is that he was actually visited by the risen Lord, we don’t need to seek some psychological explanation here.
He’s blind for three days, and during this time he would’ve had plenty of time to think. Here he is, brilliant intellect, probably had most or all of the Old Testament memorized, had heard the testimony of countless Christians, including Stephen, one of the best. And he had plenty of time to think about what happened. I wonder what Paul was thinking during this time in his life. You know he says later on, he says ‘my gospel, my teaching. I didn’t get it delivered to me by a human, I got it directly from God’ (Galatians 1). And I wonder if it’s during this time that a lot of the pillars of Paul’s theology were being worked out, reasoned through, pillars that he would flesh out for the rest of his life. One thing he had to be thinking was Jesus is alive, obviously he was. And if that’s true, then what does that mean? It means he was the Messiah. It also means he must’ve been sinless because he knew that the reason there’s death in this world is as a result of sin. It’s the only way Jesus could defeat death would be because he had no sin. He also must’ve been thinking, ‘I’m alive too.’ He knew the penalty for sin and yet here he was. He knew he had, he knew that serious sinners really deserved serious judgment, the kind of judgement he thought he was dealing out for these traitor Christians. And yet, here he was. It’s hard to get any more serious into sin than by attacking the followers of Christ and even somehow attacking Christ himself. Killing, torturing, and yet he’s still alive. That can’t be because of his own good works, there must be some sort of other standard, some sort of other basis by which his life was spared. And thus, the doctrine of justification. ‘That it’s not that I’m righteous, it’s not that I’m so good, it’s that Christ was so righteous and good and perfect.’ And yet he died on the cross, and so maybe, just maybe, Isaiah 53 where it says, “he was pierced for our transgressions” that must be applying to him. He’s realizing that doctrine of justification by trusting in Christ alone. He must’ve remembered Habakkuk 2, “the righteous shall live by faith”.
Another very puzzling statement here is, ‘I was persecuting Jesus?’ We don’t have any evidence that he ever met Jesus face to face, surely, he would’ve mentioned that in one of his writings. He must’ve been there and gone during the ministry of Christ and then back again shortly after the death of Christ. And yet, how can he be persecuting Jesus? He was persecuting his followers, but that’s it. It must be that somehow Jesus is so connected to his followers that an attack on them is really an attack on him. And that when we were persecuted as Christians, Jesus feels every bit of that pain. Do you realize that? He’s there right with us in all of our sufferings. His spirit dwells inside of us. He must have realized this must have something to do with how we can be counted righteous before God. Also, Paul’s doctrine of the body of Christ. If, somehow, we’re all connected to Christ then by implication there must be some kind of connection to each other as well. And thus, the body of Christ becomes one of his favorite metaphors for Christian community. Jesus is the head, we’re his body. He’s directing us, and there’s a spiritual linkage between us and him and us and one another. This is why as Christians, once you become a Christian, you can never be truly alone again because Christ is always with you and he’s joined you to other Christians. Whether you’re living that out or not is another story. But all of these things must’ve been circulating through Paul’s mind as he sat there thinking over these three days. And after three days, God moves.
In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias.
This is different than the one from Acts 5. If you’re here you know why, guess it was a common name back then. And,
The Lord called him in a vison
He gets a vision of God. Jesus says,
“Ananias!”
And he says what you’re supposed to say when God calls you. Here I am, Lord.
“Yes, Lord.”
And he says,
Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street,
You know where that is? Yeah.
ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, he is praying. In a vision [Saul] has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
So, he will be expecting you.
“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your [Saints] in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
Yeah, the Christians at Damascus this was no surprise attack, they had a tip-off that Saul was coming for them. They knew Saul the Terrible was coming to Damascus. I imagine house church after house church had prayer meetings that week. ‘Lord, Lord protect us from Saul. Lord spare us our lives. Lord won’t you do something to keep him from coming here, Lord. We’re all going to die.’ Leaders addressing their people, ‘okay, are you ready? Are you ready to pick up your cross and follow Jesus to death? Now’s the time that we find out how strong our faith really is. Will you trust him? Look over at your wife and your kids, men, will you trust Christ to take care of them when Saul comes for you? Will you hold firm until the end?” There were probably a lot of people down on their hands and knees that week praying, consecrating themselves to the Lord for the fury they were certain was to descend on the church. What a big obstacle, how in the world were they going to escape the wrath of Saul?
And so, Ananias begins telling God some things that God might not have known about. ‘Oh, sovereign Lord, Creator of heaven and Earth, the one who knows the end from the beginning, I don’t know if you’re aware of what this guy has done. I know people, okay? I know you said Saul of Tarsus, but is it possible you meant Schlomo of Tarsus, or maybe Sammy of Tarsus? Is there a Sammy of Tarsus here?’ And so, God listens patiently and kindly to the whole speech, and then,
The Lord said to Ananias, “Go.”
Which is sometimes the most loving thing he can tell us, ‘Look, just go, okay? The longer you stay, the longer till you get to see how I’m going to come through, okay? You have to act if you’re going to see what I’ve got planned here. You’re going to love this.’ He says,
This man, [he’s] my chosen instrument to [carry] my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the [chosen] people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.
He says, ‘Look, I know he’s caused much harm, much suffering, but I got plans for this guy. I know he’s killed; I know he’s blasphemed; I know he’s betrayed and lied; he’s caused so much pain. He’s destroyed families, I know that, but I died for him and I love him, and I’ve seen something here that I decided to use.’ And he’s also like, ‘Look, he’s going to have plenty of suffering. I’ll show him how much he must suffer for my name.’ Really one of the most forgotten truths in Christianity, I think, following God is a call, it is a call to a life of suffering. It’s a short life here, followed by an eternity of reward, but it’s not an easy, comfortable life. Picking up your cross is not easy. And he says, ‘Just go, alright?’ And so,
[he goes] to the house and he entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul”
Isn’t that cool? These might’ve been the first two words Saul heard from a Christian after his conversion. After all the things he’s done. After all the people he hurt, maybe friends of Ananias. He has Ananias sitting there with his hands on him saying, “My brother, I accept you.” God has accepted him and now Ananias has accepted him.
“the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized”
That always seems to happen right away, baptism, water baptism.
and after taking some food, he regained his strength. [He] spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. And at once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the son of God.
What about that? He doesn’t waste any time. Saul’s not like an ‘ease into it’ kind of guy. When he’s convinced, he lives out his convictions. Man, so much for the theory that he went off to the desert for three years meditating in a cave before he tried to do any ministry for God. No, he started right away, which is always the best time to start serving God. It’s always the best time to start sharing your testimony and to start sharing your faith. No matter what’s transpired in the past, he didn’t sit around worrying about that, beating himself up, like some of us are prone to do. He’s like, ‘No, I’ve been forgiven, I’ve got to tell people.’ He was a killer, he spent his whole life almost missing the Messiah and now he’s going to go berserk for the rest of his life to make sure that nobody else does, to make sure no one else misses Jesus the Messiah.
And all those who heard him were astonished, understandably so, and they asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? Hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?”
These are the non-Christians wondering about this. I don’t know what the guys thought who came to Damascus with Saul, maybe it was them saying this. I don’t know, maybe some of them converted.
Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.
Yes, baffled is the only thing that could describe what they were feeling at this point.
And after many days had gone by, the Jews there conspired to kill him.
Just like they did with Stephen, just like they did with Jesus. They couldn’t take this, they couldn’t argue with him so they kill him. Just like the Stephen strategy.
‘After many days have gone by.’ This whole period of time from his conversion until he travels back to Jerusalem, according to Galatians 1, takes about 3 years. It doesn’t tell us exactly how this 3 years was divided up, but I’m guessing, I don’t know, months maybe a year, it’s hard to say. Maybe two years. But they conspired to kill him,
But Saul learned of their plan. Day and night, they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him.
Looks like also he had offended one of the local rulers. A guy named Aretas, according to 2 Corinthians 11:30, who was also trying to get him, it was a joint effort here.
But his disciples [so he already had disciples] took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket.
Someone apparently had a house right against the wall of the city and they lowered him down and he escaped. He says he went off into Arabia (Galatians 1), which is kind of east, north-east, south-east of there, a very desert region. He spent some time there until things blew over. He comes back to Damascus. You kind of have to piece the different versions of this throughout the New Testament to figure out the chronology. But he comes back to Damascus, and then he heads down to Jerusalem, and that all takes about 3 years. It says,
when he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing he really was a disciple.
Last they saw this guy was killing their friends, putting people in prison. They were not ready to trust him, what if this is a trick; he had disappeared into Arabia for a little while.
But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles.
Good old Barnabas, son of encouragement, godly man. He saw something, he believed in Saul. He brought him to the rest of the apostles to vouch for him.
He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord, that the Lord had spoken to him. That in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus.
And so, they accepted him, and
Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.
Galatians 1 also tells us the only apostles he actually met during this time were Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, that James. He hung out with Peter for like 15 days during this time, the total trip was probably longer than that, but he went around ministering. He also learned some things from Peter, they exchanged information as well. And it says,
He talked and debated with the Grecian Jews.
Was this the same crew that he was working with to kill Stephen at Synagogue of the Freedmen that were all around the empire? He’s talking and debating with them and just like Stephen,
they tried to kill him.
Acts 22 says Saul was actually in the temple praying when he gets this vision from Jesus, and Jesus is like, ‘you need to get out of here.’ And Saul’s like, ‘but, but, they wouldn’t kill me.’ And Jesus is like, ‘you need to get out of here, go.’
When the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace
Probably because Saul was a Christian now.
It was strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.
No longer the fear of Saul, the fear of the Lord. And so, the chapter starts with Saul leaving Jerusalem to go kill Christians and our story ends with Saul leaving Jerusalem as a Christian trying to not get killed. His life has really undergone some changes over the course of this chapter.
Saul’s Conversion
I just want to end with just a few thoughts about Saul’s conversion. Conversion is really a marvelous thing. Saul’s conversion is a story of amazing grace. So much for the theory that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. Here we have a murderer being elevated to one of the greats in the history of the church. Not the first one, do you remember Moses? You remember David? Murderer, murderer, and yet God saved them. This is not what religion teaches us. It’s not that God’s into murder, it’s that God is a God of grace. And some of you have maybe done some bad things. Maybe some of you feel like what I’ve done is so bad, how could God ever accept me? How could God pay off my debt? And the story of Saul says look, that’s not how it works. You could never pay off your debt, but Jesus Christ offers to pay that debt for you. And now he can take the worst sinner and elevate him to the highest position, and grace is not only allowed to do that but really likes to do that, loves to do that because it shows grace for what it really is.
Saul’s conversion was clearly initiated by God. It wasn’t like Saul was out looking to become a Christian. He was looking for Christians to kill them, but we see all these ways God moved into his life. There’s the obvious light on the road to Damascus, I mean that was a pretty overt move by God to move into Saul’s life, but that was not the first exposure he had had. Think about all the goads along the way. One of the things we learn in a later accounting of his conversation with Jesus is on the road to Damascus, he says Saul, “is it hard for you to kick against the goads.” Do you know what the goads are? In farming, you’d have your oxen, and you have your plow that they’re pulling, and you would have these sharpened sticks and attach them to your plow because the oxen sometimes don’t really like getting harnessed and having to pull the plow around. Sometimes they would kick back to try to get free or to just try to attack the one who’s putting this harness on them, this yolk. And there were these pointy sticks, and the pointy sticks basically said look you can kick as hard as you want these sticks aren’t going anywhere. And the harder you kick and the more you kick, the more you’re just going to hurt yourself on these. There were things along the way that Christ had put in Saul’s life, and the harder he fought, Jesus says, ‘the more damage you’re doing to yourself. Why do you resist me? You’re only harming yourself, Saul.’
You think about all the testimonies from Christians that he heard, including Stephen himself. You think about Saul’s own conscience. Think about it, this guy knew the righteousness required by the law, and although on the one hand he had convinced himself that he was upholding the law there had to be a little quiet voice inside of him that was like, ‘yeah but, what about the part about how you shouldn’t covet? Have you ever wanted something you shouldn’t have wanted?’ It’s a lot of times easier to see this side of conversion, all the ways that God was moving in your life along the way. But I bet you there’s some of us here, maybe you haven’t had the light on the road, but do you have goads in your life? Do you have that prick of your conscience reminding you of your guilt? You try to justify yourself, but it’s not good enough. There’s that sense that everybody has that we know God is there. We know we don’t measure up to his standard. What are you doing with that voice? Are you trying to suppress the truth and unrighteousness as Paul says in Romans 1? So, he lived his life with these things, these goads. God was there the whole time.
There were also the people of God in his life. There were the people before his salvation, before his conversion. But what about Ananias that moved into his life right after? What about Barnabas moving into his life? The Christian life, it’s not something that can be done alone. God will send people into your life before you meet Christ, but he also puts people there to play a very important role after you meet Christ. You can’t do it by yourself. I suspect God put some people in your life, maybe that’s why you’re here tonight because of the people God’s put in your life. God says that was not an accident, don’t ignore that. There’s reason why your paths crossed, there’s a reason why you ended up here tonight hearing this teaching.
And yet, Saul still had to respond. He still had to respond. He was not some sort of mindless drone; he didn’t get lobotomized on the road to Damascus. No, he still had a response to make. Both the response to bow before Jesus and say ‘yes, Lord.’ He could’ve hardened his heart even more. There was also the response he had to make, ‘Am I going to serve God? Am I going to do it immediately, or am I going to take my time here?’ There’s still a response for you, even though God has done so much to call out to you. ‘While we were still enemies,’ Paul said, ‘Christ died for us.’ He’s gone to you, now he’s calling you to turn to him, to yield to him, to receive the forgiveness he’s offering you.
And finally, Saul’s conversion was an event that Saul would never forget. When he has to stand trial in Acts 22, what does he talk about? His conversion. Acts 26, standing before the courts, what does he talk about? His conversion. You read letter after letter and you see this coming up again and again and again as Saul fleshes out what really happened there, as he thinks back fondly on this event after which his life would never be the same again. ‘The old has gone and the new has come.’ One of my favorite passages with Saul, (he’s going to become Paul, that’s why I use those names interchangeably), 1 Timothy 1, look at what he says here, he’s writing to a man Timothy whom he loves so deeply. And he says to Timothy,
I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who’s given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service.
He says, ‘that was the moment I was put into service, I was drafted for the service of God.’ That’s one way to think about your conversion, you’ve been drafted. You’ve been called for a purpose, it’s not just for you, but God’s got a greater purpose than that for your life. He’s got works for you to do. He says,
“Even though I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, a violent man...” He says, “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly.”
That’s another way he thought of it. The moment where I got flooded with the love of God. He’s like, ‘it was like a flash flood, and I got just washed away,’
along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
That’s what it feels like, that’s what mine felt like. I just felt like a love I’ve been longing for my whole life, I’ve been searching for in all the wrong places, in a single instant of time I realized this is what I’ve been looking for my entire life, and now I know the love that I always knew somehow that I was designed to experience. He says,
here’s a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst, but for that very reason I was shown mercy. [What reason? Because I am a sinner, an especially bad sinner.] So that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who believe in him and receive eternal life.
He says, ‘not only was I drafted and flooded with the love of God, but I was also put up on display as a trophy of God’s grace.’ He says, ‘you think you’re bad, look at me. Look what I did. Look what God did in my life.’ And he says, ‘I just hope somebody will look at my story and believe in Christ Jesus and receive eternal life.’ And Paul’s wish here, his prayer, his deepest longing, that could be something that could become a reality in your life tonight. He says, ‘I wish people would just look at my life and see God’s patience, his mercy,’ and that they would too realize, if God could love Paul, maybe he can accept me too. And so tonight you need to realize if God can love Saul, he can love you. If he’s patient with him, he’s patient with you. Merciful with him, merciful with you. And maybe you too can become a trophy of God’s grace.