A Word in Season: What Saul learned (Acts 9:22)

Saul’s Conversion and Early Evangelistic Zeal

Perhaps you know someone who you think is a naturally gifted evangelist, they just seem to be able to speak easily and readily, they never seem bamboozled or nonplussed by somebody's difficult questions, the red herrings that people throw into a conversation to throw you off the track.

They always seem to have a ready answer from the scriptures or from some other place in order to get things back on track and to drive home the saving truth as it is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you may look at that person and you might conclude, I will never be able to do what they do.

I'm a waste of space when it comes to that kind of witnessing to Jesus Christ, going out onto the streets, even sitting down with a friend, I just get all tongue tied and I don't know what to say. You might imagine that someone like the Apostle Paul was a natural evangelist.

Now in one sense I certainly think that's true, he was immediately after his conversion fired with an appetite to tell people about the Christ whom once he despised and persecuted and who he'd now realised was the Lord's Messiah.

And in Acts chapter 9 and verse 20 we're told that immediately after his conversion this man preached the Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. Now in one sense that's a good and natural and a proper desire for every believer.

We should want to tell people that we have found the Lord Jesus Christ as the Saviour of our souls. And the people who heard this man, Saul of Tarsus, they were amazed and they were asking themselves, isn't this the one who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?

In other words, surely this is the persecutor. What's he doing now preaching the very Jesus that once he tried to deny and destroy? And then verse 22 is interesting. But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ.

Now the encouragement is this, that Saul of Tarsus, as a young believer, got better at this work of making known Jesus as the Christ. He increased all the more in strength. His spiritual muscles, if you like, got a little bit firmer and harder.

His understanding increased. The context there, when he's confounding the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, is clearly that these people came back against him. They argued back. When he declared that the Christ is the Son of God, when he was making known Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnate Son who saves sinners who put their faith in him, the Jews in Damascus would push back, and they'd push back hard.

They would contend with him. They would bring all kinds of objections against him. And perhaps initially the apostle was troubled or confused or wasn't quite sure what the immediate answer might be. But you see, Saul of Tarsus knew his Bible.

He knew his Old Testament. And I think we can almost imagine him going away in the evening or racking his brain in the midst of a conversation and thinking, but what did Malachi say? Or, but didn't Isaiah say something about this?

And maybe he's searching through the scrolls and trying to identify those particular texts by which he can then come back and give an answer to the question that's been put to him. And if you've had any experience as a man or a woman who tries to make known Jesus Christ, you'll appreciate that our experience can be a little bit like that.

When we set off, we're very fearful, we're very timid, we feel like we're constantly being tied in knots. But that's not the moment to give up. That's the moment, if you need to, to go away, to pray, to study, to consider, to learn from others who do the job well themselves, and then to go back again with a clearer, firmer and readier answer when you're challenged.

So you may not be a naturally gifted evangelist, I'm not sure that many people are, but you can increase all the more in strength, so that ultimately you'll be confounding those who come against you, not just winning the argument, but demonstrating to the saving of a soul that Jesus is the Christ.