The Inversion Of Saul - [Acts 9:1-9]

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The other day I was looking for a list of events that shook the world, that turned the world upside down.
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And I came upon this list. I don't know if it's the best list. I mean, I just have to be honest. First of all, it only focuses on the last about 120 years.
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And I thought, you know what, if I were going to pick a list of events, I think probably all of them would be from the
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Bible, but I certainly wouldn't pick these events. And I would not, if you gave me these events,
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I would not put them in this order. So with that as a caveat, number 20 on the list is one that's near and dear to our hearts.
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I think the coronavirus pandemic kind of turned the world upside down.
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In fact, I would argue that for most of us, it was more significant than number one. But we'll we'll get there in a minute.
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I'm not going to read all of them. But number 18 on the list, 9 -11, pretty significant event during most of our lifetimes, many of our lifetimes.
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Number 15, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of communism.
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Many people set free from it there, at least communism in Europe, at least direct communism.
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I keep qualifying it. Number 14, the assassination of John F.
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Kennedy, big event. Number 9,
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Pearl Harbor attack. Remember Pearl Harbor? And then I thought it was funny because here they had
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Pearl Harbor, number 9. Number 8, World War II. But number 7, even more important than World War II, was the invasion of Poland.
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That's basically started World War II. So like I said, maybe not the best list in the history of the world.
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Number 2, more important than World War II was World War I. I guess you could argue that it set the stage for World War II.
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But number 1, I really, if I were again, if I were listing from 1 to 20, this would probably be number 20.
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The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. And of course his family would probably disagree. But I just thought this is just really an odd list.
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So why am I using it? I don't know. But I wanted to set your minds in this kind of framework where things happen that sort of make you, they knock your breath out, take your breath away.
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They turn your world as it were upside down. They invert your world. I mean, have you ever said this really rocked my world?
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Usually we say that and it was like about a hamburger or something like it really rocked my world. Did it really?
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Not really. Come on. Now 9 -11, that was something.
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The pandemic, that was something. These are things that really changed our lives. But as we look at Acts chapter 9 today, we're going to see something that, yes, changed the life of Saul forever.
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But I think it changed the entire direction of Christianity.
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I would argue other than the Lord himself, no one has had more impact on the church and on Christianity writ large than the
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Apostle Paul. And here as we see him in Acts chapter 9, he's still just Saul, the mad guy.
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And that's what we're looking at. Let's read Acts chapter 9 verses 1 through 9.
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But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the
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Lord, went to the high priest and asked for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
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Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to the ground.
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He heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
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And he said, who are you, Lord? And he said,
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I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do.
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The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.
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Saul rose from the ground and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.
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So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.
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Now, the last few times we've been in Acts, we've been following the ministry of Philip as he went through Samaria and preached the gospel, as he kind of outdueled
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Simon Magus, as it were, Simon the magician. And then as he went out into the wilderness, directed by the
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Spirit and preached the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch. However, in terms of the flow of the book, flow of Acts, Philip was just a little bit of a detour.
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I mean, most of the book focuses either on Peter or on Paul.
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And we're really being introduced to Saul slash Paul in Acts chapter 7 at the end and then 8.
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And then all of a sudden we go to Philip. Well, now we're back to Paul. It's a blessed detour, but we're back looking at Saul again.
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And when we last saw him, he participated in the murder of Stephen, one of the deacons of the
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Jerusalem church. If you recall, and I'm sure you do, Stephen was put to death in a very barbaric way by stoning.
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It's a painful death, painful means of execution. And what was his crime? His crime was basically preaching the truth in front of the
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Sanhedrin. He'd been brought in front of the Sanhedrin. He was arrested on these bogus charges.
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And he gave him this long, long speech in which he recounted the history of the unfaithfulness of Israel.
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And at the end, he got to talking about Stephen and the matter, the more he spoke, the matter they got.
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And eventually they took him outside the city and stoned him to death. And to just read the end of Acts chapter 7, the beginning of verse 8 to really set the stage.
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Acts 7, verse 59. And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles.
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Devout men buried Stephen and made a great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church.
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And entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.
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And so we pick up the story of Saul. He's about to undergo one of the greatest transformations in history.
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Talk about, you know, the top 20 I had there which weren't so awesome in some ways.
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This one would be one of the great, I think it's probably the greatest conversion story.
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And certainly one of the great stories in all of scripture. Saul's world is going to be turned upside down.
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His theology, the course of his life, his very desires are about to be inverted.
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Changed completely. Of course when something is inverted, I mean my favorite kind of, one of my favorite cakes is a pineapple upside down cake.
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What makes it cool is when you bake it, you know, you can't really see anything except for the yellow cake.
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And then you flip it upside down and that's where all the good stuff is, right? Maybe I should have called the sermon the pineapple upside down cake that was
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Saul. But, you know, you flip them upside down and you get all the good stuff. But Saul's conversion is really ultimately like anybody else's.
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It's just a little more dramatic. This morning we have, or I have for you, four
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C's as we see Saul come to faith in Christ. And the first one is really just kind of a summary of who he is.
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Which doesn't start with a C by the way, but Saul is a champion of Judaism. And I have three kind of sub points here and they're all
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C's. Champion of Judaism, confident of his faith, and certain of his mission.
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So this first C has three sub points. Champion of Judaism, of the religion of the
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Jews. Why was Saul, as it says in 8 .3,
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ravaging the church, entering house after house, dragging people away, men and women.
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You know, he certainly wasn't a sexist. He'd take anybody who was committed to Christianity and take them to prison.
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He'd just seen Stephen murdered. And his conviction was, what?
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No one is going to do more than me to destroy the Way. The Way being the name by which
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Christianity was known then. Because Jesus said, I am the Way. So a lot of the believers identified themselves as the
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Way. No one was going to do more to put an end to this blasphemous sect.
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And that's how the Jews saw Christianity. Why? Because here you had
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Jesus saying that he was in fact God. They understood that. He said he was going to raise himself from the dead.
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And his disciples taught that. This was blasphemous to them. And his initial work really was,
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I think it resembles kind of an Old Testament sort of, I'm going to go out and destroy the idols, the false deities.
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That's kind of the idea that he had. He was like, I don't know how many are familiar with the
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Maccabeans. But they were so zealous, they just went in and slaughtered the people who had defiled the temple.
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They had no problem with that whatsoever. And Saul saw himself as that kind of avenger of things.
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Did I just say avenger? Yes. Avenger of things that were wrong. Of course, he started in Jerusalem.
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And there was no doubt to his commitment. Even think about this in Philippians 3, how does he describe himself?
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In his kind of autobiographical bit there in Philippians 3, he says, As to zeal, a persecutor of the church.
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As a Jew, this was kind of a badge of honor. A medal, something to be proud of.
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He was a persecutor of the church. From Saul's perspective, and from the perspective of the
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Jews back then, Jesus was just another in a long line of false messiahs.
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So his followers were to be treated like apostates. This movement needed to be stomped out.
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It was an infection that needed to be cut out of the body of the Jewish faith. So he was a champion of Judaism.
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He's also confident of his faith. To verse 1 of chapter 9.
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Think about what he's just seen. He's just seen Stephen murdered, stoned to death. A gory, ghastly murder.
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What does he do? He kind of cinches up his belt and says,
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I want more of that. I'm going to go to the high priest. I'm going to get some authority here.
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Why was he still in such a rage? The text doesn't tell us. But he wanted to excel more than anyone.
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Essentially, when he goes to the high priest, he seeks and is given a kind of arrest warrant against anyone professing
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Christ in these other towns. Listen to Acts 26, verses 9 to 11.
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This is another account of the vision that he has. He says, Notice he says they, not
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Stephen. Killing the
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Jews in Jerusalem wasn't enough. He wanted to expand his franchise, as it were. He was a champion of Judaism.
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He was confident in his faith. And third C here, he's certain of his mission.
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Certain of his mission. Verse 3, He's going to Damascus, which is a six -day walk.
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How many of you think, I'd like to go walking for six days and go do something? I mean, I couldn't even get the kids to go, let's all walk to Storyland.
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Nobody would want to do that. Six days to go persecute Christians.
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He is devoted to this. So that's our first C, that he's a champion of Judaism.
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He's an opponent of Christ, we could say. And our second C is,
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Saul is confronted. He is confronted. First, he's confronted by a light.
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Look at verse 3, What's interesting about this, this bright light comes out at midday, at noon.
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How do we know that? Because we have these other accounts. Acts 22, verse 6, As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about noon, a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me.
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In Acts 26, verse 13, at midday, again around noon,
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O King Agrippa, is who he's addressing, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun.
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We just had the eclipse. How many of you went out and looked without glasses? Probably not many of you.
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I saw one or two hands, but you're not blind, so I doubt it. Brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me.
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This was a powerful experience. A lot of times people say they've had these powerful experiences, but in this case, would a light by itself have converted
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Saul? Would it have convinced him that Jesus was the Christ? No. What's interesting, though, is his companions apparently didn't even see the light.
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Only Saul did. So he's confronted by a light, but he's also confronted by a voice.
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Look at verse 4. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him,
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Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? The brightness of the light drove
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Saul to his knees. But he hears this voice, and whether he knows the voice or not, there are some commentators who say he does, and some who say he does not.
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But there are a few things that are intriguing here. One is this repetition of Saul.
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Why does the voice say Saul and then Saul again? To double get his attention?
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He's already used the light. In Aramaic, in this culture, you would often repeat somebody's name when you wanted to be tender towards them, when you were trying to be kind toward them.
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So the voice seems to be more comforting rather than accusatory.
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We could say like a loving parent scolding an erring child. Jesus confronts
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Saul. Why so gentle with one who has committed murder?
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Not just Stephen, but multiple murders. Listen, if you murder somebody that I know,
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I'm not going to walk up and say, hey, how's it going today? Why?
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Why would Jesus talk to him like that? I'm going to suggest to you that part of the reason was because Jesus died for that sin.
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There are many reasons that people get disqualified from ministry. I do sometimes wonder at people who want to disqualify others from ministry for things that they did before Christ.
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And I come to this and I think, well, wait a minute. We know that Saul not only approved of the murder of Stephen, but he participated in many murders.
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He was running around chasing Christians down and putting them in prison and then voting for their deaths.
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And Jesus just comes to him and says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
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For the murderer Saul. For the zealous Saul. For the self -righteous.
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I keep the law. I do everything with great zeal, Saul. The moment of his salvation was upon him.
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This voice was the very voice of the resurrected Jesus. This voice,
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Saul may or may not know the voice, but the voice knows Saul. And it had always known
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Saul. Listen to how Paul describes the voice.
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Galatians 1 .15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace.
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See, Jesus had known Saul before he was born. And then now was the moment which he had called him to salvation.
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And as I thought about this, I thought, you know, what did Saul do to prepare himself for salvation?
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What was going on? Did Saul repent so that he would be worthy of salvation?
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Did he go to confession, confess all of his sins so that the Lord would forgive him?
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R .C. Sproul, talking about salvation, said, in our natural state, we are completely unwilling and incapable of coming to Christ.
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And when we think about Saul in his natural state, not only was he completely unwilling to come to Christ, he was an enemy of the cross.
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He hated everything to do with Jesus. He hated the people of Jesus. He wanted to stomp it out.
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He would not go to Christ, but Christ came to him.
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The Lord asked Saul why he is persecuting him.
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And we know Saul's been persecuting Christians, not Jesus. Jesus is in heaven.
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But the relationship between Jesus and believers is so tight, so close, that he identifies with them.
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I mean, even if we just think about what he said in the Gospel of John, I lay down my life for whom? For the sheep.
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He loves the sheep. He loves believers. And he was done with letting
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Saul pursue his church with hostile intent. And may I also say that he was done watching
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Saul commit sin after sin after sin. Enough.
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Saul belonged to Jesus, and Jesus was going to claim him. So we've seen Saul, champion of Judaism, Saul confronted, both by the light and by a voice.
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And now Saul corrected. Saul corrected. If we assume that Saul had no idea who was speaking to him, he certainly knew this was a powerful and heavenly being.
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So when he says in verse 5, and he said, Who are you,
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Lord? I mean, we read Lord, and right away we assume it was Jesus, but it's kind of an odd thing, right?
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If he knows it's Jesus, and then he asks anyway. But either way, if he didn't know, he's about to find out.
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And if he did know, it's really an odd question. Jesus identifies himself, the second half of the verse, and he said, the voice says,
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I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. To Saul, Jesus was a fraud.
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As I said, he was a false messiah, one of many who had been rightly put to death on the cross for claiming to be
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God. He was seeking to arrest those who claimed that Jesus had risen from the dead.
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In his mind, as we might hear from many scoffers and so -called atheists today, the resurrection was a myth that his followers had created.
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Jesus was dead. And everyone knew that no one comes back from the dead. It was impossible.
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So here we have Saul, who knows what's true, who knows what's right, who knows what's impossible. And here's the impossibility of Jesus being alive, except Jesus is speaking to him.
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If there was ever a moment in Saul's life, you know how sometimes when you go into things and it's like, things really slow down, and you kind of have that, if I can use this term for older folks, that video game experience where everything just kind of slows down and you just kind of see things in a whole different way.
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Or if you've been in combat, sometimes it feels that way, where a few seconds is like hours.
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And I think that's what it was like for Saul here. All the things, you know how fast your mind could go.
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I mean, I think there's definitely some panic happening here. These few seconds probably seemed like hours.
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Everything he so fervently believed, that he'd spent his whole life performing and doing and pursuing with zeal, were all turning out to be false.
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Heaven, God, was on the side of the Christians. So persecuting them was actually an assault on the very
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God he claimed to be serving. The one he thought he was serving. Jesus was not only raised from the grave, but ascended to glory, and he was right there confronting
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Saul. And then Jesus gives
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Saul directions. But rise, he says, and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.
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He doesn't give him a theological instruction there. He doesn't download a bunch of information to him.
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I'm going to suggest that probably nothing further was needed. That Jesus is alive, that he's able to appear in such a miraculous way, and that everything he once trusted for righteousness had been proven to be, as he would say later, in Philippians, rubbish or skubalon, in the
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Greek. That was all he needed to know. And I think as we consider this story,
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I want to just read this, and what I hope Acts chapter 9, verses 1 through 9 does for us.
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Would you turn for a moment to Ephesians chapter 2? And I think even as we read through Paul's epistles, what
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I think we ought to do now as we read them is read them through this prism, through this lens of what actually happens to Saul on the road to Damascus.
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And we can better understand what he says in all of his epistles. Think about Ephesians chapter 2.
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We're familiar with this, but now think for a moment about how this applies to Paul as he's writing it.
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This is lived experience for him. It's not just something he's theoretically writing, or he's, you know, let me just give you guys a theological treatise.
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I'm going to explain to you what happens. No, this is autobiographical information.
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And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. Would he say that he was dead?
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I think he would. Following in the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, listen, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, just because Saul's sins were holy sins, he thought they were holy at the time, didn't matter.
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He says we all did this. Then he says, and we're by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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Verse 4, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
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By grace, you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
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So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
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For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.
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It is the gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which
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God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Now think about the story of Saul.
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Here's a man dead in his sins and trespasses, but God appears to him, brings him to spiritual life and tells him, you know, you're going to get more instructions later.
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Spoiler alert, Ananias is going to give him some instructions. We can go back to Acts.
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And he's going to tell Saul how much he's going to have to suffer for the cause of Christ.
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Jesus already has Saul's pulse, life mapped out. It's already in the works.
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Before the foundation of the world it was all laid out. This is, you know, we see it, we think it's a dramatic salvation, which it is.
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But it's also a great, great act of love. The triune
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God loving Saul, not letting him continue to sin, but transforming him.
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So we've seen Saul, champion of Judaism, Saul confronted, Saul corrected, and our fourth C, Saul crushed.
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Saul crushed. What about the people he was with, the men he was with?
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I wanted to think, you know, because he's like, almost like a bounty hunter with a posse going to look for Christians and haul them off to jail.
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What did they think? Well, look at verse 7. The men who were traveling with him stood speechless. Listen, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.
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How does that happen? They don't get knocked to their knees. They don't even understand what
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Jesus said. How do I know that? Because it's in Acts 22 .9. Now, those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me.
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So they saw the light, they didn't see Jesus, they didn't hear his voice.
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Well, they heard the voice, but they didn't understand it. Why didn't they understand? Why didn't they see
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Jesus? Because the God of creation determined exactly who would see what.
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Who would hear what. This was for Paul. Saul. Full stop.
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Not for these other men. Commentator Paul Hill says, the miracle, because that's what it is, this is
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God doing something that we can't explain, entering the time -space continuum to do something that defies logic.
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The miracle was not a punitive one. This was not to punish Saul. Rather, the picture is of Saul in his brokenness and helplessness.
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The fierce opposer of Christ reduced to a helpless, pitiful soul.
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How the mighty Saul had fallen. Look at verse 8. Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.
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So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. He's blind.
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Why? He's going to have his sight restored, but why is he blind? One possibility.
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I mean, we don't know. The light certainly had something to do with it.
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But this was an overwhelming physical and spiritual experience. What happens when you lose your sight?
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I mean, I've never actually lost my sight. I've had times where I've had to have my eyes covered or something.
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What happens if you lose your sight? They say that your other senses become more developed, right?
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That you hear things better, etc. But it also reduces the amount of information that you take in.
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I'm going to suggest that perhaps these three days he's going to experience blindness are to give him time to contemplate everything that has happened.
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To really take it in. And I think there's indications of it here. I mean, if you think about it, have you ever been so distraught, so rocked by what's happened, that you just don't want to eat?
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Look at verse 9. And for three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank. Why would he be like that?
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I'm going to suggest. Speculation. Guilt.
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He had a lot of guilt. Let's go back to Acts chapter 7.
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And I'm going to start in verse 56. Maybe we can draw a few things out of this.
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This is Stephen. He says, And he said, Again, Stephen testifying.
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He says, Behold, I see the heavens open. Listen. And the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.
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What was the response to his testimony? Verse 57, But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears, put their fingers in their ears, and rushed together at him.
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And they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named
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Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
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And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them.
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And when he had said this, he fell asleep. You know, when I first started thinking about Saul, I was like,
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I wonder if there were little old ladies, a knitting circle in the church in Jerusalem who prayed for Saul.
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I don't know about that. But I know that Stephen prayed for him. Lord, do not hold this sin against them.
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Right before he died, Stephen saw
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Jesus in heaven. He was given that vision. Saul had just seen that what
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Stephen testified of and what he was killed for was true. He'd seen the risen
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Lord. Stephen had called out to Jesus to receive his spirit.
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When that had happened, Saul was surely angered, just as he had been when he said that he saw
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Jesus at the right hand of the Father. When we think of what
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Saul had witnessed, what had consumed him, and then how
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Christ had come to him, how would we respond? I think like he did.
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Paul Hill says this about his conversion. It would be hard to overestimate the significance of Paul's conversion, not only for the subsequent narrative of Acts, but for the history of Christianity as a whole.
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And we might think, wow, has there ever been such a trophy of grace as the Apostle Paul?
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The greatest salvation story of all time. Here's the reality.
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Every one of us who come to Christ go through a similar process. We just don't get the lights, the flashy voices, we don't get all that stuff.
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But think about it. Are we confronted by our sin? There's a moment for every believer in which the
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Holy Spirit convicts us of our sinfulness. That's why he came.
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John 16, 8 says this. And when he, the Holy Spirit, comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
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We are also corrected about our beliefs about Christ, just as Saul was. Whoever we think
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Jesus was before we get saved, we are convinced by the Holy Spirit that he's truly
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God, truly man, and that he lived the life we are commanded to live and don't.
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We know that he died the death we deserve and are spared by his sacrifice on our behalf.
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And we know that he's not dead, just like Saul figured out, that the grave could not hold him and that he lives and is risen.
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Finally, we're also crushed by the weight of our guilt, the full weight of our sin pulls us down.
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If we're not knocked to our knees, we at least have an overall sense that we are guilty.
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I remember myself just thinking, I don't know how Jesus could possibly love me because I don't even love myself.
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I hate myself because of what I do. How could Jesus die for me?
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And the reality is, for those of us who've been saved, the experiences may vary, but these truths do not.
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We come to know who Jesus is, what he did, what we've done, what we deserve.
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And we rejoice in knowing that as God causes that faith in us, as we trust in him, that the weight of our guilt is removed, much like we'll see the scales from Saul's eyes removed.
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For any here who have not experienced the salvation that God freely offers,
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I pray that today would be that day. Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, Lord, we rejoice as we think about the gospel, about the truth that we would never have discovered on our own, just as Saul never would have discovered it on his own.
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The reality that the second person of the Trinity would come to earth, live a perfect life, then take our sins upon himself, go to the cross, pay for our sins, and then be raised gloriously, that we might have his perfections credited to us, and our sins credited to him.
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What a wonderful truth. Father, we thank you for this illustration, this example of salvation.
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Lord, I pray that you would help us, even as we read the New Testament, to think how often
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Saul is writing in sheer gratitude about his own experience, marveling at your grace in his life.
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Thank you for that. Help us to increase in our thankfulness for Jesus Christ and the cross,