WWUTT 2606 Saul on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-5)

Saul was one of the earliest persecutors of the church, even rounding up Christians to have them put to death. But God had another plan for Saul, and it wasn't to put him to death. When We Understand the Text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we come to chapter 9, and this chapter is most known for the account of Saul of Tarsus being converted from a persecutor of the church to an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Let me go ahead and read the full account, verses 1 -19. Hear the word of the Lord. Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

And as he was traveling, it happened that when he was approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And he said, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do. And the men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.

And Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing. Leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. And the Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Here I am, Lord. And the Lord said to him, Rise up, and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas, for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying.

And he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight. But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to your saints at Jerusalem.

And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name. But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the sons of Israel.

For I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. So Ananias departed and entered the house. And he laid his hands on him and said, Brother Saul, the Lord sent me, that is, Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he rose up and was baptized, and he took food and was strengthened. And we'll get at least that far this week.

Today we're just going to look at the first nine verses here, the initial appearance of Jesus to Saul, him being blinded and then taken into Damascus. As we outline these first nine verses here, we'll begin by reading about Saul's fierce opposition to the church, which we have in verses one through two, then his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus in verses three through six, and then his physical blindness, which of course was representative of the spiritual blindness that he had.

That's in verses seven through nine. So let's come back up here to verses one and two, where we see Paul or Saul's fierce opposition against the church. Now, I'm surely going to do that again. I am going to confuse Saul's name with Paul.

I think you will be gracious to me in that. It's really the same name. There's a lot of people that will say that Saul went from being Saul to Paul, like God changed his name, just like he changed Abram's name.

Abram went from Abram to Abraham, and so Saul went from Saul to Paul. Actually, his name never changed. Paul was always his name. Saul was his Hebrew name. Paul was his Greek name. And since, as we have here, Jesus saying of Paul that he is going to become an apostle to the Gentiles, he would use his Greek name in going to Gentile cities to proclaim to those who were not Jews.

So the Jews still knew him as Saul. That was his Hebrew name. But the rest of the world, hearing the gospel preached by this man, heard of him as Paul. Paul the apostle. Saul of Tarsus, Paul the apostle, a man who was a Roman citizen by birth.

And because he has that citizenship, it is the Lord who is going to use that citizenship to make him a man that is going to go throughout the Roman Empire, spreading the gospel more so than the rest of the apostles did.

But first, we know him as Saul, who was the persecutor of Christians. Verse 1 begins, Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest. Now we don't have any record of Saul personally killing anybody.

But when we had the death of Stephen in chapter 7, the people who stoned Stephen to death laid their cloaks at the feet of a man named Saul, who watched on approvingly. So he was there, he was present with Stephen's death, and he may as well have been a murderer of Stephen himself.

He may as well have picked up the rocks and done it. He was certainly an accomplice in this, because he held on to everybody else's cloaks while they picked up their rocks and put Stephen to death. So we don't have a record of him in Acts of him raising his hand to somebody specifically.

But this task that he's on right now, this mission that he's on, going to Damascus, is to round up Christians to murder them. That is what he intends to have happen to them. He is breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.

Anyone who is a follower of Christ, they are hearing from Saul, we will kill you unless you renounce your devotion to this Jesus Christ. You know, Saul sharing his, well, by this point, Paul, as he was understood to be, Paul sharing his testimony with the Philippians in Philippians chapter 3.

He said, if anyone has confidence in the flesh, I have more. I was circumcised on the eighth day. I was of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee verse six, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church as to the righteousness, which is in the law found blameless.

But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them, but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness, which is from God upon faith.

So at one point, Paul had such an enthusiasm for the law that he was willing to kill anybody who believed that salvation was actually by grace through faith. Oh, you're going to you're going to believe that then you're going to believe that it's just by faith in Jesus Christ, you can be justified and not by your keeping of the law.

All this stuff that I've done, all of my keeping of the law. And you're saying that's worthless. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to put you to death. That was Paul's reaction to that. And having such zeal for that, he became a persecutor of Christians and he thought he was doing the right thing.

He thought what he was doing was in defense of the word of God, but he actually stood opposed to it as God appeared to him on the road to round up these Christians and saying, yeah, when you're putting these Christians to death, when you're threatening, making these threats against them, whom you're persecuting is me.

And let's consider what the Lord said about that as we continue on here. So in verse two, Saul asked for letters from the high priest to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found any belonging to the way, capital W .A .Y., both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Now, the word Christian is only used twice in the Bible or three times. I take that back as three occasions. There's two occasions in Acts. There's one in one of Peter's letters, and that's it. That's the only time the word Christian ever appears in the New Testament.

And it's used as a derogatory term. So when it's first used, when Paul is preaching at Antioch and it's by those at Antioch, they will refer to those who are followers of Jesus Christ as Christians. And that was meant to be an insult.

They weren't complimenting them as being Christians. They were you follow this carpenter that was put to death. Apparently, you think he was God and yet he was killed by the same people he made. Well, y 'all are weird and we're going to call you Christians.

That was the the the use of that term. So the Christians themselves did not call themselves Christians. Now, of course, we understand what it means and we have no shame in calling ourselves Christians as followers of Jesus Christ.

But that was not the the title that Christians used of themselves, even in the book of Acts when we're seeing the church spread. So here the faith, the faith itself, faith in Jesus Christ is referred to as the way it is the way.

Because what did Jesus say about himself? John 14, six, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but by me. And this would have particularly incensed the Jews for for Christians to say of themselves that that we are of the way your keeping of the law is not the way.

It is faith in Jesus Christ that is the way. So this was the way that they are. Yeah, this was the way that they referred to themselves. And so if Paul found anybody belonging to the way he would bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Now, it was unlikely that the Pharisees used the expression the way. For Christians, they could have. And if they used it that way, if they if they called it the way, then it would have been in a derogatory manner, not in a complimentary manner, not in the sense that Jesus is the only way.

But they would have they would have said, oh, they're part of the way, the way to what? Well, the way to hell, that's the way they would have thought of it, because their belief, of course, was in the law.

It was the keeping of the law that made a person righteous and in right standing with God. So if these guys are going to be following the way and they're going to call themselves the way, OK, we'll accommodate you in that.

But it's the wrong way as the way Saul would have seen it. It's likely, though, that the way Luke is writing about it here is is the way that Christians would have called it. They would have called it the way.

So Luke is using it in in the way. I feel like I'm I'm using a pun every time I say that, but I don't know any other way to say this. Anyway, the way that Luke is writing of it, he is talking about it the way that the Christians would talk about it.

We do belong to the way this is the only way to the father. This is the only way into the kingdom of God. The way is Christ. And so Saul is asking from the high priest permission that he can round up any of these Christians and bring them bound to Jerusalem, though even the Jews at this time were not even calling them Christians, because later on in Acts, it says the first time that Christians are called Christians was there at Antioch.

But these first two verses here revealed to us Paul's zeal, Saul's zeal for the law of God, even to the point of wanting to persecute Christians, thinking that he was doing the right thing. But again, he's standing in opposition to the word, not in keeping with the word.

We had considered this also in Acts chapter seven, where in the speech of Stephen, Stephen is pointing out to his hearers, you are the ones who are blaspheming God in his word and disrespecting what Moses said.

Moses pointed to Christ. And yet you are rejecting Christ and putting to death his followers. Saul was part of that. He was part of Stephen's death. And now he has been enlivened all the more to put more Christians to death.

This had sparked the persecution of Christians with Stephen's death in Acts chapter seven. And so Saul becomes all the more zealous in this crusade to put Christians to death. Acts chapter eight began by saying Saul was in hearty agreement with putting Stephen to death.

And on that day, a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Verse three, Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house and dragging off men and women.

He was delivering them into prison. So, again, we don't have any account that he directly killed anybody, but he certainly intended for them to be put to death, even if it wasn't his hand that did it.

So that's at the start of Acts chapter eight. Here we are at the start of chapter nine, and we're reading the same sort of introduction with Saul going about rounding up Christians to have them arrested and even put to death.

So he's going to Damascus to round up Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem bound. That's verses one and two. Then in the next part of this, verses three through six, we have Saul's encounter with Christ as he's on the road to Damascus.

So verse three, as he was traveling, it happened that when he was approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him and falling to the ground. He heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Now, later on in Acts, when Paul is recalling this testimony, when he's recalling the time that Jesus appeared to him and made him an apostle, converted him to Christianity and was going to make him an apostle, even to the Gentiles, when Paul was recalling this, he said that Jesus spoke to him in the Hebrew language.

So if you're wondering what the voice of God might sound like here, is he speaking to Paul? Well, he would have, he would have been speaking to Paul in the language that Paul knew. He knew Hebrew. He also knew Greek.

But Jesus is addressing him here in Hebrew. And Paul responds to him, who are you, Lord? And Jesus said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Remember that the church is the body of Christ. So whatever is done to the church is done to Christ.

Jesus so identifies with the brethren that whatever is done to us, it is as if it was done to Christ. Jesus had said to his disciples, remember when they hate you, they hated me first. They'll hate you because they are not followers of Jesus Christ.

And so that's what Saul is doing because he hates the church. It's actually a demonstration that in his heart, he hates Christ. Jesus saying, you're persecuting the church and in so doing, you are persecuting me.

Saul is hearing from God himself now appearing to him and saying, what you are doing is actually not in keeping with my word. It is exactly contrary to what I have said in my word. But Jesus is putting a stop to it and is going to put Saul in the position of being the persecuted rather than the persecutor.

And it is it's both a grace of God and really quite the irony that Saul would go from being the persecutor of the church to one being persecuted for the church. And again, this by the gracious hand of God, Saul doesn't deserve this.

What did he deserve on the way to round up Christians in Damascus? He deserved to be struck down dead. And Saul even recognizes that, too, in his testimony a little bit later on, sharing that I would have been better off as dead at this point.

This is what I deserve because I persecuted the church. He'll even say of his own apostleship, I am as one untimely born because I persecuted the church. Whereas the rest of the apostles knew Jesus with him in his life, had witnessed his death and resurrection and even his ascension into heaven.

Saul wasn't there for any of that, did not know him personally. And so falling to the ground has to say, who are you, Lord? And Jesus saying, I am he whom you are persecuting. Well, we're going to stop there for today and we'll come back to this again tomorrow.

Finishing up Saul's encounter with Christ, got another thing to share regarding that and then going on to read of his physical and spiritual blindness as he spends three days fasting and praying before the Lord commissions him to become this apostle to the Gentiles.

Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for the grace that you show to us. None of us deserve to be saved either. And yet it is by an exercise of your grace to us, your mercy to us, that we have been made from sinners into saints through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

As we've been clothed in his righteousness, teach us to live righteously. May we desire to follow after Christ in word and deed today. We ask these things in Jesus name.

Amen.

Thank you for listening to when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com and click on the gift tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.