Acts 9 Saul Encounters Jesus

This is a summary of the transcription: The main idea of this information is about the conversion of Saul to Paul, who was previously a persecutor of Christians. Saul was a devout Jew who obtained government permission to imprison and persecute Christians. However, on his journey to Damascus, he experienced a life-altering event when a light from heaven flashed around him and he heard a voice asking why he was persecuting Jesus. This encounter led to his spiritual transformation and he became a strong advocate for Christianity. The information also emphasizes the deep connection between believers and Jesus, highlighting that mistreating other Christians is equivalent to mistreating Jesus himself. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of being on God's side and having confidence in His support. Let's continue next, chapter 9, and it's really a highlight of the book of Acts, and as Luke wrote the book of Acts, he mentioned this Paul guy many times throughout his writings, because it was such a significant conversion, like you think of the worst person on earth that wants to kill Christians is now the biggest advocate for Christians in the name of Saul that converted to Paul. And I titled this, I once was blind, but now I see, because he was literally blind in two ways. He was spiritually blind, he did not see the truth, he was blind to the truth, but also he became physically blind after he saw the truth face-to-face. For three days he was blind, but now, once he has his vision come back, now he sees. But before we get started, let's go ahead and go to God in prayer. Dear God, we pray that you just help us to stay out of the way of what you want to tell us tonight, forgive us for our sins, just help us to see the truth clearly in a world of darkness, and I pray that you would motivate us to serve you better and be closer to you because of this, in Jesus' name, amen. So Saul was in a very bad, dark place, the most evil place he's ever been in his whole life. He was an Old Testament Jew, as closely as he followed the Torah and the Old Testament, he was a Jew of the Jews, he was one of the best servants of God there could possibly be, but now he's the worst servant of God that he could possibly have been. And it's amazing that God would want to use somebody like this. In Acts 9, he says, Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priests and asked them for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the way, now this was, you know, they didn't call us Christians back during this time. The people of that time, the Jews of that time, referred to us as the way. Now we think of it as more of a creepy thing now, because if you've ever heard of the way college, that was more of a cult type of thing, where they strayed from scripture. But they were called the way. And whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. Now this was a big deal because he went up to the high ups and got government permission. And he got these letters, I'm sure stamped with the wax and everything to make it legitimate. And they put their stamp of approval on going and taking prisoners, Christian prisoners. This was a government backed anti-Christian mission. So in verse 3 we go on, as he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. So one second earlier, he was in this mode, I'm going to imprison and kill and torture Christians because they are attacking my faith and I am close to my God named Yahweh and I want to serve him as best as possible. Well, he's obviously aimed the wrong way. And now all of a sudden, boom, this is how fast the life can change. This is how fast God can get your attention. In an instant, a light flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Now keep this in mind that Saul was a very devout Old Testament follower. He probably had much of the Old Testament, if not the whole thing memorized. They used to really place it in their heart because they didn't have pen and paper to write on. And so they had to memorize these things and they knew their scripture well. And he would have known and remember when God came down to Abraham and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he would have known when God came down to Jacob and Moses and said, Moses, Moses and Jacob, Jacob. He said, God said this in the Old Testament twice, for some reason, he said their names several times. Now, I don't know if it was just for this moment of Saul to get his attention. He said, hey, Saul, remember when I said Abraham, Abraham, but it was more so to make it a point. Hey, I am communicating with you and I want you to hear this important message. Jesus said the same thing to Abraham in a critical moment in Genesis 29 or 22, nine. Then they came to the place of which God had told him and Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, says the angel of the Lord. So most likely this was Jesus Christ himself. And he said, here I am. He said, do not stretch out your hand against the lad and do nothing for him. For now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. And here Paul would have known that story. He was probably inspired by that story, much like we are. We always forget, you know, Paul was murderous and evil and well, he knew these same stories we knew. He thought he was serving the same God we serve. God really wanted to get their attention, so he said their name twice. So did Paul recognize Jesus' voice possibly? Did he recognize this voice as being from God himself or from some other mystical source? Well, most likely, Paul, I mean, he was very close to God and he would not ever believe that any pagan God could make such a miracle happen like this, appear in a light and talk. So surely he probably thought it was God himself, Yahweh, his version of God, which was the same God, but they were cut off because of Christ. And he said also in verse four, he said, Saul, why do you persecute me? Now, he didn't say, why are you going to go up to Damascus and persecute my people, the church? He said, why are you persecuting me? Well, he wasn't literally in body persecuting Jesus Christ himself, although he probably would have loved to be one of the ones to hang Jesus on that cross, but he came more into play after Jesus Christ rose from the dead and ascended. But he said, persecute me because this is the doctrine of us being in Christ. We are united with Christ, we are one with Christ, and that's how Jesus views our relationship. If you hurt one of mine, you hurt me. Romans 6.4 says, therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we might too walk in the newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. So we've been crucified with Christ, we were there on the cross, not literally, but figuratively. Our old self has died, now our sin is no more so that we can be united with God. So in a way, we have died. A part of us has died and gone forever after we put our trust in Christ. It is no more. Certainly on the other hand, we're going to be in the likeness of his resurrection. Now in Romans 6.8 it says, now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. So verse after verse is showing this deep connection, not just a nonchalant connection, it's a deep connection. So deep that he even says we have been crucified with him. So you think he's going to want to come to our rescue when we need rescuing? You think he's going to want a relationship with us every chance he can get? Most of the time it's one-sided, we don't do our part and run to him, he's usually having to run to us, but he says if you treat other Christians bad, you're treating me bad. Matthew 25.34 says, then the king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. So this is an exciting time, he says these kind of people are the ones that are going to inherit the kingdom. Who are those type of people? This for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you and thirsty and give you something to drink? Again emphasizing the fact that you mess with my people, you have messed with me. You know, just kind of like your family, if somebody picks on your family or does something to your family or threatens your family, you've had enough, you're going to go do something about that. And verse 38 says, and when did we see a stranger and invite you in or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and come to you? And the king will answer and say to them, truly, I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me. You come against my family, you come against my people, you try to destroy my people, like the disciple song says, we cannot stand by, Jesus will not stand by and let his people be destroyed. And we see that even in his mercy and grace with Israel, his original, really love the Jewish people. He still protects them despite them turning from him. So when somebody calls us names, they do it to Jesus. When they push us around, they're doing it to Jesus. And when we do something good for other believers, it says we are doing it for Jesus. I like this, it says, as long as you know that God is for you, it doesn't matter who's against you. What kind of, that gives you ultimate confidence and power. Like if you think about it, nobody can ever be against you if the God, the creator of the universe, Jesus is for you. But we also, you know, he comes to our rescue. We have to remember what side we're on too. We don't always play on the right side. We become Christians sometimes and, and we turn our backs on him. Romans 8, 31, it says, what shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? God is always for us, but we're not always for him. We can't root for both teams that many times we do. It says, I would, this one says, I would rather stand with God and be judged by the world than stand with the world and be judged by God. The easy route in the world is almost always the wrong side, the wrong direction. It's hard to stand with God and there's no greater example than we see with the persecution we're going to see with Paul that is about to happen. So Saul is about to be transformed by the power of Jesus, by the living truth right in front of him, by the word of God, the words spoken, literally, Jesus calls himself the word. He hears the word spoken to him. He says in verse five, who are you, Lord, Saul asks. So this Lord, it could be the word, sir, or could mean Yahweh. He might've thought this was God, the father. He says, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, he replied. Now in his mind, he probably knows, okay, this is an ultimate power, supernatural. The only supernatural power I know is Yahweh. So it probably has to do with Yahweh, so I better pay attention. In verse six it says, the first command, now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do. The man traveling with Saul stood there speechless. They heard the sound, but 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. He obeyed God immediately, didn't even question him. He was on his way to Damascus, not to go to Damascus and minister to people on behalf of Jesus Christ. He was there to destroy people because of Jesus Christ. But now in an instant, he has transformed. He is willing to go on this mission right away. I don't know if it was, you know, you think of the words that were spoken by Jesus and the sound, the natural drawing of that supernatural moment, the inspirational feeling that he got. I don't know. It was a complete convincing. He was completely convinced to believe in Jesus. So and another thing with the Jews, his Old Testament knowledge primed him to believe. He was just like ready to believe, just like many of the Jews today. And verse 9, it goes on, for three days he was blind and did not eat or drink anything. So this represented his spiritual blindness. He was completely spiritual blind before this. Now he's physically blind. And this isn't necessarily an intentional spiritual fast. It doesn't really point that out, you know, because fasts are good to kind of refocus. It might have been he was so worked up and so nervous, you know, like Fawn's a nervous person. I don't know if it was him or her. She'd be nervous for, I don't know, decades, probably. It'd be hard to get over that, you know, that kind of experience of making nervous like, oh, wow, the creator of the universe has just spoken to me on this road and given me a mission. So it might have not been necessarily a spiritual fast. Just three days, the event probably just absolutely consumed his life. I mean, he would never forget this, obviously. I don't know if you remember the time that you put your trust in Christ. Many people may not know that specific time because it's just a trusting thing. It's not an outward action. It's not a moment of coming down the altar. It could be just an instant. It could be while you're mowing the yard. That's one of the most glorious places on earth. So when you're mowing the yard, you see God and the different little things and he convinces in weird ways sometimes. The thoughts running through his head had to be crazy. And just like Jesus was dead for three days, now he was taking no nutrition and he was blind for three days. But when Saul comes out of these three days, he is going to be a powerhouse for God. So now, kind of go to chapter two of this story. We see Ananias come into the story because obviously we have another problem. Okay, you convince the most evil person on earth to become a Christian. But now the most evil person on earth, everybody else still hates them. So people knew Saul's reputation going into Damascus. They probably knew he was coming to do some things that were not good. So God had a plan. Of course, he has a plan for everything. And he had this plan to use Ananias to help ease the crowd. In verse 10, it goes on. Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias, and he said, here am I, Lord. And the Lord said to him, get up and go to the street called street and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, where he is praying. And he has seen in a vision, a man named Ananias come in and lay hands on him so that he might regain his sight. But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard many about this man, from many about this man. How much harm did he do to your saints in Jerusalem? So here, Ananias is literally talking to the God of the universe, and he's like, no, I'm going to push back a little bit, boss. You know, if God physically talked to me, I don't know that I would push back, you know, I'd probably be on my face. But it seemed like many times God maybe speaks this way still, it's just not documented like it is in scripture. He definitely can. But he says, and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who come who call on your name. It'll be hard to trust him. It's like trying to trust, you know, the most evil person on earth, like I said, or trying to trust like George Soros, or a member of the mainstream media saying, hey, trust me on this, you know, I'm right. It's so hard to trust somebody with a bad reputation. Ronald Reagan said this, the most terrifying words in the English language are I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. You've heard that before. The government is not trustworthy. And he knew it very well. And this was actually back in the news this week, because the Department of Education Secretary Cordona, which, you know, I think they should just eliminate that and bring it to the local. You know, we don't need a federal oversight. But anyway, Cordona said in a speech, he's saying, Yeah, we're going to go to each state. And he's like, Oh, yeah, I remember that Reagan quote, he's, he says, This is a good thing. I'm from the government. I'm here to help. I totally took it out of context, saying, the government was a good thing, they're going to go state to state and help out all these schools, and little did he know that it was the exact opposite of what he was intending. Pretty embarrassing moment. But God knew trusting Saul would be difficult. So what does God do? He endorses Paul. He publicly endorses Paul. In verse 15, it says, But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine. God's saying that about you. You are a chosen instrument of mine. We don't have to imagine it because he does say that. We are all his chosen instruments, that he got the endorsement directly from God himself. And he says, 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's sake. So he throws them a little bit here, he's like, because you're thinking these people probably want vengeance on this Saul guy, he's been terrorizing his people. And God's like, yes, he has. And yes, he will suffer. But he will suffer for my name, not some fake religion. So Ananias departed and entered the house and after laying his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. So here again, not only was he physically healed, he was filled with the Holy Spirit's power. And this is another delayed filling. Did he trust in Christ on that road? I think he did. But again, in the Old Testament, many times the apostles would come and lay hands on the people and it gave more legitimacy to their ministry. So maybe God delayed the filling to give them more legitimacy. That's one of the theories. But he says, and immediately there fell from his eyes, something like scales. And he regained his sight and he got up and was baptized. So baptism is a personal decision. And right when those scales fell off, he saw the truth now, he had a new life now, he was on a new track now. And he could see clearly. And what's the first thing you do when you want to, when you put your trust in Christ and your new creation? Well, he wants to tell the world. He wanted to show everybody that he was completely immersed in this new thing called the way. That's what it was called back then. This showed his dedication at conversion. So it took blindness to the world, literal blindness, for Paul to open his eyes to the truth. He was blind for so many years and now he's opened his eyes to the truth. To us seeing the truth is so obvious, you know, as Christians, but to the world, it's even impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit. G.K. Chesterton, if you ever look up some of his quotes, really a smart Christian man, Robbie Zacharias used to quote from him a lot. But he says, truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth. You ever think about that? We can see that other perspective. And I was talking to my co-worker, she's a more liberal girl, doesn't like the people I like and, you know, stuff like that. But she, we were talking the other day and I'm, and she's like, oh, that can't be true. And I'm like, she's like, how do you know all this stuff? And I'm like, well, do you ever watch news from our side? She's like, oh, no, I never, never have in her whole life. But do we see things from their side? All the time. Because it's everywhere. It's all you see. So in a way you can understand both sides better because of where we're at. We're not part of the world, we're outside of the world, and they're in the world. But this is another quote from GK, it says, it often happens that science arrives eventually at truth, which common sense has discovered without its aid a long time before. Does that make a lot of sense? We arrive at the truth very quickly. And science works and works and tries and, and they say, I heard a scientist this week in a, or read in a news report that they have determined that there is no evidence of a global flood. There's shells up on top of mountains. I mean, they know that. There's fish fossils up on the highest mountains in the world. But yet there's no obvious sign of a global flood. That's how blind to the truth they are because they can't understand it. I like this one. I don't often have a meme from this guy, but conspiracy theorists, this is nothing but a derogatory term for a person who researches a subject, then uses logic and critical thinking to form an educated opinion, instead of just blindly believing whatever they see on their television. So people that actually look into it are often called conspiracy theorists. And this is where Paul is now. He went from being part of the world, had it easy, had connections to very powerful people. He could get a letter signed and have the authority to do about anything. But now he's on the other side. Now he knows the truth, but now the world is going to come down on him. In verse 19 it says, and he took food and was strengthened. Now for several days he was with the disciples who were in Damascus. So it says several days there he was with the disciples. Keep in mind, this is going to be a fast Bible college. It's called several days, that's it. And then he goes and starts preaching right away. He didn't go to Bible college. He didn't get to studying. He already knew it all. He was primed and ready to go. The only Bible that existed was the Old Testament. And now the New Testament is being written before his very eyes. So God pursues us, the summary of all this story is, you know, God pursues us where we are, you know, on that road, wherever your road was, where Jesus appeared to you. God is willing to do big and or small things to get our attention. And he doesn't leave us hanging after we get back on track. You know, he, your Paul was kind of in a bad spot, but he led him, he guided him, he told him where to go. He healed him. He filled him with the Holy Spirit, gave him the tools he needed to be successful. That's how God works. And now Paul gets right to work. In verse 20, it says, immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying he is the son of God. Now, the synagogues were the main area where they would teach their Jewish beliefs. That would not be like another religion coming in here and standing up here and starting to preach. I don't think we put up with it very much, would you? I think there was a lot of persecution. I think there was a lot of, get out of here, you know, you don't have anything good to say. But for somehow the Holy Spirit must have been working because this wouldn't happen today. Well, if a Muslim would come up here and start preaching, I don't think we would allow that, would we? But all who are hearing him, God used the Holy Spirit to convince people. He says, all those who are hearing him continue to be amazed and were saying, is this not he who in Jerusalem destroyed those who called on his name, who had come here before for the purpose, bringing them down before the chief priests. But Saul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. Now, I know it doesn't say exactly how he proved it, but I think that the Holy Spirit spoke through him and convinced people to believe through him. They were baffled, you know, he was going to come there to kill them, but now he's there to preach to them. So pretty awesome. This is a map of where Damascus is compared to where Jerusalem is. I don't know if you guys knew it was way up north in the land of Syria right now, but you hear a lot of these places on the news. The West Bank is the main area where the Jews have settled now, and that's pretty much all of Israel. They don't have much land there. So now they're staying from the river to the sea because they want to push Israel into the Mediterranean Sea so they don't exist anymore. But that's quite a walk there from Jerusalem where he was originally. Verse 23, and then we'll wrap up here with the next few verses. So many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted together to do away with him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were also watching the gates stay in night so that they might put him to death. But his disciples took him in by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket. So this is how bad it's getting. He went from this position of power to now he's having to sneak into places to be safe. He was up against a lot. He was up against his own people, the Jews, his friends, his family. He was up against the Christians who totally were not convinced that this was actually a good guy. Kind of like if a super liberal would become conservative. We may not trust that right away, especially if they're activists. We might want to see, are they really doing this honestly? Is CNN now conservative? Are they trying to pull something on us? And then you also have the government against them. Many religions and governments are against us still today. I mean, you hear some governments like North Korea, Syria, Egypt, even Ukraine has imprisoned some pastors, which is shocking because of all the money we're giving them. But some things never change. We're still imprisoned. We're still persecuted. The king and the Jews were against Paul here in 2 Corinthians 11, 32. In Damascus, the Athenarch under Aretas, a lot of weird words here, the king was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me. And I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his hands. In 926, now the disciples. When he came to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. He had no friends. It's like he had nobody, so God had to step in and give him some credibility. But Barnabas in verse 27 took a hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road and that he talked to him and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus. We're going to get introduced to Barnabas now next week. I don't have time to go into the whole Barnabas story yet, so we'll stop right there. But blindness to sight. God takes our blindness, drops off the scales, lets us see truth clearly, and he meets us where we need to be met. Let's go ahead and close in prayer tonight. Dear God, thank you for your word and how it's a guide to our life and how we can understand the world better and have a better grasp of what you want us to do for you. I pray that you just be with us, fill us with your Holy Spirit throughout the rest of this week, guide and direct us. In Jesus' name, Amen.