Acts 9:18-25
Amen. You may be seated. Please
turn in your copy of God’s word to the book of acts. Uh, chapter
nine verses 18 through 25 will be our study for the day. I think
it’s been about four weeks since we were last in acts. So we picked
back up where we left off. This is, um, uh, continuation
of the conversion of the apostle Paul. Saul of Tarsus on his way
to Damascus with papers from the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem
to persecute, to arrest, to harass and even to put to death the
followers of the way. And so last time we considered
the conversion of Saul when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
Today we’ll pick up with the next things which he does. important
in his life and ministry. So before we read God’s word,
let’s pause and pray and ask for help and grace. Pray with
me. Lord, like the apostle Paul, we would have scales on our eyes
unless you remove them. So take them away so that we
can clearly see the wonderful salvation that you put before
us in your scripture. Grow us in grace. Grow us in
the knowledge of the Son and encourage us in our Christian
path as we hear your word now. Give us your help by your spirit,
we do pray. And we pray it in the name of
Jesus, our great savior, amen. Hear the word of the living God,
Acts chapter nine, beginning at verse 18. It says of the apostle
Paul, immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and
he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized,
and taking food, he was strengthened. For some days he was with the
disciples at Damascus. And immediately he proclaimed
Jesus in the synagogue, saying, he is the Son of God. And all
who heard him were amazed and said, is not this the man who
made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called on this name? And
has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them down before
the chief priest? But Saul increased all the more
in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by
proving that Jesus was the Christ. When many days had passed, the
Jews plotted to kill him. But their plot became known to
Saul. They were watching the gates by day and night in order
to kill him. But his disciples took him by
night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering
him in a basket. 50 years ago on Friday, this
past Friday, we understand the breaking of the story of the
Watergate scandal. Arrests were made. A scandal
was uncovered. The presidential campaign of
Richard Nixon had been conspiring to secure the election. Sounds
kind of familiar, doesn’t it, in our day? All this espionage
and whatnot. But they were caught breaking
in the with the Democrat National Committee’s office. They were
arrested. And one of the persons convicted in the Watergate
scandal was a man by the name of Chuck Colson. Many of you
will not know him from the Watergate scandal, but you’ll know of him
from his 30 books, from his prison fellowship ministry, from his
Christian worldview teachings and ministry that continues even
to this day, 10 years past his death. You do one kind of math
and Watergate was one of the greatest scandals in our nation. But you do the kingdom math and
out of that great scandal came the conversion of a man who has
gone on to do mighty things for Almighty God, Chuck Colson. He was used by Almighty God in
great ways. But before his conversion, he
was known as Nixon’s hatchet man. It was said by him that
he would run over his grandmother to see Nixon reelected. But this
man converted to Jesus and used mightily. That was 50 years ago. 2000 years ago, there was Saul
of Tarsus, a man much like Colson, great education, good upbringing,
strong, strong constitution to do great things in the world.
And you do the math of the Saul of Tarsus. He killed people.
He put them to death. He was a terror, a scourge in
the days of the early church, the great persecutor of persecutors. But you do the kingdom math.
And when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, And Jesus converted
him into salvation. This man would come to do great
things. 13 New Testament epistles, which
give shape and form our expression of the church throughout the
centuries. This man had been a great persecutor. He had been the hatchet man,
if you will, of the Jewish faith. And now he’s come to faith in
Jesus. And there are two mighty questions, two big questions
that Saul asks on the road to Damascus. He says, first, who
are you, Lord? And second, what shall I do? And we’ll see through the life
of the apostle Paul, he indeed gets the answer to the first
question. Who are you, Lord? I am Jesus
of Nazareth. I am the savior of sinners. I’m
the second person of the Trinity. I am the one who has come in
this world to take on sin and to conquer it, to take on death
and to defeat it. And the answer to the second
question, what shall I do? Jesus tells Saul, I will use
you to bring my gospel to the Gentiles. And in your bringing
the gospel to the Gentiles, I will show you how much you will suffer
for my name’s sake. So in thinking of this passage
today, I want us to look at a handful of little vignettes that we see,
little, little snapshots, little pictures of what God is doing
in Saul’s life, Paul’s life, that prepare him and put him
into the ministry as an apostle of Jesus Christ. We’ve already
mentioned his conversion. is traveling the Damascus road
and he meets the Risen Lord. Why are you persecuting me? Jesus
says. He receives this divine rebuke.
Stop killing my people. Stop ravaging my church. But
he also on this Damascus road experience receives God’s call
to ministry. You will be an apostle for my
name. uh, to the ends of the earth.
So there’s Paul’s conversion. There’s also his restoration. You can imagine the trauma of
this event. Uh, if we, if we sent a Paul
to a shrink, right, that’s what we would do today. After such
an event, uh, they would look at PTSD. They would look at,
um, all the things he endured by, by meeting Christ, by being
stopped in his tracks, by being stopped by this thunderbolt of
light. by the trauma of the holy, the
trauma of meeting God himself. And so part of his restoration
is, well, it’s not to visit a shrink, it’s to go see Ananias. Ananias
is the poor sap who God chooses to have to go find Saul, now
Paul, and to help him on his feet. Saul is blind for a period
of time. The scales are removed from his
eyes. He regains his strength. Now
stop there for just a moment. It says he regains his strength
this time through food and probably a little nourishment, maybe some
ramen broth and you know, all the things you do. Um, but on
down in the passage, it is going to talk about Paul’s strength
and it’s not going to be as physical strength. It’s going to be his,
his preaching strength. He will preach to the Jewish
authorities there in Damascus and over and over we’ll see they
cannot overcome his arguments. that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus
is the son of God. And so this restoration for the
apostle Paul, yes, it’s twofold. It’s it’s getting his strength
back. You know, he’s on a diet of smoothies and protein shakes
and, you know, all the things we would do. He’s regaining his
strength in order to serve the living God, for he’s been what
might we say he’s been walloped by the presence of Jesus. who
stopped him in his tracks on the road to Damascus. So we see
Paul’s conversion. We see his restoration physically,
also spiritually. He’s baptized. He’s converted to almighty God
and must be baptized. And so we can only assume that
Ananias immediately baptized him. He took him to water, baptized
him. He gave him the outward sign
of inward change. brought him through baptism into
the body, into the church of Jesus Christ. He baptized him
into Jesus great name. And so now this converted man,
this restored man, this baptized man begins a ministry. And it
says in our passage immediately, The scales fell off. He regained
his sight. He was baptized, took food and
was strengthened. He was for some days with the
disciples and immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue
saying, he is the son of God. Talk about getting to it. Most
of us, when we are converted, we kind of take it slow. We go
to church, we go to Sunday school, we read our Bibles. We try to
learn a little about faith. We read some books, listen to
some tapes or podcasts or whatever. Remember this about Paul. He
was schooled under Gamaliel. In his early life, he learned
everything there was to know about the Old Testament. And
so you can see that as soon as the lights clicked on, this Old
Testament proclaims Jesus. This Old Testament speaks clearly
of Messiah. Once the spirit opens your eyes.
Once the scales fall off, once your chains fall, you begin to
see very quickly, especially a man of Paul’s Old Testament
education, Jesus is everywhere. Jesus is clearly the Messiah,
the son of God. And so in his ministry in the
synagogues, you understand that in the synagogues, they would
usually let a guest read a portion of scripture and explain it.
We saw this with Jesus, say at Caesarea or at at the sea of
Galilee, that the, at the synagogue there, Jesus would come, he’d
open the scroll of Isaiah. And remember he got in big trouble
because he said, Oh, this Isaiah passage I’m reading, it’s about
me. And I’ve come to fulfill all prophecy. Well, the apostle
Paul is the guest. He’s explaining a passage of
scripture, which he knew so well. And he’s saying, look, folks,
this is Jesus. This is Messiah. He’s probably
reading the Psalms. He’s probably reading the prophets. He’s reading the law and he’s
showing them over and over time after time as he visits the synagogue.
Jesus is Messiah. Jesus is the son of God. Now we’re going to find out they
don’t really like this message. They didn’t like it when Jesus
proclaimed it. So why would they like it now that Paul is proclaiming
it? And we think of these two titles
in this passage in verse 20, it says, he is the son of God.
And then down in verse 22, it says, Saul increased all the
more in strength, right? This is the time it’s not from
chicken broth. and smoothies and protein shakes.
This is God strengthening him because he is confounding the
Jews and he’s proving that Jesus was the Christ. So you have two
statements here about Jesus. He is the son of God and he is
the Messiah. What does it mean that Jesus
is the son of God? It means that Jesus, the second
person of the Trinity is divine. He is both the God man. And then
when it speaks of Jesus as the Christ, he is the Messiah. Now
these are two big no-nos. Preachers kind of know in the
back of their mind, there’s just subjects you don’t bring up in
church. Well, if you’re a preacher going to a Jewish synagogue and
you’re the guest that day, you don’t preach on Jesus as Messiah
and you don’t preach on Jesus as the divine son of God. Well,
Paul, not Paul. wishing to cater to men and be
a pragmatist, he gets to it. He ministers preaching that Jesus
is the son of God. He is the second person of the
Trinity. He is both divine and human. And we can only think
of what Paul must have explained to them, that Jesus, the eternal
son of God, left the riches of heaven. He became man through
the incarnation. He was conceived by the Holy
Ghost. He was born of the Virgin Mary.
He was born without sin. And in his humanity, he did what
the first Adam failed to do. He obeyed God perfectly. He lived
a sinless life. And so when the sinless man went
to the cross, he paid the price for the sins of all his children. We just sang richly of that. He bled for his chosen race. And so Jesus is the eternal son
of God who became human. Now we get a little mixed up
here. Uh, sometimes how is he God? How was he man? Did they mix?
Did they get confused? Did he, you know, turn into modes?
Was he Superman and went in the phone booth and came out, uh,
the God part and went back and put on his, you know, his Galilean
tunic. We get a little confused sometimes,
but our larger catechism helps us think of Jesus, the God man,
when it comes to salvation. And it says to us, it was necessary
for Jesus to be both God and man. It was necessary for him
to be human, to take up our infirmities. It was necessary for him to be
human, to take up our sin and to bear it at the cross. But
it was necessary for him to be God because what human, even
a perfect human could not bear the wrath of God. And so it was
necessary for the divine nature to hold him up. under that great
deluge of God’s wrath. So a little bit ago we sang,
and can it be, um, and we sang something about that thou my
God should die for me. Um, we, we understand in our
brains theologically that God did not die, right? What would
happen if God died? You wouldn’t exist. This room
would disappear. The whole earth would disintegrate
because it is God, particularly Jesus, Colossians tells us, who
upholds the earth by the word of his power. So if God, particularly
Jesus, ceases to exist, we have nothing. So we understand when
we say God died. It’s speaking of the second person
of the Trinity, the human nature. God does not die. God cannot
die. God will not die. And we’re in
big trouble if he were to die. Could that happen? But it can’t.
So no worries. But Jesus’ ministry here proclaimed
by God, proclaimed by Paul, he is the son of God, but he’s also
the Messiah. He’s the one promised to Abraham.
He’s the one promised to Adam. He’s the one that all the Levitical
laws pointed to. He’s the one the whole Old Testament
is saying here he will come and here’s what he will do. Isaiah
in particular speaks of him in the suffering servant songs,
speaks of the servant of God despised, rejected a man of sorrows
acquainted with grief. And you can imagine Paul explaining
all these passages event by event, time by time in the synagogue.
Of course, they get angry. They don’t want to hear this,
but the word tells us. that he was strengthened the
more and more. He could not be opposed. This
man whose brain was so well-educated and now converted to Jesus was
of great use to God Almighty in service to his church. And
it says that in his ministry, the Jews, the people in the synagogue
were both amazed at what he had to say. And it also says they
were confounded. by what he had to say. They were
amazed, surprised, dazzled by what he had to say. But boy,
it made them angry. It baffled them. It confused them. Now,
tucked in this passage is another little snapshot of Paul’s ministry. And you have read it and not
seen it, but I’m going to explain it to you. And, uh, you can go
look it up and see if, see if I’m right on this. Uh, and this
little story is, or this little vignette is the preparation of
the apostle Paul. So if you look at verse 22, it
says, Saul increased all the more in strength. He confounded
the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving Jesus was the Christ.
And then it says very beginning of verse 23, when many days had
passed. Okay. You know, when you’re reading
along in a story and it says time passed or after this, thus
and such happened, we know there’s a gap. Well, according to most
New Testament scholars, Everybody kind of agrees with this. In
Galatians chapter one, Paul speaks about being in Arabia for a little
stretch of time. And so we’re speaking of Paul’s
preparation for ministry. So he’s, he’s converted. He spent
some time with Ananias. The scales fell off. He eats
his chicken broth. He gets his strength up and he does go immediately
to the synagogue and preach. But sometime after that, he spends
three years in Arabia. Now, three years could be three
12-month stretches, 36 months, or it could be like, say, December
of this year, all of next year, and then January of the next.
That would only be 14 months, right? But could you see how
it could be construed as three years, three passings of a calendar
year? So here’s what the Apostle Paul
says of himself. I make known to you, brethren,
that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.
For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it. but
it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have
heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the
church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And
I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in
my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of
my fathers. But when it pleased God who separated
me from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace to
reveal his son to me that I might preach him among the Gentiles,
I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did
I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.
But I went to Arabia and then returned to Damascus. After three
years and after many days were passed, the Jews plotted to kill
me. And so we often understand his
time of preparation was, well, say 14 months to three years.
And it was in Arabia, which would have been possibly nearby Damascus. Who knows? But Paul spent a lot
of time thinking on his Old Testament knowledge and Christ spent a
lot of time revealing to him the content of his gospel. of
the content of his ministry, the things which he would go
and say. And so in this passage, while we speak of Paul’s conversion,
his restoration to health, his baptism, his ministry, we have
to think about this preparation. Time passed, maybe it was 14
months, maybe it was three years, but he was in Arabia. And then
he comes back to Damascus and he continues to baffle and confound
the Jews. And so what do they decide to
do? Well, he’s got to go. Boy, don’t preachers in America
have it easier? You just get run off. I really
haven’t heard of a preacher getting killed, having to be let out
of the manse through a basket. But this helps us think of this
last little snapshot of this passage, his opposition. He’s preaching Christ. And just
as Christ was preaching himself, As the fulfillment of all great
hope in the scriptures and opposition came, it’s now Paul’s turn and
it’s his turn to suffer for the name of Jesus. And it speaks
of the Oh, how would you put it? The paranoia of the Jews. We don’t want our sweet little
synagogue disrupted. We got a good life here. We got
a good comfort level here. We’re making some good money
here. Just like the temple at Jerusalem, here’s the temple
at Damascus, the synagogue. They don’t want anybody disrupting.
And so they watch the gates night and day to kill the apostle Paul. He catches wind of it. They let
him out. down by a basket. And so Paul will speak over and
over of the opposition he was under, the sufferings he will
receive, not just from Rome, but from his own kinsmen. And
isn’t it interesting what God works in a man like Chuck Colson
to do great and mighty things in our own time. But isn’t it
amazing to see what God does through the apostle Paul? There’s
actually a place in Romans where Paul is wondering about the salvation
of Israel, his own people who’ve rejected God, and he says, if
I could, if I could, I would give my life for theirs. And
dear brothers and sisters, I wanna ask you this hour, has your conversion
not necessarily brought the same fruit and ministry as Paul and
Chuck Colson? They’re extraordinary men for
an extraordinary time. But has your conversion led you
to be strengthened and to speak for the Lord and to say mighty
things, most especially that Jesus is who he says he is. Jesus
has done all the scriptures have said he will do and has done. And so I believe these, these
I proclaim to you. I hope these things are near
and dear to your heart and that you will love Christ and serve
him just as Paul did, just as Chuck Colson has done. but in
your own unique way as God calls you and places you in your part
of the world. Let’s go to God in prayer. Lord,
we give you thanks that you save sinners. We give you thanks that
you save sinners to make your name known to the ends of the
earth. Thank you that you put us in families so that our children
might know you. Thank you that you put us in
communities that we might be salt and light. Thank you that
you put us in the church where when we are gathered together,
we can look at one another and see your mighty hand of grace.
You’ve saved each and every one of us out of sin and death and
darkness, brought us into your kingdom of life that we might
live for you. Lord, help us this hour to realize all that has
been done for us in Jesus. And may our lives be full of
grace as we go away from this place to live for you and to
serve your kingdom. Hear us and help us. We pray
all this in Jesus name. Amen.