Acts 9:26-30
Amen. You may be seated. Turn
in your copy of God’s word to the book of Acts chapter nine.
Our reading and study today will be nine 26 through, uh, first
30. So Acts chapter nine versus 26
through 30. Uh, since I guess about last
August or so when we finished, uh, Luke, uh, we have continued
in Luke’s orderly, uh, account of the person and the work of
Jesus. Now he’s giving us an account
of the work of Jesus, the risen and ascended Jesus, through the
Acts of the Apostles. Luke wrote both Luke and Acts,
and so we’re making our way now through Acts. We’ve come through
Paul’s conversion, Saul’s conversion. And now we’re gonna look today
at the beginnings of his ministry. We’re gonna fill in some gaps
and some dots and some holes in the story of the Apostle Paul. Before we read, let’s go to God
in prayer. Blessed Lord, you have caused
holy scripture to be written for our learning. We pray that
we would hear, read, learn, and inwardly digest these your words
through your grace and that through the comfort of your holy word,
we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting
life, which you have given us in our savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen. Hear the word of the living God
from Acts chapter nine, beginning at 26. This is speaking of Paul. When he had come to Jerusalem,
he attempted to join the disciples and they were all afraid of him
for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas
took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them
how on the road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him, and how
at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went
in and out and among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in
the name of the Lord. And he spoke and disputed against
the Hellenist, but they were seeking to kill him. And when
the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea
and sent him off to Tarsus. the word of the living God for
us, his children. You hear a lot of people from
time to time say that they have given up on the institutional
church. They say that, you know, church
leadership has done them wrong. A church staff has done them
wrong. You know, the church has taken my money. The church has
done this, the church has done that. So I’ve given up on organized
religion. So they sit at home and watch
organized religion on TV and send in their money. You can’t
get around organized religion. And I’ll tell you why. Not because
it’s everywhere, but because that’s how Jesus has ordered
his church. If you look through the scriptures
and see how God orders his church, how Jesus, the king and head
of the church, orders his church, how the Holy Spirit blesses his
church, you can’t help but get around organized religion. Um,
we, we gather in a place and, you know, so we build a building,
we give ourselves a name. We, we elect our elders. We call
a pastor. Um, we decide when service will
be, we take up offerings and we decide as a congregation where
those offerings will go, what ministries they will accomplish.
You can’t help, but get around organized, uh, institutional
ministry. But we want to remember that’s
how Jesus has set it up. And I think there’s an important
example in our passage today of the institutional church. And we see the Apostle Paul affirming
it. We see the Apostle Paul coming
to the church as a convert. He comes to the church as a preacher,
and then he’s sent out as an apostle. So I want us to think
through these three aspects of Paul’s early ministry as an early
convert, as a preacher, as an apostle, and how they help us
see the church today. And I hope you’ll be encouraged
about the Church of the Living God, not discouraged. I hope
you won’t give up on organized religion. It is how Jesus takes
care of his disciples. The church is as necessary as
the family. The church is as necessary as
the medical system we have all around us. The church is as important
as the governmental institutions we have, the limited ones at
least, I suppose. Yes, the church is very important,
but it’s it’s it’s a support system. It’s a life system for
us. And so we want to think about
how Paul affirms that in his early life and ministry. You all know that the apostle
Paul. Well, it’s been about three years when we come to our passage
today, but about three years before this subject comes up,
these verses come up. Paul was not Paul. He was Saul. He was the persecutor. He was
the great zealot of Judaism. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He was a student of Gamaliel. Paul, in his mind and in his
heart, knew Judaism backwards and forwards, and he was willing
to kill for it. And remember, recall that he
was breathing murderous threats on the road to Damascus. He had
an entourage of assistants and soldiers from the temple. He
had papers signed by the high priest and he was on his way
to Damascus, some small travel from Jerusalem to arrest and
to bring back to Jerusalem for their trial and probably their
death, those who were followers of the way. But you know how
the story changed on the way to Damascus. The man with letters
from the high priest met the real high priest. He bumped into
Jesus Christ. And Jesus said to him with a
loud voice as he confronted him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting
me? You persecute my people. You
persecute me. We remember Jesus words to his
disciples. If they, uh, if they came after
me, they’re going to come after you. Then Paul writes at the
beginning of Colossians, my life, my ministry is filling up what
is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. When Jesus goes up
to heaven, we, the church receive. Those attacks as if they’re to
Jesus himself. And so Saul, now a Christian,
has spent some time in Damascus preaching in the synagogues.
He spent about three years in Arabia with Christ himself, blessing
him and giving him useful information for being a gospel witness to
the Gentile nations. And now we pick up in the story,
it says, and when he had come to Jerusalem. So this is about
three years after he left Jerusalem. This is three years Damascus,
three years Arabia, and now he’s been let down out of a basket,
out of the wall of Damascus, because guess what? They wanted
to kill him there too. And now he’s come to Jerusalem
and he’s come to join the disciples. And so we take a look first at
Saul the convert. And you can imagine Saul’s thoughts
as he kind of trotted it all the way to Jerusalem. They’ll
love me. They’ll love me not. They’ll
love me. They’ll love me not. It’s been
three years. but they have not forgotten Stephen.
They have not forgotten Paul or Saul, the persecutor. They have not forgotten that
the reason their city is empty of Christians is because of persecution.
They’ve been scattered all over to the ends of the earth. Now,
all of this persecution under God’s sovereignty, all of this
scattering in his great plans. Remember he told his disciples,
my gospel will go from Judea to Samaria. to the ends of the
earth, and it’s through persecution that the gospel will spread. It’s through Saul’s persecution,
and now Saul is being persecuted, and it pushes him around, he
moves from place to place. But Saul the convert is on his
way into Jerusalem, and you can imagine his thoughts. What will
they think of me? Will they receive me? He’s escaped
Damascus and he’s going to see Peter and he’s going to see James,
the brother of the Lord Jesus. Now you’ve got to stop and think
about the irony for a moment. He left Jerusalem to persecute.
Now he comes to Jerusalem seeking the approval, seeking the admiration,
the laying on of hands of these Jerusalem disciples. And it’s
necessary for Saul the convert to show himself there. And this
is where we want to think about why we need the institutional
church and why we should love the institutional church. Saul
the convert is coming to the church to say, here I am, I’m
a believer. Here I am, my faith is real.
Here I am, look at the fruit in my life. And I wanna take
up gospel ministry. But I need your approval. I need
you to lay hands on me. I need you to send me out the
door. Now, what does it say in our
passage? They did not believe he was a
disciple. Well, probably pretty good reason. He was the persecutor. He was the hater. He was breathing,
breathing murderous threats. Last time they saw some years
ago, I was a pastor of a church in the Charlotte area and had
a guy in the church who came to faith. He became a deacon.
And so one summer sitting up at our denominational meeting
over breakfast, the guy that used to be the pastor of the
church was asking me how so-and-so, how so-and-so. And I said, well,
so-and-so is a deacon now. And you could hear the fork drop
on his plate. You could see his mouth drop
open. What do you mean so-and-so is a deacon? I said, well, so-and-so
became a Christian. Apparently that was news to him
and he was shocked and I think went on a five or ten minutes
feel about how it could not be possible that so and so was now
a Christian. Well, friends, the gospel changes everything, doesn’t
it? The gospel comes into our lives.
It removes the darkness. It ushers in the light. It frees
us from our chains and our bondage to sin. God takes a sinful person
and makes them a new creation. And so, yes, we who once were
persecutors of the way or haters of the followers of Jesus or
whatever we did in our fallen condition, Jesus can make a mighty
change. And so Saul, the convert, comes
and he’s brother Saul. He’s the apostle Paul. He’s a
new man in Jesus Christ, but they And for good reason, did
not believe he was a disciple. Can you imagine the knock, knock,
knock in the opening of the peephole? Oh, it’s him. You know, lock
it back up, shut the door, add the extra chain. Now Jesus had
changed Saul. Jesus had converted the apostle
Paul and this man now who had been through his years in Damascus
and Arabia was coming to them as a convert seeking their approval. And so we look at the church
to confirm salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. It’s why
when a family comes to us, we we we say it’s good to have you.
It’s wonderful that you are here. We offer a new members class
wherein we explain salvation. We explain the gospel. We explain
the A.R.P. church way. We explain our doctrine,
our worship, our practices. And then when it gets down to
the nitty gritty, we say we have these seven vows of membership.
Do you believe yourself to be a sinner in God’s sight, knowing
that you deserve his wrath and curse? Do you believe in Jesus
as the savior of sinners? Do you promise with the Lord’s
help to be faithful in your Christian duties in the church, in your
private life, but out in the world? Do you promise to submit
to the authority of the elders? Do you believe our system of
belief and practice is biblical, it’s faithful. And on and on
we ask. And so then we affirm through
church membership the work that God has already done. And we’re
able to say to one another, yes, indeed, this person is a Christian. This person has made a credible
profession of faith. If they’re not baptized, we baptize
them. If they bring their family, we usher them into the covenant
community. And so the church recognizes
converts. Historically, it’s been through
a catechism class. You learn the creeds, the catechisms,
the confessions, and then you become a baptized member of the
Church of Jesus Christ. And so Paul affirms that. Paul
says, hey church, I need your stamp of approval, and comes
to them as a convert. But he also comes to them as
a preacher. He’s already been doing a little
lay preaching, we might call it. And what I’ve just spoken of
in, I don’t know, in light of the institutional church is really
the local church. And so now when Paul or Saul
comes to Jerusalem, he’s coming to the regional church. This
is kind of our Presbyterian mindset. We have local churches governed
by elders locally, but we also have a regional church. It just
so happens for us, we have 18 churches in the Triad Triangle
area and they ordain ministers. They open and close churches.
They oversee ministry. And so Paul is saying, hey, I
wanna be a preacher. And so he goes to Jerusalem.
That’s sort of the mothership at the time. He doesn’t take
up ministry on his own, but he wants to be connected to Christ
and connected to the people. And this pops up in different
ways. If you’re from a congregational background, the local church
does all that ordaining. There’s no regional church or
national church generally. If you’re Episcopal, which could
be Anglican or Episcopalian or Methodist, Usually a bishop presides
over those sorts of things. Same in the Catholic church.
But we believe Presbyterianism is the most biblical way when
you look at it. And so Paul can’t just take up
preaching. He has to go to the church. He
has to go to them and say, Hey, look, I want to preach, but you,
I got to be bonafide, right? I need to be ordained. One doesn’t
just take up ministry, no matter his gifts or his abilities. And
even Saul or Paul cannot say, Hey, I’ve met with Jesus. I bet
you hadn’t. I met the risen Lord in a pretty spectacular event.
So therefore that trumps you. No, Paul, Paul goes to the church
and he shares with them. We find out through his writings
that he shares with them the gospel that he’s preaching. And
they say, that’s great. That’s a, that’s, that is, that is not
only a good gospel, that is the gospel. Uh, we think that’s wonderful. So they, they lay hands on him.
They, they send Paul seeks to use his gifts and his calling
through the church. He seeks to use his gifts and his calling
through the church of Jesus Christ. And he wants their approval.
You know, today in America, you can find a lot of school cafeterias
with a church in them on the weekend. You can find a lot of
churches and movie theaters and all kinds of places. And all
you gotta do is file your articles of incorporation, have a twinkle
in your eye and an entrepreneurial spirit in your heart. And you
can not only set up shop and gather people, you can get pretty
doggone rich in America. And we wonder why there’s so
many church scandals. It’s because these people take
up the call to ministry themselves. They set up a ministry unto themselves. And then when somebody tries
to come in and make a correction, as we’ve seen so well in recent
years, they say, who do you think you are? This is my church. This is the church of me, not
the church of Jesus Christ. And so Paul is a convert, seeks
the approval of the church. Profession of faith. Approbation of Barnabas, the
son of encouragement. Then he comes as a preacher seeking. He could have said, look, I met
Jesus on the road and he set me apart. I’m going to do this
thing and you’re going to like it. But no, he seeks church approval. And Paul says elsewhere, he spent
two weeks in Jerusalem with Peter. and with James. The third thing
we see in this passage, though, is Paul the apostle. And it comes
at the very end of our passage. It says they learned of the Hellenists
seeking to kill Paul. So they learned this and they
brought him down to Caesarea. which is a coastal town, and
they sent him off to Tarsus. That’s where he’s from. That’s
his hometown. Now, you don’t see all this in the book of Acts,
but if you read the little book on Paul that we got a couple
of left in the resource room, really helpful, you’ll see how
John MacArthur’s put Paul’s life and filled in the gaps and the
holes in the chronology of his life. And he says, when it says
that they brought him down to Caesarea, sent him off to Tarsus,
Paul goes home for about 10 years. So there’s about 10 years before
Paul will come back to Jerusalem. Could you imagine that? Can you
imagine a 10 year gap? We haven’t seen our missionaries.
We haven’t seen our evangelists. It’s been 10 years. Well, we
understand that because of travel and whatever, but in God’s providence,
Saul is going to go home. Paul is going to go back to Tarsus
and he’s going to preach through that region. And he’s going to
plant many, many churches. It’s not his first official missionary
journey, but it’s, It’s 10 years of his life. It’s 10 years of
his ministry. So they send Paul off to Tarsus. Remember the meaning of the word
apostle. It literally means a sent one. Well, who is sending Paul?
Is Paul sending himself? No, the church is sending him.
They lay hands on him for preaching. They bless his conversion. And
now they are sending him off as an apostle of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Why do we hate the institutional
church? Well, it does burn us from time to time. We do get
hurt by the institutional church. We get booted off of committees
and, you know, they spend our money the wrong way. We get sideways
in all kinds of ways. That’s why a simple church, the
way Jesus orders it, is a wonderful thing, I do believe. But we ought
to come to the church when we are converted and seek the approval
of the church. Yes, indeed, there is fruit In
your faith, there is a credibility to your profession. We should
ordain and send ministers into the laboring fields. We should
send people off to the mission field. Maybe you’ve been burned
by the church. And I would suggest you haven’t
been burned by Jesus’ church. You’ve been burned by a man’s
church. Maybe you’re a little reticent
to put a little money on the plate. Maybe you’re a little
scared when you hear a creed said or some part of the The
church scares you. If a church is seeking to follow
Jesus Christ, if a church is doing all it can to please Jesus
and to exalt the name of the triune God through the power
of the Holy Spirit according to the authority of the word,
you should trust that church. You should plant yourself in
that church and you should give yourself wholeheartedly as Saul
did, as Paul did, as the apostles did. Or how about this? As Jesus
did. Jesus has bled for the institution
of the church. It’s when he was risen and exalted
that he gave us this wonderful body to be a place for conversions
and preaching and sending and serving in his name. There are
no mavericks in the church of Jesus. If you find one, stay
away. Hug your local church. I think
it’s a good thing. Hug your local faithful church
and be a part of a faithful denomination that’s not reinventing the wheel,
but living and abiding and worshiping and serving on the rock, Peter,
and on the foundation, the content of the gospel. And I think you’ll
be safely ushered through this life into Mount Zion, the heavenly
church, where there won’t be any squabbles, or imperfect people,
only Jesus, the founder of the church, with his wounds, reminding
us that he bled and died to bring a people out of sin and into
life with himself. It’s a joy, I think, to be part
of the institutional church. Maybe not always, but in this
life, most of the time, it’s pretty good, and it’s only gonna
get better when we get into the heavenly city. Let’s pray to
God. Our Lord, we thank you so much
that you bless us in this life with a place to call home, a
place to be nurtured and fed. The church has done so much harm
around the world and in our own country. There’ve been so many
scandals and painful hardships, but we understand that’s not
the true church. That’s not who you are and what
you intended the church to be. So we thank you when there are
faithful manifestations faithful outpost of heaven, help us to
be one Lord, keep us straight, give us courage, and help us
to be a place of joy and worship and Christian growth, so that
we are a light to the nations. Hear us and help us now, we pray
in the name of Jesus, our great Savior, who has built the church,
amen.