Sometimes God meets in a way we never expected, and life is never the same again. The great Apostle Paul had an experience like that.
ACTS 9:1-20: PAUL’S BIG SURPRISE
INTRODUCTION
An Object Lesson
During the First World War, the Chaplain General of the British Forces was Bishop Taylor Smith.
Once while visiting a military hospital he passed a party of convalescent soldiers seated around a table on which he spied a bowl turned upside down. He said to the men, “Do you know what two things are inside that bowl? No? Darkness and uselessness.”
Then he turned it the right way up. “Now,” he said “it is full of light and ready to hold porridge or soup or anything you like to use it for.
It is a converted bowl. Which are you men like? The inverted, dark, useless bowl, or the converted, light, useful bowl—because you have turned from darkness to light, from Satan to God?”
I. I would like to tell you three conversion stories
A. St. Augustine was born in North Africa in 354.
Augustine’s mother was a devoted Christian and prayed every day for her son.
Although Augustine loved to talk philosophy, he lived a careless, sinful life. He lived with a woman, and they had a son but never married.
As a young man Augustine found a job in Milan teaching rhetoric.
He went to church to hear the eloquent preaching of St. Ambrose.
Gradually he became interested in the true Christian faith.
One day Augustine, now 32 years old, was with a friend in a garden. He was greatly troubled in his heart because of his sinfulness. Suddenly he heard the voice of a child coming from a neighboring house, chanting over and over again, “Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.”
He quickly returned to the bench where his friend was sitting and picked up the book he had left lying there. It was St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
He snatched the book up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which his eyes first fell. [It was the last verses of Romans 13]: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof."
Suddenly Augustine’s heart was flooded with light. He showed the passage to his friend, who read on farther where it said, “Him that is weak in the faith receive.”
Augustine’s friend joined him in full commitment without any hesitation.
He then went to his mother and told her what had happened, and she rejoiced with him.
Augustine lived a long and useful life.
He became one of most influential Christians who ever lived.
B. Sundar Singh was born in India in 1889.
He was educated in a Christian school but was deeply interested in Hindu philosophy. He hated Christianity. He threw filth on his Christian teachers. He mocked their scriptures and interrupted classes. He bought a New Testament from the Christians. Outside his house he built a fire and page by page tore up the scripture and burnt it.
But his search for the truth was only leaving him more and more depressed. Finally one night in December 1903, he rose from bed and prayed that God would reveal himself to him if he was real.
He determined that on the following day he would lay his head on the railroad track near his home and end his life. The next train was due at 5 a.m.
The hours passed. Suddenly the room filled with light. He looked out the door, but it was still dark outside.
A man appeared before him with a shining face. The man said, “How long will you deny me? I died for you; I have given my life for you.”
He saw the man’s hands pierced by nails. He knew it was Christ. He fell to his knees with a wonderful sense of peace.
Sundar Singh was baptized by the Christians.
Wearing sandals and the saffron robe of a Hindu holy man, Sundar Singh began wandering throughout India and the borders of Tibet preaching Christ.
Many believed through his witness. There seemed to be a radiance of holiness about him. Wherever he went, crowds came to hear his telling of the gospel.
Sundar Singh had a great burden to preach Christ in the closed country of Tibet. He disappeared in Tibet at the age of 41. No one knows how he died, but his influence still lives on.
C. Francis Collins is a physicist, a physician, and recently the director of the Human Genome Project. He is a super-star scientist.
As a young scientist he shifted from agnosticism to atheism. He came to the conclusion that no thinking scientist could believe in God.
But as a physician he noticed that many of his patients had a faith that provided them with a strong assurance of peace despite terrible suffering. He couldn’t understand it.
One day, he was speaking to a patient who was suffering daily from severe untreatable pain. He had discussed the important issues of life and death with this woman and she had shared her faith with Collins. One day she blurted out: “Doctor, what do you believe?
Collins was taken aback. He realized that he had never really considered the evidence for and against belief.
He visited a Methodist pastor who lived down the street and the pastor gave him a copy of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. He read it and became a committed Christian.
He recently published a book relating his study of genetics to his faith in Christ. It is called The Language of God. He included the story of his conversion in that book.
D. But the most famous and most important conversion story of all time is the story of Saul of Tarsus, which we find in Acts 9.
Paul’s conversion changed the course of history. For Christians, it is the most important event since the resurrection of Christ.
But today we’re not going to look at the story as a part of the grand scheme of things but only to learn what it has to teach us about living for Jesus.
II. Saul’s story. Read Acts 9:1-2.
A. We first meet Saul in Acts 8, as he watched with approval the stoning to death of the first Christian martyr, Stephen.
Here we read that Saul was convinced that this new faith was blasphemous.
He did what he could to stop the new faith from spreading. He entered house after house dragging both men and women to prison.
In Acts 26 Paul tells King Agrippa that he not only locked many of the believers in prison, but also cast his vote against them when they were being condemned to death.
He tells Agrippa that by punishing them he tried to force the believers to blaspheme—by torturing them, Paul attempted to force them to curse Christ and apostatize.
In all this he was convinced that he was offering service to God.
B. One day, with his letters from the high priest, Saul and a troop of soldiers set out to go to Damascus to arrest the believers who had fled the persecution in Jerusalem.
It was a journey of something like 150 miles. It would have taken a week. Paul had plenty of time to nurse his grudges, to justify his behavior, and perhaps to entertain some doubts as he considered the spectacle of the man Stephen dying under a hail of stones as he prayed for mercy on his assailants—of whom he, Saul was one
C. In Acts 9:3-9 we read what happened as he neared Damascus, his destination.
Here we read only of the intense blinding light and the voice. But in v19 we learn that Paul actually saw the face of Jesus.
When Jesus said, “Why are you persecuting me?” and “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” Saul was shocked into an understanding he would never forget: Jesus’ people are his family—a part of Christ’s own self.
Saul was blinded by the vision, and his companions took his hand and led him on into Damascus.
The man who had intended to lead the Christians as captives to Jerusalem is himself led a captive to Christ into Damascus. But it is not so much Saul’s weakness as the power of Christ that Luke wants to show us.
D. Read Acts 9:10-19
Ananias is one of the unsung heroes of the Bible. He has only this bit role to play in Luke’s story, but his part is essential.
If it is true that The Church owes Paul to the prayer of Stephen, it is also true that the Church owes Paul to the brotherliness of Ananias. Note Ananias’s first words to Saul: “Brother Saul…”
Ananias lived so close to God that he knew how to listen to the voice of Jesus, and he was prepared to obey it, even when what Jesus asked of him seemed unreasonably dangerous.
The mark of Saul’s conversion that silenced Ananias was this, that Saul had been three days and three nights in fasting and in prayer without ceasing. “Behold he is praying,” says Jesus to Ananias. As a Pharisee we can be sure that Saul was diligent in saying his prayers, but now he is really praying—pouring out his heart before God.
E. And as soon as the scales fell from his eyes and Saul can see again, Ananias confronted him with his destiny.
What we call Saul’s “conversion” wasn’t simply the entrance into the “abundant life.”
Right at the beginning of his new life Saul is given a calling: to be a witness for Jesus:
And right at the beginning, Ananias warns him of the cost of his decision to follow Jesus: Saul will suffer much for the sake of Jesus.
We also need to keep in mind these two facts of the Christian life:
The Christian life is a life of service—service to Christ by serving others. We are not saved just to soak up God’s love but to spread it around. We are “saved to serve.”
And the Christian life is a way of life that costs. For Saul it cost dearly. For believers in countries hostile to the faith of Christ, it costs dearly. For us, if we are whole-hearted for Jesus, it will also cost.
CONCLUSION
Christ finds each of us in a different way.
For several years at the Men’s Fellowship of our church we have asked a different man each month to tell us the story of his faith journey. Each has been unique; no two are very similar. Jesus calls in different ways and heals us in different ways.
Few conversions are as clear-cut as that of Saul of Tarsus. A few of my friends have such dramatic stories to tell. For most believers the realization of Christ’s lordship comes more slowly.
I can’t point to the time when I “passed from darkness to light,” but I can remember the week when I realized what it really meant to be a true Christian.
The experience came through an experience of Christian fellowship and listening to calls to discipleship at a missions conference for college students.
The Bible verse that sums up the realization came so strongly into my conscience that week is one that Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: “You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
That verse showed me that to believe in Jesus really simply means to give myself to him. I would belong to him. Jesus would be the Lord of my life.
That was 60 years ago, and since then I’ve never looked back. Sometimes the way has been rocky and rough. I’ve had doubts and fears. I like that verse from “Amazing Grace” that goes like this:
“Through many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already come;
tis grace hath led me safe thus far,
and grace will lead me home.”
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