“Extreme Makeover, Damascus Edition”
Acts 9:1-19
August 19, 2007
Though I’ve never seen it, I’m given to understand that there is an ABC TV show called “Extreme Makeover”. It must play well in our “image is everything” culture, as teams of plastic surgeons and dermatologists and dentists and other “image consultants go to work on folks who are in deemed of needing an “extreme makeover”. I found a few of these folks, and I must admit, some of the work is fairly impressive! (I found some Extreme Makeover examples online, and shared pictures with the congregation.)
Here’s Jim, both before and after.
Here’s Jennifer; she’s his fiancé, and they did some work on both of them in preparation for their wedding.
Here’s a young lady named Micha, and hers is a touching story; she was legally blind and suffered from an overbite so severe that she could hardly be understood. She lived on the farm with her parents, never learning to drive. The team went to work on her, not only the plastic surgeons, but also coaches who helped her with her speech, her social skills, and her driving. After her “extreme makeover, Micha was hardly the same girl! Even cynical me is impressed…
What we find in Acts 9 is an extreme makeover of a spiritual nature, the story of the conversion of a man named Saul, who’d later take on the name “Paul” and become the first full-time missionary to people outside of the nation of Israel. It would be no stretch to suggest that, after Jesus Christ, the most important human being who ever lived was the apostle Paul. The first part of Acts details the birth of the church; the last part details the expansion of the gospel. The catalytic event connecting these two is the event we concern ourselves with today, the conversion of Saul.
I. The “Before” - :1-2
This wasn’t a dude who was mildly annoyed by Christians. The very breath that animated him was threatening the church! The verb used in the previous chapter to describe Paul’s work against the church, “ravaging” the church, is used only that one time in the NT, but it is used in Psalm 80 of wild boars destroying a vineyard, with the picture being of an untamed beast wreaking havoc and destruction in its path. Paul’s own words in Acts 26 described his “raging fury” at followers of Christ.
Saul was a zealous guy, completely committed to his cause. He wanted to extradite followers of Christ who had fled Jerusalem back to Jerusalem that they might be held accountable for their decision to follow Jesus, that they might face the music, that they might stop proselytizing.
This idea of a crucified Messiah struck Saul as preposterous, and from his perspective, this teaching was nothing short of heresy, their worship of Jesus nothing short of blasphemy, the Way nothing more than a cult that because of its sudden popularity was threatening the very core of Judaistic religion; it had to be stopped, at all costs!
Saul believed in using force to accomplish his purpose. He could point back to certain OT precedents for validation of his actions. Moses killed immoral Israelites at Baal-peor (Numbers 25); Phinehas killed Israelite men and women in the plains of Moab (same passage). Think about it: what reaction do some of us have at the perversion of God’s truth? I posted on my blog about that very thing this week, and I do so with regularity, the indignation I feel when people are claiming to speak for God, yet ignore His truth and twist the Scriptures to suit their own purposes. Saul was utterly convinced that he was right, and that these Christ-followers were wrong, and he was determined to do something about it!
II. The Makeover - :3-6
A brilliant light, bright enough to blind Saul, suddenly appeared from heaven, and a voice that was only understood by Saul himself. “Saul, why are you persecuting Me”, it asked. Was this what Saul was doing, in his mind? Anything but! To his way of thinking, Saul was on the Lord’s side, doing the work of God, and zealously at that! Persecuting God? How could this be?
Stumbling for words, confused and bewildered, confident that he’d been pursuing God’s will faithfully only to be accused by a voice from heaven of persecuting the One he’d believed he’d been serving, Saul stammers out, incredulously, “who are you, Lord?”
“I am Jesus”, came the answer. In an instant, Saul was given an entirely new perspective on God, a new Authority in his life, a brand-new direction and purpose. Needless to say, this rocked him to the depths of his soul!
Jesus equated persecuting His church with persecuting Himself. If you ever wondered how Jesus thinks about you, about His church, this ought to be one passage you should allow to sink deep down: Jesus is so intimately connected with the church that to mess with you is to mess with Him! We are His body; He is the head. This is more than metaphorical; it is real. We don’t say, “we’re like the body of Christ”; we say, “we are the body of Christ”, because that’s what Scripture teaches!
In Acts 26, as Saul, then Paul, relates the story to King Agrippa, he says that Jesus followed up his self-identification with this phrase, “it is hard for you to kick against the goads.” If you have a KJV or a NKJV, it inserts the phrase right into Acts 9 here, though most manuscripts would suggest that this is a later insertion. When a stubborn ox wouldn’t move, a pointed goad would be applied ever so strategically to get the animal to move. If the animal were to kick against the goad, it would have the effect of embedding the point further into the hoof of the animal. Jesus said to Saul, “it’s hard to do that!” In what sense might Saul have been “kicking against the goads”?
Some commentators suggest that Saul was, perhaps on a subconscious level, already trying to deal with some disturbing rumblings in his soul about this Jesus fellow. If this was the case, then his vicious fighting against Christians might have been at least as much about himself as it was about defending the Jewish faith against this perceived heresy. It’s certainly a curious thing about a lot of folk that, the less sure they are that their position is correct, the more determined they get as they fight to maintain it.
I don’t know what was going on inside Saul’s head, whether there’s anything to those suggestions or not, whether the things he’d seen as he witnessed Stephen’s martyrdom played in his mind, whether the astonishing growth of the church, something of which he was very aware, gave him misgivings about his own position. I just don’t know, but in any case he was fighting against God, a dangerous position to be in!
In Saul’s case, his conversion was simultaneous with his call; Jesus tells him, “you’ve got something to do”, and he’ll learn more of that in Damascus itself. Can I suggest that, while none of us will experience a conversion event quite as spectacular as Saul’s described here, when we submit ourselves to Jesus Christ and His authority, as Saul did, we are given a brand-new direction, a completely different purpose, than that which we’d had before?
III. The “After” - :7-9
Pity these poor guys who were Saul’s companions. They had some clue of what was happening, but the voice they heard from heaven was only gibberish to them, apparently, the light not blinding as it was to Saul, but real nonetheless.
We can only speculate, but likely with some accuracy, what must have been going through Saul’s mind during those three days without sight, food, and water. This Jesus impostor was no impostor at all, but the risen and living Lord. Saul had been completely mistaken in seeing himself as doing God’s work; rather, he’d been fighting against God!
Confident and cocky Saul had left Jerusalem, utterly convinced of the rightness of his mission, of the fact that he was doing God’s will and God’s work. Blind and humbled, relying upon others for direction, bewildered and confused but utterly changed, we see a different Saul making the rest of the journey. Saul is a different man than he’d been just a few moments before—but in years to come, the apostle Paul would explain that his zeal for Christ and His gospel came from this life-altering extreme makeover.
IV. The Rest of the Story - :10-19
You get a call on the phone, and it’s the Lord. “Chris, I’ve got some work for you to do. Osama bin Laden is praying right now in Pakistan, and I’ve just given him a vision that you’re going to come and minister to him, because he’s lost his sight, but you’re going to heal him. So go get on Travelocity and book this flight; time’s a-wastin’.” And your response would be? “Hot dog!”
No, it would be, “Uhhh…Lord, uhhh, are you sure about this? Do you really know much about this bin Laden guy? Have you heard what he does? God, look at Ken Chaney; he’s got a lot more faith than I do, and he’s got military experience; send him!”
Table Talk
What kind of man do you imagine Ananias to be? What aspects of his character do you see in this episode (good or bad)?
Put yourself in Ananias’ shoes. He trusted God, but he was apprehensive…OK, chicken. But let’s not be too hard on him. Even some of the prophets of God had expressed reservations about God’s operating in their lives, His direction for them, and so it isn’t unusual that Ananias, having heard so much about this man, would wonder what God was up to, would wonder if this was really a good thing, or if his neck was instead on the line.
And yet, apprehensive as he was, Ananias obeys boldly. The critical ministry of Ananias began with obeying God, despite the potential cost and against “common sense”. It continued with a welcoming role to one who had to be considered, by any measure, suspect.
• “Brother Saul” – if Jesus had accepted Saul as a brother, then Ananias knew that he had to as well, that he couldn’t reject him, despite his trepidation.
• “Regain your sight” – Seeing Ananias, Paul could have had him arrested! This took guts on Ananias’ part!
• “Be filled with the Holy Spirit” – Here was Ananias assisting in the preparation for God’s use of His man, Saul.
Some might say, “God sure makes some funny choices!” We need to remember that while we look at the outward appearance, God is looking on the heart. And that’s what God did: He chose Saul for the purpose of carrying the gospel to
• Gentiles – Those traditionally shunned by the Jews, non-Jews like you and me. If anyone ever asks you, “are you a product of foreign missions”, the answer is “yes!” Because of Paul, and others like him who would take the gospel of Christ beyond the borders of Israel, we heard and believed and followed Jesus!
• Kings – Paul’s testimony of Christ was heard by the poor and indigent, and it was heard by kings and rulers as well, so well-traveled, committed, well-spoken, and filled with the Spirit was this man Saul, who became Paul.
• Jews – As well.
God had an extreme makeover planned for a zealous persecutor of His people, not one where Paul’s outward appearance was altered by expensive plastic surgery, but where his entire life was reshaped by an encounter with Jesus Christ.
Points to Ponder
• The Ordinary Parts of an Extraordinary Conversion
Ajith Fernando points out that while we are immediately taken with the incredible and supernatural means which God used to convert Saul to the faith, there are some extremely “ordinary” elements of conversion taking place here as well (if we can ever term conversion “ordinary”!). While none of us ought to expect blinding lights and thunderous voices from Heaven, notice some things true of Saul’s conversion that are true for us as well:
Conversion comes
o From divine initiative
God took the initiative, not Saul. Sometimes we get the idea that conversion is up to us, that we are the ones who seek God; we even use the term “seeker” sometimes to describe those who are considering a relationship with Christ. Now, I grant that there are a lot of restless folks who don’t know what it is they need, who are looking for answers in life, whose lives don’t add up, who recognize that there’s a hole in the middle of their souls; that’s true! But no one seeks God unless God draws him first, and in our seeking, it isn’t the God of the Bible that we seek unless He first seeks us. Saul might have had a good bit of inner angst, as we suggested earlier; he might have had more conflicts within than his outer bravado gave evidence of. But God came seeking, and God always gets His man!
o Through a personal surrender to Christ’s Lordship
For us, it probably won’t involved being knocked blind to the ground, but it must involve a humble surrender of life to Jesus Christ, to say and mean from our hearts the same word Saul did: “Lord”. Jesus doesn’t come in to be Savior of our souls and then say, “ah, I don’t care whether I’m ‘Lord’ and ‘Master’ in your life or not; you can take that or leave it.” When I come to Christ, I don’t set the conditions; I don’t choose the terms; I don’t negotiate the surrender. I say, “Lord, here I am, as I am, surrendering to You.”
C.S. Lewis, the Oxford professor who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, among other things, said of his own conversion, “I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” Saul didn’t set out that morning to surrender to Jesus Christ, but surrender he did, and called Him “Lord”, and from that moment on, the question was settled as to Who was in charge in Saul’s life; it was Jesus, the One to Whom Saul surrendered.
o In relation to the body of Christ
Saul was welcomed into the church as a brother by Ananias; the first words he heard from a Christian were, “brother Saul”. His understanding from the get-go was that his faith made him a part of the broad body of Christ. The dreaded fanatic was now dear family. God didn’t have to, but He used the church, a leader in it, to minister to Saul and get him going. And all of his life, Paul understood something that too many professing Christ-followers miss today, the fact that we are saved that we might be part of the functioning local body of Christ, the church!
o Individually, but not Individualistically
Similarly, we are converted, not that we might soak up the blessings of Heaven in the sweet bye-and-bye, but that we might have a mission to others in the sometimes ugly here-and-now.
• The Incredible Grace of God
Saul demonstrates the incredible grace of God that can take a snorting, fire-breathing beast of a man, completely opposed to God’s way, and change him into a man who still had that “wild man” streak, but who was a wild man for God, and able to be gentle and compassionate with those who needed that.
• The Beginning, not the End
This is not the end of the story for Saul; in fact, it’s just the beginning. And while it may seem for some that coming to Christ represents the culmination of a lot of factors, the finding at last of a home for one’s soul, be sure of this: it’s just the beginning of a never-ending story, the story of God the Father welcoming home a prodigal child, to love and serve and live for God forever.
Table Talk
Do we see God’s grace as more “incredible” or “amazing” in relation to a “dramatic” conversion than to our own? If so, why
