Wow 2008, the first Sunday of a brand new year. How many people stayed up to welcome the New Year in? And with a new year come commitments to change our lives to make things better or at least different. I don’t know what your resolutions might be but here are some reflections from off the street.
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I would suspect that there have been a pile of New Year’s resolutions made in the past week and if the truth was known there have probably been a pile of New Year’s resolutions broken in the past week.
We have probably all verbally or silently, publicly or privately resolved to do something different this year then we did last year. Some will finally decide to give up the demon tabbacy, other’s myself included have decided to do battle with a more acceptable vice and that is food. You ever notice that the Christian argument against smoking and drinking: they are addictive and harm the temple of the Holy Spirit, i.e. our bodies, don’t seem to hold water for gluttony. Interesting.
You say Pastor the reason I’m overweight is that I have a glandular problem. Me too, if you consider the mouth a gland. Actually I decided a long time ago that I’m not overweight I’m under tall so my New Years Resolution is to get taller in 2008.
So what are your resolutions for 2008? Big, little, practical, impractical, what have you decided to change about your life in the next twelve months? On December 31st of this year will you be the same person you are now? A better person? Or a worse person? Will you have won a victory over some area of your life or will you have gone down to defeat? I want to go on record right now as saying I believe you can do it. And I know that you are sitting there thinking “But Denn you don’t even know what I’m struggling with.” You’re right, I don’t, but I know my God and I know that he can give you victory. Do you believe that? Do you believe that you are a partner in faith with the Almighty God?
Do you remember what Gabriel told Mary in Luke 1:37? That’s right, “For nothing is impossible with God.” And if nothing is impossible with God then all things will be possible with God.
Have you ever heard the phrase “A Damascus Road Experience”? It comes from the scripture that was read earlier in the service. I went online and discovered this definition of a Damascus Road Experience from Wisegeek.com: Common language has adopted this story to allude to the possibility that a person’s fundamental outlook on life could be utterly changed in a single moment.
Now understand this isn’t simply changing your mind, it is a radical change usually for the better that dramatically changes a person’s life. “You know I never really liked Milli Vanilli but after hearing Girl You Know It’s True it was good bye Boy George.” That’s not a Damascus Road Experience.
On the other hand, if you were a Leafs fan all your life and then one day in a single moment of clarity you realized that perhaps the team you actually needed to align yourself with lay further to the east, that would be a Damascus Road Experience.
Hockey aside, the New Year is usually a time for starting over and this morning we are looking at a dramatic and radical shift in the life of a Jewish religious leader by the name of Saul.
The first time that Saul appears is in three little references in the story of the stoning of Stephen. Acts 7:58 and dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. His accusers took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul. And then in
Acts 8:1 Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen. A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria. And finally in Acts 8:3 But Saul was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison.
Here was a man with a vision, a goal, an ambition. For whatever reason the church really bugged him. It was kind of like the Grinch and Christmas, except more violent. Perhaps Saul’s heart was three sizes too small.
And it is a continuation of this that we begin our story with this morning. In Acts 9:1 Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers. I don’t know what it was about the church that caused so much animosity within Paul. He was a religious leader within the Jewish faith and maybe he had just heard snippets of Jesus teaching and felt that Christ has come to destroy Judaism and the threat was alive in the teachings of his followers. If that was the case it was a matter of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, because if he had of known and understood the totality of Jesus teachings then he would have understood the truth of the statement that Jesus made in Matthew 5:17 “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose.”
But for whatever reason Paul had set his course on destroying the early church and in his heart he knew the church was the people that made it up. At least he had that much right. And so his mission to destroy the church was centered around destroying those who were the church. And as he sought to fulfil his goals he decided to move out of Jerusalem to Damascus. And it was while he was on the road to Damascus that our story takes place, which is where we get the term a “Damascus Road Experience.” Acts 9:3-4 As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” The story continues as Saul questions who the voice was Acts 9:5-6 “Who are you, lord?” Saul asked. And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
And as they say “the rest is history.” Saul stood and started down the road that would lead him to Damascus eventually across the known world. This man Saul would become known by the Greek version of his name, and as the Apostle Paul would become the greatest teacher, author and theologian that the church had ever known.
It would be through his individual efforts that the church would eventually spread beyond Israel and into Asia and ultimately would make it’s way into Europe and become the prominent religious movement of the world.
So in one decisive point in time Saul became Paul and went from being the church’s greatest enemy to becoming it’s greatest statesman. That my friends is a Damascus Road experience. And today I want to look at what it means to start over.
1) It Means Stopping Some Behaviour. Paul knew that there were certain behaviours that he had to put behind him if he was to truly follow Jesus. That he could not continue some of the activities that he had been involved in if he was truly making a new start. He knew that a new beginning would involve a change in heart and a change in behaviour. For Paul it was pretty clear cut, there were very little grey areas that we are talking about here.
Before his encounter with Jesus, his goal, his vision, his life purpose, if you will, was to see the church destroyed. He wasn’t just grumpy he was dangerous. And that had to change. He had to go from viewing the church with an all consuming hatred to embracing the church with an all consuming love. He was heading south and now he was heading north. He had been saying no and now he was saying yes. His life was dark and now it had become filled with light. This wasn’t just a little change, this wasn’t just “I think I’ll try it for awhile and see how it works out.” This was a dramatic life changing experience that anyone who had known Saul previous to his conversion would have a hard time believing it was the same Saul.
The change was not a little change, you didn’t have to squint to see it, this was a blatant change, everyone could see it. It wasn’t covert it was overt. Sometimes I think that we are like the guy who had the mangy old dog, not much of anything. And one day another fellow asked him, “What type of dog is that?” “Well” said the first guy “It’s a police dog.” “A police dog” the second man scoffed “that ain’t no police dog.” “Sure it is” came the reply “He’s undercover.” Sometimes I think too many Christians are working undercover. On Sunday’s they are very obviously Christ followers but the other six days, in the office, in the factory, in the class room behind the wheel of their cars and at their kids sporting events they go undercover.
And that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. If we are starting over as a Christian then we need to be starting over, there needs to be a change and that means changing some of our behaviour. That is why Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
Now I know that there was a time that being a Christian was defined by a list of do’s and don’ts that were always being debated. And the church was very legalistic in what was required and what was forbidden. And we could debate ad nauseam about whether Christians ought to dance, drink or go to movies. And that doesn’t even get into what we do on our Sundays, what we wear and how we wear it.
But there are things that are spelled out in the scriptures. You remember the Ten Commandments right? How about scriptures such as 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God.
You say, “Well preacher I don’t know if I agree with everything on that list.” Tough. You don’t have to agree with it, but according to God’s word those as some of the things Christians don’t do. And if you are doing them then you need to stop. And here is the promise for you in the very next verse 1 Corinthians 6:11 Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
2) It Means Starting Some Behaviour For Paul it didn’t just mean no longer persecuting the church, it wasn’t just a matter turning away from one form of behaviour and activity, it meant doing something different.
Further along in the book of Acts Paul has been arrested for preaching the Gospel and the Roman Consulate Festus, who I always thought was Marshall Dillon’s deputy, decides to hand over responsibility for Paul to King Agrippa who really wasn’t a king, but then neither was Elvis.
Agrippa was in fact Herod Agrippa the second who ruled over a small part of Palestine at the grace of the Romans along with his sister Bernice, who was the sister in law to Festus, the consulate not the deputy. The story is told in the book of Acts chapter 26. In the first twenty three verses Paul states his case, he begins at the beginning which seems an appropriate place to begin and tells Agrippa about his early life, then he proceeds on to how he persecuted the Christians and then he clearly tells of his conversion experience. In short he gave his testimony. And we read this account from Paul of what happened that day on the Damascus Road. Acts 26:15-16 “ ‘Who are you, lord?’ I asked. “And the Lord replied, ‘I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Now get to your feet! For I have appeared to you to appoint you as my servant and witness. You are to tell the world what you have seen and what I will show you in the future. And Paul’s response is found in Acts 26:19 “And so, King Agrippa, I obeyed that vision from heaven.
And so it’s not enough to simply stop some things, there are things that are required. There has to be a change of heart. Paul writes in Romans 6:17-18 Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.
Did you catch that? There is a change of ownership, no longer do you belong to sin, but now you belong to righteous living and that’s why John wrote in 1 John 3:7-8 Dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous. But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil.
What is there that you need to start doing in your life. Reading your bible? Get a version that you understand and read it. Praying? That’s simply talking to God. Telling other’s about the change in your life? Maybe like Paul you need to be baptised. And if you have made a commitment to follow Christ then you need to get baptized. That’s not an option that is a command of the bible, that is your public declaration of what Christ has done in your life. And if you are a Christ follower and haven’t been baptized then dig our the communication card in your seat back and write down that you need to be baptized and we will do it.
3) He Didn’t Do It Alone It’s interesting that Paul was on his way to Damascus to find the church and instead the church found him. We are told that a Godly Christ Follower by the name of Ananias was in prayer and the Lord spoke to him and told him to find Saul. That must have been quite the conversation, everyone in the church knew who Saul was, he was the Osama Bin Laden of the day. As a matter of fact we read in Acts 9:13-14 “But Lord,” exclaimed Ananias, “I’ve heard many people talk about the terrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem! And he is authorized by the leading priests to arrest everyone who calls upon your name.”
But Ananias was obedient because we read in Acts 9:17 So Ananias went and found Saul. He laid his hands on him and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me so that you might regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
Saul didn’t try to do it alone, he knew that Christianity isn’t a solitary religion. That throughout the New Testament it is always about groups of people who are together to learn and to pray and to support one another. Time and time again we are told to love one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to correct one another, to pray with one another, to cry with one another and to laugh with one another. And that only happens if we are willing to be with one another. When we get together on Sunday to worship together, when small groups get together to study and pray together. When you get together over a table and eat together. You aren’t supposed to be in this alone.
4) It Cost Him Something Just because Paul became a fully committed follower of Jesus Christ didn’t mean that all of a sudden everything was perfect. And there was never the illusion that it would be perfect and without cost. When Ananias was commanded to go and find Paul this is what he was told, in Acts 9:15-16 we read But the Lord said, “Go, for Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel. And I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’s sake.”
It cost him in material possessions, we don’t know what he had before he became a Christian, but it would appear that he had been a man of means and influence. And he gave that up to become an itinerant preacher who worked making tents when he had to and often survived on the generosity of other believers. List to his words in Philippians 4:12 I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. Perhaps that is a lesson we need to learn.
But it wasn’t just monetary, he gave up his social and religious position in life and even gave up how people would view him. Remember earlier I told you about Paul giving his testimony to Festus and Agrippa? Listen to Festus’s response in Acts 26:24 Suddenly, Festus shouted, “Paul, you are insane. Too much study has made you crazy!”
Just because you change it doesn’t mean everyone will understand the change or for that matter even like the change, but you can’t do it or not do it for the sake of others. You have to do it for yourself.
So where are you at? What is there in your life that you need to stop doing, or you need to start doing? Who is there that can help you and are you willing to pay what it cost.
Any time you start something new it’s always wise to look at the cost’s vs. the benefits. And in Paul’s case the cost vs benefits was spelled out very clearly in Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Free PowerPoint may be available for this message contact me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
