Action – A transformed name
I was watching the news reports of the rioting in Vancouver after game 7 this week and was struck by two things, how dangerous people can be when they start going down that path and the danger that is our reaction to it, thinking that there is no way we would ever do something like that, we are too good for that, ect. When the truth is, we have both possibilities in us. Given the right circumstances, we all have that in us, and when we think that we would never do “that kind of thing” (speaking now of more than just the Vancouver riots), we are deceiving ourselves with our own arrogance.
We were created by God, but all of us are also capable of the most horrific actions. This Sunday we are actually looking at some of that capability for both. We will also be looking to how God can move us from being in the midst of the worst actions and understandings, to reform us into some of the greatest agents of God’s action.
Today’s text in Acts is acts 9:1-22 and we will be looking at a pivotal time in one person’s life. This is the person we were introduced to at the end of the last text we looked at, at the end of the stoning of Stephen, a man named Saul is there, and we find out that he was one of those in charge of having Stephen stoned. Since then, as the persecution increased around Jerusalem, this new people of God move outward, and God uses it to bring about all sorts of new growth and reaching people, but as this is happening, the opposition, and in particular Saul’s opposition, has intensified.
9 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
This is a rather ominous beginning...you can almost hear the music change in the background of the story, as we begin this section.
It starts with “Meanwhile” ---tied back to the expansion and glorious things going on even as they are scattered, at the same time as all of these great things are happening... Saul was continuing to be a threat, continuing to fight against the movement of the word of God, continued to put this whole thing in Jeopardy.
He gets the permission of the highest authority he could find in order to proceed with this...and the leaders who had been in charge of Stephen’s trial, who had been found guilty of closing their hearts and lives to Jesus saw Saul as one of their own, an extension of their desire to stop this movement. He know gets permission to take the fight to them, and Saul is so committed that he is willing and wanting to go some 6 days hard travel to Damascus to the north.
Things don’t look so well for this new people, but as Gamaliel had said a few chapters ago, if God is not in this it will amount to nothing...but if he is in this, then we will be fighting against God Himself...and that is just what Saul is up against...so the story doesn’t go the way he thought it would.
3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
God lets him get all the way to Damascus before he steps in, and in a stunning revelation, shows himself to Saul.
“Saul, Saul” this sort of repetition is not a repetition to get attention, but on indicating fondness and care. That while Saul was still far from being in a right place, when he was filled with his own self righteousness, anger and hatred, and while he was actively working against what God was doing, still God not only loved but liked him.
He doesn’t ask “why are you persecuting my church or my people”, but instead “why are you persecuting me”. Showing the depth of the connection that God has with his church, and the suffering that he goes through with our own.
Jesus’ response to Saul’s question of “who are you?” links God to Jesus, showing them to be the same. He finds out that the Lord to which he had dedicated all he was doing was in fact the very God working in and through this new movement he was persecuting.
7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
This is the point in the life of Saul where everything changes, and his whole view on life, his very identity and even eventually his name will change. This is someone who was in the midst of some of the worst action against God, and at the same time thinking he was doing exactly what he should…all of a sudden broken, and reformed…this is the thing that has happened to so many people in so many different ways that have come to know Jesus. It is something we have taken to calling conversion.
Conversion fits as a word because it means a change that goes beyond superficial, beyond alterations to how you live or additions. If you were a computer it would be not just a new operating system for windows but switching to a Mac…or maybe that doesn’t even get the full magnitude of what happens, it is like switching from a typewriter to an Ipad. It is a whole different thing.
The thing is, when we try to change, it doesn’t really go to deep, we might change the things we buy, how we talk, how we look, You try to see things in a new light, reinvent yourself...but the changes are very shallow, they don’t so much change who you are as what items you keep around you, the outer understanding of who you are.
True conversion is something bigger: it is being Transformed by the love of the true God: God wants to put a stop to our old way of living so that we might experience His restoration and know His love.
Saul is humbled, and God reveals the brokenness within him, and he is lead into the city in weakness, instead of his plans to come in with strength, authority and with a purpose that was wholly his own.
Saul fasted for three days, but when he opened his mouth again, it was a whole new thing...it was to proclaim Jesus as Lord. He was working through a life transformation of epic proportions, one that would allow God to use him in a mind blowing and shocking way.
God changes one of the most active persecutors of His church into one of the most active and effective participants, all through GOD’S power. The last few weeks we have seen how God has shown the opposition to his Action to be less than his power to overcome. To a small frightened group he shows new hope; to limited abilities he brought spiritual power and results; to a motley crew he brings connection and fellowship; to internal corruption and ego he brings Holy fear and freedom in generosity; to a week and unorganized movement God brings lasting power; to a person on trial he brings a flipping around of the whole system ...and now, to a person who was the persecutor he becomes one of the persecuted but with a purpose and a new identity
10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
Saul in Damascus and Jerusalem
Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. 20 At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. 21 All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” 22 Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.
In the dialogue between Ananias and God, Saul’s mission to the Gentiles was foreseen (9:15). Saul was chosen to witness and suffer. The laying of Ananias’s hands on Saul was a means of identifying him with the Christians whom he had been persecuting (19:17). Saul’s baptism identified him further with the movement. His filling with the Holy Spirit was his commission as God’s prophet.
Ananias given a dubious task, Go to the one was responsible for Stephen’s death, for hundreds of arrests and deaths and who you have heard is coming to your city to do the same, go to him and say that Jesus has asked that you heal him...Awkward.
God does not get offended or remove Ananias from the plan when he asked questions, he knew it was going to be a stretch, but also knew Ananias’ willingness to go forward, even at risk to himself.
So what is happening with these two times God is getting into people’s lives?
There is a realization that happens, and it is a lesson I think everyone needs to learn and it starts with something very simple. Are you ready for it?
There is a God, and it is not you.
Did you catch that, now turn to your neighbour and say that...there is a God, and it is not you...
This is the realization that comes every time that someone has a meeting with God, and God tends to do a few things through it, but the first thing that has to happen is we have to stop putting ourselves in that position.
You see, we all have ambitions and desires in life, and we all are trying to figure out how to reach our full potential, and we make all these plans and work so hard at it, and we get more and more frustrated and angry and so we push harder. This is the story of Saul, who worked so hard to maximize his potential and was so full of anger and not as successful as he thought he was. That is to one degree or another me...and probably you.
And when we realize that we are not God, we can also start to realize that the true God, that Saul met on the road, created us and knows better than anyone how we can reach our full potential, and that is actually what God is trying to do in people’s lives, it isn’t a cosmic traffic cop kind of thing, it is God trying to get us to reach our full potential because he knows what we were created for. And he cares even more than we do about having us reach our full potential, but we have to stop trying to be God and doing it all ourselves.
When Saul came face to face with God:
– A part of himself was destroyed (eyes, but even more than this, his plan and whole framework and identity), and when we come face to face with God, part of who we were, the old us, has to be destroyed in order for things to change.
– Humbled: He isn’t up for doing what he needs to do on his own
– Direction and plans are changed
– A new name (identity)
In order to change, God also calls someone else to be a part of it all.
We often talk about how we wish we could have a face to face with God, we could come into his presence, but the truth is coming into the presence of God has some big effects, ones we can see in what it did to Saul. It destroyed something, it humbled him, is changed his plans, changed what he knew of himself and how he interacted with God. Another thing that we talk about is how God is in our midst when we gather together, if that is the case, and we are seeking to meet with him, are we ready and willing to have this happen? Because that is God’s agenda, and being open, as Ananias was, to the action of God, can have some pretty powerful repercussions, both for our own lives and what God is doing throughout the world. Another question we must ask ourselves is, are we willing to be that one that is called into uncomfortable circumstances to bring someone else to the identity and mission God has for them.
Who was Saul? Became Paul, wrote about 14 books of the New Testament, he was born in Tarsus, in what is now turkey, but he was a Roman citizen with certain rights, he was trained under Gamaliel, which was like saying you were trained at Oxford or Princeton today (the best of the best),
Who was Ananias, we don’t know, besides the person who gave sight and a future to Paul...and that might be it, as far as long reaching impact, but I think that is more than enough.
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As we celebrate communion today, we are celebrating a God who is not absent, but present, and wanting to meet with us, and we are, in this act of remembrance, meeting with the God who will not leave us as we are, who is more concerned than we are about us reaching our full potential, and has given each one of you, and me, a new name...
2 Cor. 5:14-19
14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
