We are continuing the series called The Story: God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. Today, we are going to talk about a conversion. A radical conversion that is found in the ninth chapter of Acts. It is a conversion of a guy named Saul that eventually would change his name to Paul. We find that in about the thirteenth chapter of Acts. You may recall that the first place we learned about Saul was during the stoning of Stephen. Stephen was the first martyr. After Stephen was stoned to death, we find out in the first verse of chapter eight that says Saul was there giving approval to his death. That is our first introduction to this guy named Saul. Then following the death of Stephen, the church began to be persecuted. We find that Saul was right in the middle of the persecution. In chapter 8, verse 3 it says “Saul began to destroy the church, going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.” We are getting this introduction to this guy named Saul that is not very appealing. As the story goes, we know that the church was scattered. We saw last week how the church was scattered all the way up into the region of Judea and Samaria and particularly how a guy named Philip ended up first in Samaria where he began to do the works of the disciples. They began to do miracles and convert many people. Subsequently, he ended up being directed by an angel of God down to the desert road of Gaza where he met an Ethiopian on a chariot and pretty much converted him on the spot. That was a little bit of interlude.
That was a little bit of interlude and then we pick up in chapter 9 again and we begin to see Saul appear. In verse 1 of chapter 9, we see that Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. If you have read this far in the book of Acts, you pretty much begin to see that this guy Saul was not a very nice guy. In fact, he was mean. He was murderous. He was out to get these people. Why would he be so angry at these people? The simple answer is he had grown up a dedicated Jew. He was a Pharisee. He had a worldview and set of beliefs that had no room for this idea of a risen Lord, a risen Messiah, of someone who was crucified and raised from the dead. In the Pharisee mind, Jesus was nothing but a criminal. A criminal who was someone who was blasphemous towards God and ultimately got what he deserved, which was death on a cross. They would say that the death on the cross was proof-positive that Jesus was indeed cursed by God. In fact, they could point to a passage back in Deuteronomy that says “Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” The Pharisees would equate the crucifixion to being hung on a tree. The Pharisees didn’t like Jesus. We know that from the gospels. We know that Jesus was an annoyance to the Pharisees. Jesus was always calling out the Pharisees for their hypocritical behavior and how they didn’t practice what they preached. Jesus accused the Pharisees of having their own agenda. An agenda that was really at the expense of the average believer. The Pharisees didn’t like Jesus while he was alive, so they certainly weren’t going to like him while he was dead. They most certainly were not going to like the fact that there was this large and growing group of disciples claiming that Jesus wasn’t dead. He was alive. And not only was he alive, he was the long-awaited Messiah. If you would ask Saul why do you persecute these poor people, he would say I have reason. Jesus was a criminal who deserved death on a cross. Because he was killed on the cross that was proof that he was cursed by God. To have this group of people out there saying that this cursed criminal is out there and is the new King of the Jews that is pure blasphemy. In other words, we have to destroy this movement before it destroys our very faith. We see that Saul had a zeal. His whole life and will was bent toward the destruction of this church before it got off the ground.
We also begin to see that he had a major turning of events on the road to Damascus. Damascus was a city that was about a good six days’ journey from Jerusalem. It was about 150 miles. On the map, this is where it would be. It is way up here in Syria. Down here you have Jerusalem. That is about a six-day journey. Why was he going to Damascus? Damascus was highly populated by Jewish people. Not only that. It was a trade city. If this new cult was going to begin to infect Damascus with their views that would cause problems. He has to shut this down. That was really Saul’s purpose in life; to destroy this rapidly growing, as he saw it, cult. As the story goes, he got letters of credentials from the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem that he could take to the Jewish leaders in Damascus and it would give him permission to arrest any man or woman who claimed to be part of this growing thing that they referred to as The Way and take them back to Jerusalem and put them in prison. As a side note, this thing called The Way was really the name of the first Christians. They were not called Christians until several chapters later in Antioch. They first refer to themselves as The Way. We don’t know where they got that name, but apparently they might have borrowed it from the passage in John 14:6 where Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” We don’t know where they picked up this term The Way, but we do know that Saul, on the way to Damascus, had a powerful, powerful encounter with the risen Christ. The passage goes on to say “As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’”
As a side note, there are actually three places in the book of Acts where this story is told; chapter 9, chapter 22, and chapter 26. If you were to look at those passages, you would see they all kind of nuance this story different ways because in this particular section in chapter 9 you have Luke telling the story. In those other two chapters you have Paul telling the story of his conversion to several different audiences. So you have a little bit of different slants on this story. Little things like here it is saying that a light from heaven flashed around him. In I think 22 it says that it was a bright light from heaven and in 26 it says it was a bright light like the sun. Here it seems like the light just shined around him. In some of the other chapters, the light seemed to appear to everyone. Whatever the case, it doesn’t really affect the story. In fact, there is an artist’s rendering that adds a horse to the situation even though the New Testament does not mention a horse. The idea from the 16th century artist’s rendering is that he was riding a horse and he fell from his horse, which could have been possible, but we just do not know. But we do know the one thing that is certain and the main thing about the story is that Saul had a very powerful and very real experience with the risen Christ, with Jesus. How do we know it was Jesus? We know because Saul asked him. Saul said to him “‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.’” Right there that has to be a real eye opener for Saul because he says why are you persecuting me. He is beginning to connect the dots and realizes that if you persecute the followers of Jesus, it is like you are persecuting Jesus. You mess with the followers of Christ, you are messing with Jesus, and he would have none of that. We begin to see a really interesting twist. Saul was persecuting Jesus but now he is taking orders from Jesus. Jesus says to go into the city and you will be told what you must do.
As the story continues, Saul gets up and he is blinded. He can’t see a thing so he is forced to be carried along by his companions into Damascus where it says that he was blind for three days and had nothing to eat or drink during those three days. The story goes that there was a man named Ananias who Jesus appeared to in a dream. He told Ananias that you are to go and go to this man called Saul and you are going to put your hands on him, and you are going to restore his sight. You can imagine Ananias is thinking I have gotten reports about Saul, and I want nothing to do with this guy whatsoever. But Jesus told him just go because this man is going to be my chosen instrument to take the message of Christ into the known world at that time. Ananias goes there and puts his hands on Saul’s eyes. The story goes on to say “Immediately something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized; and after taking some food, he regained his strength.” We learn in the following chapters that he got up and went out in Damascus and he began to preach that Jesus was indeed the son of God. So much so that by verse 22 it says that “Saul grew more and more powerful, and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.”
In a nutshell that is the conversion of Saul. Some say was it really a conversion because it just doesn’t seem like a conversion that we are used to. It is indeed different from most conversions. Some people would say conversion is when you switch religions. Maybe you go from Catholic to Protestant or Episcopalian to Catholic or whatever it is. You have to remember this really wasn’t that sort of conversion in a religious-type sense. Saul wasn’t switching from being a Jew to being a Christian. There were no Christians at that time. So it was not that type of conversion. It also wasn’t a moral breakdown type conversion. Last week, Eric shared his story and he dealt with a lot of heavy moral issues and finally came to the place where he knew he had to change his life for Christ. But really, Saul didn’t see himself as a bad person. He didn’t see himself as having a moral problem. In fact, he thought he was quite righteous. He said he had followed all the laws. What we see is that in conversions, there really isn’t a common experience. I am hoping you are beginning to see. If we were to have everybody come up here that would call themselves a Christian, I bet you would see that every experience is pretty much unique. When it comes to experiencing Christ for the first time, you cannot put God in a box. You cannot predict how God is going to appear to you. But what we can do as we begin to look at conversions, we begin to see maybe a common thread throughout all conversions. The common thread is what I would refer to as surrender. Specifically surrender of the will. Specifically surrender of the self-will. We all have a will. We all have the ability to make choices. We have the ability to act or not to act. We are given free will. God did not make us robots. We have the freedom to choose, which means we have the right and freedom to choose for God or against God. We have the right to choose the will of God or self-will. We know that the perfect man, Jesus, was all about God’s will. Back in John, we see that Jesus said “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent me.” Jesus was wired to do the will of his Father. Likewise, I think because of sin in the world, pretty much the whole world’s population is wired to do self-will and to follow our self-desires. To act out of our selfish desires and our selfish thoughts. That is why I would suspect the world is the way it is and why the world is so messed up at this point. If self-will is the thing that we try to cling onto so tightly and that is the thing that results in our condemnation, then in order to receive a redemption the first thing we need to let go of is our self-will and begin to latch onto God’s will. That is what we see in Saul. Saul was somebody who was passionately pursuing his own will. He thought it was good and right, but it was dead wrong. When he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, there was a major change, a major turnaround where he swapped his will for God’s will. When you think about conversions, it doesn’t really matter whether you are converted on the road to Damascus. It doesn’t matter if you were converted in the midst of some sort of a moral breakdown or if you were even converted as a child saying a prayer alone on some night. That is not so much the issue. The common thread is that in order for it to be a real conversion, you have to be willing to submit your will, completely surrender your will to God’s will. That has to occur. Having said that, it is also something that many believe is not something that happens completely overnight. Even Saul struggled probably with a lot of things with his own will.
A man by the name of Dallas Willard suggests that really the transfer of your will over to God’s will involves four stages. The first stage being surrender. Surrendering to the fact that you do not have control of your life. Realizing that there is a God above you that has control over your life. Some of you are familiar with the 12-step program. I think the first step in the 12-step program is really surrender. It is surrendering the fact that you are not in control of your life. God is in control. What happens often is you may make that initial surrender, but you may find yourself still resisting that surrender. People come out of a 12-step meeting or church and they feel like they have surrendered their will only to find themselves resisting that surrender. That is okay because at least they made that initial choice of surrender. Then as you continue to allow the grace of God and light of God come into your life, you eventually would go to what would be called the next stage which is basically abandonment. You get to the point where you are not just giving control of your life on a Sunday morning or in a 12-step program. You are beginning to let God’s will infiltrate your life in every way possible. Your relationships, your finances, your career. You are giving your entire life over to God. Somebody compared it to the commercial with Lipton tea where a guy would drink a big glass of tea and then fall back into a pool of water without looking. That is the kind of abandonment you begin to get to. You begin to say God I want your will in all aspects of my life. Then they would suggest that there is a third stage. In the third stage of giving your will over to God is the stage of contentment. You realize that even though you have given your will over to God in every area of your life, you are getting to the place where you say I am okay with it too. Even though things don’t seem to be working out the way that I would like, I am learning to be content. The whole idea it is well with my soul. Paul back in Philippians talked about the idea that I have learned to be content. Whether well fed or hungry, it really doesn’t matter. I have learned to be content because I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength. The final place you get to is the place of participation. Full participation in the will of God. Paul would describe it later as being in Christ. If you are in Christ, you desire what Christ desires. And what Christ desired based on this verse is to have the will of the Father completely in your life, which means that you are actively, not passively, pursuing God’s will. You want to be part of the unfolding drama of redemption. You are sold out for God.
When we think about this idea of turning over our will, it really is a process. Even though it is a process, you cannot get to the point even of that initial surrender until you have had some sort of encounter with the living Christ, with the resurrected Christ. It doesn’t mean it has to be in a dramatic way such as on the road to Damascus. It doesn’t have to be a moral crisis. It really doesn’t have to be that. It has to be an encounter. You say how am I going to have that encounter? We don’t know how that is going to occur. We do know that when somebody is seeking God, when somebody has opened their heart to the light of Christ coming in, they will begin to experience that resurrected Christ. When they experience that Christ, they need to respond to the light, whatever small light they have been given, they need to respond to it. Early the first chapter of John he talks about the idea that Jesus came to this world and Jesus was the light. It talks about how he came to those who were his own, but his own people didn’t receive him. They remained in the darkness. But he goes on to say but those who received him were able to then become children of God. Children not born of natural descent or human decision but born of God. That is what conversion is about. Conversion isn’t that difficult. Conversion is having that initial encounter with the risen Christ in whatever way he wants to come to you, on the road to Damascus, in a moral failure, or even as a child praying at night. You have to have that initial experience. You have to have that initial understanding of the light. When you have that light, then it is surrendering your will to the person behind the light, which is Jesus Christ. I close with a quote that comes from a man by the name of William Law that says “Would you know who is the greater saint in the world? It is not the one who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives the most alms or most eminent for temperance, chastity, or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness, and has a heart always ready to praise God for it.” Let us pray.
