10.05.98 Christchurch Bridlington 11.15 Service
ANANIAS AND PAUL
Prayer to open:
Father I pray that you will speak to each one of us this morning through what I say and that what I say may be what you would have me say this morning. Through Jeus Christ our Lord. Amen
The title for this morning’s sermon is
With God, Our impossibilities become God’s possibilities
The passage that I want to look at this morning is Acts 9: 1-19
The Story of the Conversion of Saul of Tarsus - the Apostle Paul
Introduction:
I was praying about this in the Sunday evening service a month ago (5th April) when it struck me that God would have me preach on Ananias this morning.
This Ananias only turns up once in the pages of Scripture, but wow what a blockbuster.
It beats the Titanic hands down.
And he is there for prosterity.
And it seemed to me that there are three things the Lord wants to tell us this morning:
SLIDE
1. With God our impossibilities become his possibilities
2. God can use ordinary people to achieve great things.
3. No one is too bad for the grace of God
1. With God our impossibilities become His possibilities
1.1 Background:
This was probably one of the most formative events in Early Church History. The calling of the apostle Paul.
Christ was crucified at Passover in AD 29 and has risen from the dead three days later.
The Book of Acts opens after Christ’s rising from the dead.
He commissions them in Acts 1 to preach the Gospel in Acts 1:8
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
50 Days later, the power of the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost. The power came on the early Church to enable them to take the Gospel into the World.
As the book of Acts unfolds, we see in Chapter 6 the first church quarrel and the development of the Diaconate. This was followed very quickly by the first Christian martyr, Stephen in Chapter 7.
And we have our first glimpse of Saul of Tarsus, later to become the Apostle Paul, in Acts 7:58. At the stoning of Stephen, we read
Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 60Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep.
8 1 And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.
Here was a man that looked hardly likely to be the Apostle to the Gentiles.
But even as Stephen was dying, he was praying for the likes of Saul of Tarsus.
"Lord, do not hold this sin against them."
If we want to see things happen:
Slide 1
The key is PRAYER.
People
Respond
As
You
Exercise your
Rights
We have the RIGHT as Children of God to pray.
Are you exercising that Right?
Not just when we are feeling like it.
1. 2. What sort of man was Paul before his conversion
1.2.1. Satan’s Hitman in Syria
Slide 2:
At the beginning of Chapter 9 how Paul was not apathetic to church.
He persecuted them and threw them into prison.
Not exactly the sort of person the church were counting on converting.
Yet God had other plans.
Story:
Last week I read of Eldridge Cleaver’s death (at 62). The famous sixties leader of the Black Panthers. A gang leader who God spoke to in a spectacular way.
No one is too bad for the Grace of God
Slide 3
Saul was on his way to DAMASCUS doing what he thought was God’s work.
Here was this sect called the WAY claiming a crucified convict was the Son of God. This was outrageous blasphemy to a strict Pharisee’s ears.
Yet Christ met him on the way.
A Close Encounter of the Third Kind you might say.
Meeting with God had a tremendous effect on Him.
He was blinded by the presence of God and he was led by the hand into Damascus, with no idea what God was going to do.
Slide 4
Imagine Ananias’s joy when the Lord calls him up at night with a mission:
I imagine the conversation going something like this:
Dialogue:
The Lord: Ananias?
Ananias: Yes Lord
The Lord: Got a job for you today, pretty high profile.
Ananias: Wow,great Lord what do you want me to do?
The Lord: I want you to go and speak to someone very important.
Ananias: Great, who ? the governor?
The Lord: Actually, no!
Ananias: Well who then?
The Lord: To Saul of Tarsus.
Ananias: Lord, hang on a sec. I think you want Andy Jeff. That’s his line of business.
The Lord: No, I am asking you to "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel.
Slide 5
Ananias obeyed and the rest is history.
The history of the Church was radically changed.
Indeed the history of our country was changed by this act of obedience
Remember how the Reformation was so strongly influenced by Paul.
Ananias’s obedience was part of the chain of events in God’s plan that brought each one of us here today.
1.3 Who was Ananias
He only turns up once in the Bible in Acts Chapter 9. But can we deduce anything about him.
I think we can.
My first deduction is that
1.3.1 He had a relationship with God.
Mike was talking two weeks ago about our need for intimacy with God.
Ananias wasn’t afraid to speak to God and argue with him. This indicates to me that he was a man of intimacy with God.
He prayed. He knew his God.
You might not be called to be a great preacher or an electric evangelist, but you have the right as a Child of God to pray.
Prayer is a dialogue and many great men of prayer have wrestled nights with God.
Just think of Jacob in the Old Testament, or indeed Peter in Acts 10.
He was a man who was INTIMATE with His God.
My second deduction is that
1.3.2 He was a committed man - a man of faith
Ananias put his life on the line by obeying God
He was committed to his God not just involved with Him.
What is the difference between commitment and involvement.
A good analogy is bacon and egg
In bacon and egg, the hen is involved but the pig is committed.
God is interested in obedience.
We read in 1 Samuel 15:22
To obey is better than sacrifice
And to heed is better than the fat of rams
If we want revival, then we have to be the man or woman who prepared
"to boldly go where no man has gone before".
if I can borrow from the words of Star Trek
We have to get away from the mentality
Here am I, Lord, send him!
When we think the task is impossible, God makes it possible:
Fear is one of the greatest barriers to the move of God, did you know that?
Yet it is nothing new to God’s chosen people:
Slide 6:
How often do we see the Grasshopper mentality
What do I mean by that?
We’ll have too go back to the book of Numbers for a clue.
You will recall that God had empowered Moses to bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt.
They experienced the miraculous parting of the Red Sea to allow them to escape the Egyptian army and now in Numbers 12 and 13, they were on the verge of gaining the Promised Land.
We read that they sent 12 spies into the Land to report on the prospects.
Ten of the Twelve came back and said:
"The land we explored, devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.
33We saw the Nephilim there. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." (Numbers 13:32 and 33).
Only two disagreed, Caleb and Joshua and they were the only two who made it into the Promised Land
Let’s face it, we’ve all suffered from Grasshopper mentality haven’t we?
But if we are going to see revival, we have get out of that rut.
Story:
The Lord gave me a vision to start an English speaking charismatic church in Basle.
We shared this vision with a lot of people.
Almost all the Christians I talked with told me, forget it, it is not of God.
One pastor, Johannes Czwalina, invited Maddy, Cathrin and me to sing in the evening service and to share my vision at his church of about 1000 people - the Alban Arbeit in Basle.
At the end of the service a young man came up to me and stuck three verses on my guitar saying that God had given him these three verses for me.
John 4:38: You will reap where you did not sow
Isaiah 43:19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland
Ex. 14:14: The Lord will fight for you when you are silent.
The church was founded and is still going on, working primarily among the refugees. We didn’t get the vision right first time, but we stepped out in faith.
And numbers of refugees over the last 10 years or so have come to a living faith in God.
I didn’t get it all right from the beginning but I did step out in faith.
The only place that we won’t make mistakes in is in the graveyard.
Even Paul got it wrong at times. Acts 16: 6-8
At the beginning of the second missionary journey:
6 Paul and his companions travelled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.
You might get it wrong, but the Holy Spirit will show you the way to get it right.
2. God can use ordinary people to achieve great things.
My second point this morning is that God can use ordinary people for great things.
Story: There was a deacon who once said to D.L. Moody
"The world has not seen what God can do with a man totally dedicated to himself"
And Moody replied: By God’s grace I shall be such a man.
Many of us think we have to be Billy Graham to be used by God but that is not true.
Story:
I remember hearing the story of an old lady who God called to simply bake a cake for the Hell’s Angels who used to go to the cafe opposite.
So she did what God told her to do.
They accepted her cake and she started to build up a relationship with them until one day a rival gang came in and tried to throw the old lady out.
The Hells Angels got up and told them to leave her alone as she was "their grandmother".
Her obedience enabled her to reach them and some of them even started to come to church.
Don’t sell yourself short.
With God you are a majority!
3. No one is too bad for the grace of God
My last point this morning is that we should never give up on a person.
Story:We can have hope, one of the thieves on the Cross was saved. However the other thief wasn’t saved, so we should not be complacent.
Often we give up on the nearest and dearest in our family.
We just don’t believe he or she will get saved.
We want them to be, but we just don’t believe they will.
Ananias could have given up on Paul, but he didn’t.
You see man’s impossibilities are God’s possibilities.
Story:
My friend John Gaughan was an alcoholic six years ago. His liver was finished and the doctors gave him six months to live. Yet God had another purpose for John’s life. God healed him.
Ananias gives me hope.
He was not one of the megastars in the church. He wasn’t an apostle or a prophet as far as we know. He wasn’t even a deacon.
Yet his obedience released an incredible move of God throughout the world and over the centuries.
The Calling of the Apostle Paul was a watershed in the life of the Church.
Are you ready to be used by God as Ananias was?
I was encouraged to hear of what God is doing in the most unlikely places with the most unlikely people.
3.1 Indonesia
Like in Indonesia, a country that is almost 90% Muslim.
When I was up in SUNDERLAND three months ago, when I heard Suzette Hattingh speak.
She told us how she held a crusade in Yapura on the island of Irian Jaya.
And the miracles that she saw. The Indonesian army offered the use of 110 trucks to bus people to the meetings free of charge.
Thousands committed their lives to the Lord. The state radio broadcast all the meetings live.
Yapura only has 50 thousand inhabitants and 200 thousand in the whole area.
100 thousand came to the last night of the Crusade in MUSLIM INDONESIA!!! That is more than you will get to the Wembley Cup Final!!
And in Muslim countries women have nothing to say
3. 2. Haiti
Let me give you another example of how God is on the move.
Haiti is a state that made a pact with the Devil three hundred years. It is renown as a centre of witchcraft, voodoo and satanic worship.
The Christians recently went to the most traditional satanic voodoo field in Haiti and were "violent in the Spirit, praying, rebuking, fighting and casting out spirits"...until they felt the power of the devil had been lifted.
When the voodoo priests came several days later to attempt their rituals they were unable to evoke the demonic spirits.
And they went off to complain to Government Officials and the news media.
The Christians defended their position with the Government and the Government declared it their legitimate legal right to hold Christian meetings at the site and in all historic sites in Haiti.
Do we need the Government to tell us what we can do in the name of the Lord?
If the Christians can do that in a centre of satanism, there is no power of earth that can stop us here in Brid.
Folks, God’s on the move. Are you ready?
Let’s go for it.
