Saxlingham- Langham 25-01-03
The Conversion of St. Paul
The passage that I want to look at today is our epistle Acts 9: 1-19
The story of the Conversion of St. Paul.
It is one of the watersheds in the New Testament.
1. Introduction
What sort of man was Paul before his conversion
We have our first glimpse of St. Paul – known then as “Saul of Tarsus” 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 material to become 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."
What a prayer and what an answer.
Saul of Tarsus could best be described as Satan’s Hitman in Syria
At the beginning of Chapter 9 we see how he was not just apathetic to church.
He positively persecuted it and took delight in throwing Chrsitains into prison.
Not exactly the sort of person the church would have been counting on converting.
But then God’s ways are not always our ways.
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.
2. Paul’s pedigree
Paul had a top notch Jewish pedigree. In Philippians he said this of his judaistic background:
5 I had the mark of a Jew cut in my body when I was eight days old. I was born of the people of Israel. I belong to the family of Benjamin, so I was born a true Jew. I was a Pharisee, so I obeyed the Jewish law very carefully.
6 I was so full of my own ideas that I sent Christians to prison. But I was a good man in the way the Jewish law calls a man good.
7 But all these things that might have helped me, I call them all nothing, because of Christ. (Phil 3:5-8)
Paul was probably a member of the Sanhedrin – the Jewish council of 70 - that condemned Stephen to death.
We read in the book of Acts 22:3 that Paul studied at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the top Jewish scholars of the time. It was a bit like saying today that he studied theology at Oxford or Cambridge University today.
3. The Event – the conversion of St. Paul
St. Paul’s conversion is key in the development of Christianity, because it is Paul who starts to flesh out the theology of the bones of Christianity.
But that is not where I want to go today.
What struck me about the conversion of such an important figure in the church was that God did not use one of the Church’s super stars.
None of the 12 apostles were called to be God’s messenger to Paul. The Lotrdc did not send one of the remaining six deacons. (You will recall there were 7 deacons until Stephen was martyred).
In other words, he didn’t use the top dogs but he used an ordininary church member - ANANIAS to be the instrument to bring Paul through into the faith. And we know very little about ANANIAS.
Yet I believe that the Lord’s commissioning of Ananias for this special task teaches us three very important lessons about God.
4. With God our impossibilities become his possibilities
5. God can use ordinary people to achieve great things.
6. No one is too bad for the grace of God
4. With God our impossibilities become his possibilities
Story: Imagine Ananias’s joy when the Lord calls him up at night with a mission:
I imagine the conversation going something like this: (Take my mobile out and start talking into it)
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 John Penny for this one. That’s more 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. “
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 the teaching of St. Paul.
Ananias’s obedience was part of the chain of events in God’s plan that brought each one of us here today.
4.1 Who was Ananias
He only turns up once in the Bible in Acts 9.
But can we deduce anything about him.
I think we can.
My first deduction is that
4.1.1 Ananias had a relationship 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 and women of prayer have wrestled nights with God.
My second deduction is that
4.1.2 Ananias 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.
Story: What is the difference between commitment and involvement.
It is best summed up by the analogy of 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 to see growth in our churches, then we must start by being 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. With God nothing is impossible.
5. God can use ordinary people to achieve great things.
My second point 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. We simply have to be like Ananias – in tune and listening to God and obedient too.
6. No one is too bad for the grace of God
My last point is that we should never give up on a
person. Never give up hope.
Seeing the conversion of one of the two thieves on the Cross gives me great hope.
However seeing the other thief wasn’t saved, warns me not be complacent.
Often there is the temptation to give up on the nearest and dearest in our family. Don’t
Ananias could have given up on Paul, but he didn’t.
You see what seems inmpossible to us is a possibility for God
7. Conclusion
Ananias gives me hope. God is interested not only is using the megastars in the church.
Ananias wasn’t an apostle or a prophet as far as we know. He wasn’t even a deacon.
St. Paul’s conversion was a watershed event in the life of the Early Church that has had an impact for the last 2000 years and could well have an imptct for the next 2000 years.
If we go - when God calls us to go – you never know whose life might call you to touch.
God may use us to reach a “Saul of Tarsus” and help him to become the man of God that God wants him to be.
Would we want that?
