Major Adjustments (Paul’s Conversion)
Acts 9:1-9
If you have your bibles,
turn to Acts chapter 9.
We’re continuing in our series on the top ten bible stories,
which you all selected a few weeks ago,
and today we’re looking at our first story from the new testament,
the story of the Apostle Pauls conversion
on the road to Damascus.
If you’ve read the book of Acts,
you know that Paul’s name was originally Saul,
but God changed his name after his conversion.
And this story in Acts chapter 9
takes place shortly after the story of the first martyr, Stephen.
Paul and a group of others all helped kill Stephen. and we pick up the story in…
Acts 9:1-9 NIV
9:1 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. 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." 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.
You may have heard the story about the old farmer who bragged about his mule,
and said that his mule was so well trained,
that all he needed to do was say a few soft words, and she’d respond, she’d doing anything he told her to.
Well his buddy down at the feed store had a hard time believing this,
and he said, this I’ve gotta see. Show me.
So they go back to his farm,
and there the mule is near the barn,
and as the friend watched, first with curiosity but then in dismay,
the old farmer went and pick up a 2x4 about 6 feet long, and swung it with all his might, whacked the mule on one ear.
When the animal stopped braying and bellowing and prancing around, the farmer then said, quietly, “Come here” and the mule came.
“Sit”, and the poor creature sat.
“Back up”, and she backed right up.
The old farmer said, “You see?
She’ll respond to a simple voice command”.
His friend said, “What are you talking about?
You said all you had to do was talk to her, but you hit her with this huge two-by-four.
What do you mean, you just say a few soft words.
That’s not what I saw!”
“Oh, that,” said the farmer.
“Well, first I do have to get her attention!”
God sometimes has to use a two-by-four to get our attention, because without it we won’t listen.
You ever had that happen to you?
God has to do something dramatic, because we just don’t notice that He’s trying to talk to us.
We don’t notice that
He’s calling us to do something.
or to make a change in our lives.
He is calling us out of our mulish stubbornness and is asking us to make an adjustment in our life.
But we don’t even notice it until He whacks us over the head.
Henry Blackaby says in Experiencing God, “you must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.”
Its not an option. You must.
And the adjustments will be major.
And because of that,
some of us have to be hit hard to see what God is doing and what our response should be.
Because most of us are just plain slow to comprehend and even slower to adjust.
The Apostle Paul needed a 2x4 over the head,
to see that he was missing it,
and needed to change.
Paul had a way different background
from Peter and the other apostles.
Peter and James and John were all fishermen when Jesus found them,
so they were basically blue collar workers,
very little education,
or social status.
Paul was different.
He was a Roman citizen,
which carried a lot of clout back then.
Many people back then who weren’t born Roman citizens
would pay huge amounts of money to become one,
because it carried a lot of status,
and protection.
Paul was also very educated.
He was taught by a Jewish scholar named Gamaliel,
who was the master of Jewish study and teaching,
at that time.
It would be the same as someone today saying,
I went to Harvard University,
Paul could say, I was taught by Gamaliel.
So Paul seemingly had it all.
He had ambition, direction, applause, success.
He had it all.
No reason for him to change his life.
No reason to make any major adjustments.
No reason for him to do anything different from what he had been doing all along.
His life was working out fine.
Why change?
The truth is, Paul was like many of us.
Things are going fine.
My needs are being met.
Why change?
Why make any major adjustments to my life?
For Paul, however, God’s two-by-four over the head,
was a flash of light on the road to Damascus
that left him blind,
and a voice out of heaven,
that told him he needed to make major adjustments.
And you want to talk about major adjustments?
With Paul you’ve got ‘em.
Just about every adjustment you can imagine, Paul made.
Why?
Because God got his attention and forced him to see the truth about his life.
Has God done that to you?
The interesting thing about Paul’s story,
the thing that sets it apart from almost every other story in the bible
is that when Paul was converted,
he was already very religious.
He wasn’t running from God,
he wasn’t rejecting the 10 commandments,
and purposely rejecting God.
He was trying to serve God.
He was doing everything he could to please God,
he was zealous for God.
Only one problem,
he was very misled about what it meant to serve God.
And that makes the story of Saul who became Paul,
the most relevant possible story for our society today.
We living in a supposedly Christian society.
98% of people in the US believe in God.
Over 80% believe in heaven.
Almost half say they’re born again.
People in the US are really pretty religious,
but does that mean they have the power of God working in them,
does that mean their lives are being changed,
and their relationships are being healed,
and their bodies are being healed,
and the power of God is giving them joy and peace and love
so that they shine like flaming torches in a dark world.
Well: when you put it that way,
I don’t think so.
Not for most people who call themselves Christians.
You see, there’s a big difference in being religious,
and in truly loving God.
Paul was very religious,
but he didn’t truly love God,
because he didn’t even know the true God.
God had to knock him down and blind him,
so the Paul would stop his silly religious activities
long enough to get to know God.
God needed to make a big adjustment in his life.
I think God might need to knock some of us down too,
so he can make an adjustment in our lives.
Because we’re pretty religious,
but we’re missing God.
Its ironic that
Paul had gone several years spiritually blind to the teachings of Jesus.
but when his eyes were opened spiritually, he became blinded physically.
Some of us grew up in church, and so we’ve been learning about God all our lives.
I grew up in a Baptist church.
And I appreciate that upbringing, and all I learned.
But the problem is, we learn a lot, along with those Bible stories,
that doesn’t have anything to do with what God is really like,
and some of those things blind us spiritually.
We learn that a quote “Christian” looks and acts a certain way,
that there are rules and regulations that you can follow to please God.
We learn that if you act a certain way,
especially when you’re in church,
then people will think you’re a good Christian.
And we’re taught certain ways of doing religion.
You’ve got to sing this certain kind of music,
Or we get taught that certain versions of the Bible are OK –
And I’ve heard people say,
Oh, I’d never bring coffee into the sanctuary.
As if this room is somehow more holy,
then all the rest of God’s creation.
as if God is here in this room,
but He’s not in your kitchen at home.
God wants you to worship and reverence him
wherever you are,
anywhere you go,
not just here on Sunday morning.
Let me tell you,
whenever you get a certain picture in your mind
of what a Christian looks like,
and then you start trying to look like that,
you’ve just taken your first step away from grace,
and toward legalism.
Because that’s not how God looks at us.
Let me tell you a true story.
In 1967 in the midst of the hippie movement in the US there was a huge revival of interest in God that started in the U.S.,
which is now usually called the Jesus movement.
It started on the West Coast and spread to the rest of the U.S.
but all these long haired hippie types started getting saved.
But they weren’t getting saved in churches,
they were getting saved on the beaches,
or on the streets,
or in bars, as a result of work of organizations like Youth for Christ,
and Campus Crusade, and Youth With A Mission,
and others.
All these hippies were turning their backs on drugs and sex,
and turning to Jesus to find meaning in their lives.
The Jesus Movement had a huge impact
between 1967 and 1975.
In fact, in 1971,
this Jesus Movement ranked number three in Time Magazines story of the year poll.
Thousands and thousands of the most unlikely people turning to Jesus.
I can imagine God looking down from heaven,
and he is so excited,
because all of these lost, desperately needy people,
are turning to Jesus,
as the answer to life.
And all the angels are having a party
as they look down and see this great revival happening across the US.
Now, the problem was that
after all these people got saved, on the beach, or wherever,
they started thinking,
we ought to start going to church somewhere.
So they’d find a church nearby and show up on Sunday morning.
And these churches were not ready for anything like this.
They expected people to dress up when they came to church,
they expected them to cut their hair,
and behave normally,
and look like they look.
So they weren’t too excited about all these new converts.
You see the problem was, these churches were too religious.
They had all their ideas of what it meant to be a Christian,
or what a Christian looked like,
and they were blind to what was really important.
For these churches,
the external appearance was so important,
but they forgot something – they forgot that what God looks at, is the heart.
God doesn’t care what you look like on the outside,
he looks at your heart.
Jesus told the Pharisees,
Matt 23:27-28
You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.
He was saying,
You Pharisees are completely missing it.
God looks on the inside, at your heart.
That’s where you need to be beautiful.
On the inside, not on the outside.
God doesn’t care about your outward appearance.
And so most of these traditional churches
rejected all these Jesus people,
because they didn’t fit in.
And I can imagine what God and the angels were doing then.
as they looked at what was happening,
and they looked at all these new believers,
these baby Christians that just wanted to follow Jesus,
I think maybe the party in heaven stopped,
and they started weeping when they saw the traditional church trying to impose their religiousness
on these new believers,
and eventually rejecting these new believers because they didn’t fit.
It was just like Paul before his conversion,
running around trying to make everybody religious again,
All they wanted to do was follow Jesus,
but he says, no way,
you’ve gotta go back to the way we’ve always done it before,
you’ve gotta follow the rules.
Fortunately, not everyone rejected these Jesus people.
In 1968 a pastor named Chuck Smith moved to Costa Mesa California, (south of LA)
to become pastor of this little church of 50 people.
And he was surprised, and a little aggravated,
when all these hippies started showing up.
He said later that he couldn’t stand hippies at first, but God changed his heart,
and soon God gave him such a love for hippies that he and his wife would drive out to Huntington beach
just to hang around with hippies and pray for them.
It reminds me of some people in this church,
who 5 years ago were a little afraid of homeless people,
because we really didn’t know any,
but now God’s given us such a love for them
that we want to be around them all the time.
The real test for Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel came though,
when the church started to outgrow its building,
and there started to be tensions between the more traditional members
and all these new Jesus freaks.
It came to a head when one of the church members hung a sign outside the front entrance saying, NO BARE FEET ALLOWED.
They wanted to protect their new carpet.
Chuck Smith was horrified at this, and took the sign down,
and they had a board meeting that night. Chuck challenged the people, saying that the church was on trial,
it was a test of love.
So they decided that night that they would learn how to love the hippies just as they were, just as God had loved them.
That church attracted more and more of these Jesus people till at one point it was the largest church in the US with 20,000 people,
and then they started planting Calvary Chapels all over California and then around the rest of the country.
I like to think that’s the kind of thing the early disciples did.
They just followed Jesus.
Instead of following their organized religion of the time,
instead of being religious Pharisees,
they left all that behind and just followed Jesus.
Those people back in the 60’s and 70’s decided
they just wanted to follow Jesus,
and they decided,
hey, we’re going to try to do what God does,
we’re going to be more concerned about what’s in a persons heart,
then about what they look like.
And we’re going to accept anybody that wants to come to church.
We won’t make them clean up their act first,
we won’t make them cut their hair,
or put on shoes, or dress up,
we’ll just accept them, and love them,
and we’ll let God work in their lives,
and God will change them,
and eventually their lives will become godly,
but its God that’s got to make that happen, not us,
because God’s the only one with the power to make it happen.
And that’s where our roots are,
as a church,
in loving and accepting people.
In fact, that’s the whole reason why we need to get into a larger building,
so that we can make room for all the people who aren’t here yet.
There’s 60,000 people in the greater Hamilton area alone that don’t attend any church, and in many cases its because they’ve never found one where they’ll really be loved and accepted
without having to fit in first.
But if we make room for them,
eventually they’ll find us,
because that’s what everyone wants,
love and acceptance.
People come in here all the time and tell me,
I don’t know what it is,
but I just feel an atmosphere of love and acceptance around here.
There’s a reason for that – its in our roots as a church,
we cant help but accept people the way they are,
because that’s the way God accepts us.
Paul started as a religious Pharisee,
more religious than any of them,
he set the standard for religiousness.
But God couldn’t even use him.
He had to knock Paul on the head with a 2x4, so that Paul would leave all that behind,
and just started following Jesus.
Paul had to make a major adjustment.
Some of you do too.
You’ve got ideas of what it means to be religious,
and they’re keeping you from just following Jesus,
with a simple wholehearted, humble faith.
They’re keeping you from the joy and peace and love
that God wants you to have,
because you’re always wondering,
am I following all the rules well enough.
Titus 3:4-7 NIV
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
You hear what that says?
God’s love for us, and our salvation,
is not based on righteous things we’ve done,
but purely on God’s mercy and grace,
that is generously poured out on us
through Jesus.
So this whole story about Paul’s conversion
is really about a religious guy
who realized that he missed the whole point,
because he missed Jesus.
And as a result, he had to make a major adjustment.
Now lets make this practical.
God calls all of us to major adjustments.
All of us.
Not just those who already want to change, not just those who aren’t doing anything else anyway.
God calls all of us to major adjustments in our lives in order to join Him in what He is doing.
Now some of you might be thinking,
Ken, I don’t know about that.
I don’t need any major adjustments in my life.
I’ve always been a Christian.
I can’t remember when I didn’t believe.
I’m doing OK in my relationship with God,
I don’t need any major adjustments.
The very fact that you think you don’t need to change much,
is the clearest sign that you really do.
And it may mean that you are actually resisting the things God really wants to do in you.
There’s a story in Isaiah about when Isaiah has this vision of God,
and how Isaiah reacts to it.
Now the prophet Isaiah is probably one of the holiest, most godly men that ever lived.
God spoke through him to the people of Judah for decades.
But listen to what Isaiah says.
Isa 6:5 NIV
"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
Isaiah realized that even as a very godly spiritual leader,
he still needed major adjustments in his life,
and if you think you don’t,
if you think you’re better than Isaiah,
then you might want to reconsider.
In fact, the main reason most of us ignore the need to change,
is that we really don’t want to.
Its as simple as that.
Nobody really likes to change.
Paul must have found it very hard to change.
He’d been trained for years as a strict Pharisee.
all the rules and regulations and legalism of the Pharisees had been drilled into him for years,
so he really knows religion.
It had to be extremely difficult to forget all that.
But God has a way of getting our attention.
God calls us out of our comfort zone to make major adjustments so we can join Him in His work.
Every one of us.
All of us, no matter who we are.
No exceptions.
Major adjustments.
So, what are some of the adjustments we’re going to have to make?
In what ways do we need to change?
I’m going to go through these very quickly.
There’s at least four major adjustments
that God wants all of us to make in our lives,
no matter what our background,
no matter if we’re religious or not.
4 major adjustments.
1. God Wants To Adjust the Place we Put Our Focus:
Paul had to admit, the very first thing, that what he had been giving his life to was wrong.
It seemed right to him.
The religious leaders of that day told him it was right.
But it was just plain wrong.
When Jesus busted Paul, on the road to Damascus,
He said,
“Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?”
Paul found out that what he had been doing to try to serve God
was actually sin against God.
He was trying so hard to serve God,
that he totally missed God.
And so Paul had to confess that what he had been doing was sin and had to turn away from it.
I believe that some of us are trying so hard to serve God,
that we miss him too.
We’re so wrapped up in the externals,
in doing the things a Christian is supposed to do,
and looking like a Christian is supposed to look,
that we miss what God wants to do in our lives,
on the inside, where almost nobody sees.
We need to change our focus.
Because God doesn’t look at externals,
he looks at your heart.
1 Sam 16:7 NIV
The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."
There came a point in my life many years ago, when I realized that I looked like a great Christian on the outside,
I taught Bible studies,
I was a leader in the church,
but I hadn’t allowed God to change the inside, the part that nobody saw.
I hadn’t allowed him to transform my relationships,
and make me more loving,
and more patient,
and more humble.
I thought I was serving God,
I was working hard,
but I needed to repent and let him make some big adjustments in my life.
How about you?
What have you been focusing on?
Has God been changing you from the inside out?
2. God Wants To Adjust The Way We Use Our Time and Energy.
Now Paul had been plenty busy.
He had been busy pursuing Christians, trying to get them to be religious by his definition.
He was busy getting warrants for their arrest He was busy, busy, busy all the time,
like many of us are.
But when God hit him with a 2x4,
Paul had to make a major adjustment.
His adjustment wasn’t in how much energy he spent.
His adjustment was in where he spent it!
We’re all busy people.
We’ve all got full schedules.
We are on the go, ripping and running, all the time.
But what are we spending our energy for?
Where does our time go?
Are you so busy all the time
that you don’t have time to spend with God?
Some of us need to make major adjustments, in our time and energy.
3. God Wants To Adjust The Way We:
Invest Our Financial Resources.
What do you think happened to Paul the minute he started following Jesus,
and turned his back on the religious leaders in Israel?
Do you think those religious Pharisees kept on supporting his work?
I don’t think so.
Do you think they said, “Oh, well, Paul’s not throwing Christians in prison like we wanted, he’s actually become a Christian himself,
but we’ll carry him on the payroll anyway?”
Not a chance.
In fact, he tells us later that he had to turn to tent-making in order to support himself.
You see, when Jesus meets us and asks us to join Him in His work, there is always a financial impact.
Always.
If we try to be followers of Christ
without making major adjustments in the way we use our money,
then we’ve lost the battle before we start.
You can’t do it.
Because it was God who said,
Matt 6:24
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
You’ve got to choose one or the other.
But when you make that adjustment in your life,
and decide to use your money to serve God,
then God blesses your life,
and promises to provide everything you need.
One more adjustment ----
4. God Wants To Adjust The Way We:
See Ourselves.
Paul was so changed that he even changed his name.
And Saul the old Pharisee became Paul the new man in Christ.
Saul the old persecutor became Paul the new missionary.
Saul the angry struggler against sin became Paul who talked about his joy in Christ.
Paul made a major adjustment, and got a new name and a new identity, in order to join God in His work.
Does your identity come from the God who created you,
from Jesus who saved you,
from the Holy Spirit who fills you?
Is that how you measure who you really are?
Or does your identity really come from your job,
or your family,
or your possessions.
At the end of this story of Paul,
Paul asked, "Who are you, Lord?" and Jesus said.
"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."
Jesus said,
Get up and enter the city.
That is God’s word for many of us who need to make major adjustments.
Get up, enter the city, in other words, get going, get to work on what God has shown you to do,
Don’t procrastinate, don’t rationalize, don’t argue.
Just get up and go.
Get up and enter the city.
And the next steps will become clear.
When we take the first steps,
God makes the next steps clear.
And I believe each one of us knows, down deep, what our first steps are,
what we have to do to join God in His work.
Whatever God shows us to do, he’ll make it possible for us to do,
But its not without cost.
It’ll take a major adjustment on our part, in the way we invest our time, our energies, and our money, and even in the whole way we see ourselves.
