1 Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, 2 and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; 4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” 5 And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, 6 but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.”
If there was ever a man born who could be labeled least likely to become a Christian, it was Saul of Tarsus. Now someone might object to that and bring up some infamous names from history like Adolf Hitler or Al Capone or Osama Bin Laden. You might even say, since those people and many others never did become Christians, doesn’t that make them, by default, less likely than Paul who did become a Christian?
No. Whatever can be said about any other evil man in history, Saul of Tarsus, an intelligent and highly educated Jew, knew what he was doing and thought what he was doing was not only lawful but holy and just, and he deliberately tried single-handedly to crush the infant church by intimidation, persecution and murder.
Today I want to follow the steps of Paul from the Bible’s earliest introduction of him, through his conversion and into his ministry, and let his story point us again and again to the cross of Christ.
SAUL THE AVENGER
The amazing, transforming power of the cross is nowhere manifest more poignantly than in the life of Saul of Tarsus. Here was a man whose life had centered in his religion so completely that he could later write about himself that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews and according to the righteousness that comes from the keeping of the Law, blameless (Phil 3:5-6) .
In the first chapter of his letter to the Galatians he was able to say that in his former life, that is, as a Jew, he had been ‘advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.’
Now folks, this is not a man who is going to be easily persuaded to change his thinking about things. Here was a young man on the fast track to success and wide acclaim as a leader of Jews. I would not be afraid to speculate that if Paul had never become a Christian we would have read about him elsewhere as a great historical figure of his day. We would have seen his name listed with the great teachers like Gamaliel, who was indeed Paul’s teacher.
Chances are the orthodox Jews of today’s Rabbinical schools would be studying the works of Saul of Tarsus, great thinker of the first century.
But Saul wasn’t an armchair quarterback. Saul was out there in the thick of things living his religion, like many Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses today who put most of us Christians to shame with their zeal. They may be wrong but they are very sincerely wrong! And vocal about it!
The very first Biblical mention of Saul is that he is standing by to witness as his fellow Jews are bashing Stephen’s brains out with stones and even watching their cloaks for them so they can free up their arms for better aim and more crushing blows.
You know, Saul didn’t just drop out of a tree somewhere. We’re going to look at a passage in just a moment where he tells the Council of elders in the Temple that although he was born in Tarsus he was brought up in Jerusalem. So even though the Holy Spirit chose to introduce him to the narrative at this point, I can’t help wonder if he was one of those at the mock trials of Jesus. He was, after all, a Pharisee of Pharisees.
Was he at the cross? Was he one of the ones wagging his head and sticking out his tongue and saying, “He saved others, He cannot save Himself”?
Well we don’t know; we can’t know. But considering the portrait painted of him in Luke’s narrative and Paul’s own defenses I would find it hard to believe that during such momentous times he was sipping lattes in a corner at Starbuck’s and reading the Jerusalem Post.
But he was here, anyway; at the stoning of Stephen. That’s in Acts 7:58, and three verses later Luke writes, “And Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death”.
Do you think this was a man who, if he was given the opportunity, would have plunged a knife into the very heart of Jesus of Nazareth? You bet! You bet he would!
Here’s the portion I wanted to read for you from Acts 22
1 “Brethren and fathers, hear my defense which I now offer to you.” 2 And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew dialect, they became even more quiet; and he said, 3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today. 4 “I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons, 5 as also the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify. From them I also received letters to the brethren, and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished.”
So when we come back to our text and look at verse 1 of chapter 9 of Acts, we get this picture of a man so zealous for his religion, so absolutely certain that he is right and righteous, so intent on wiping off the face of the earth all these heretics who in his mind would not only destroy his religion but bring the wrath of the Romans down on every Jewish head, that his livid, raging, murderous hatred for them is fairly dripping like the poison of an asp from his lips as he travels along the way.
This is why I began the way I did, asserting that Saul may well be the one man in history least likely to become a Christian.
Let’s join him now, there on the road outside of Damascus, where he went almost instantaneously from Avenger of Judaism to Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ.
PAUL THE APOSTLE
Artists have had Paul riding on a horse as he approached Damascus. There is no mention of a horse in the Biblical narrative. I suppose it would have made sense if he was going with a group of men to a certain community to take a large number of people into custody and force march them back to Jerusalem, that he would approach in a military manner and ready for a fight.
Just a side note to consider. In any case, whether on his feet or on a horse he was shortly in the dirt.
“…and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’”
Now we have to try to put ourselves in the head of Paul as much as is possible with the little information we have.
Remember all the things I’ve said to this point about Paul’s theology and his religious zeal.
Suddenly he is struck blind physically to match his spiritual condition, by a light that Paul describes later to King Agrippa as being brighter than the sun; and he reveals also there in chapter 26 verse 13 that it was midday that it happened.
Now we can easily imagine being in the dark at night and having a halogen light suddenly shined in our face or walking into a dark room and before we can reach for the light switch, having bright lights come on and our friends jumping up and yelling ‘surprise!’
But just think about being in a desert place with the hot sun directly over head and suddenly being enveloped by a light that is so superior in brilliance to the sun itself that your world just becomes a white flash.
No wonder Paul went blind. No eyes of flesh can see the glory of God, He even protected Moses from seeing its fullness there on the mountain so he wouldn’t be struck dead by it.
And what does this say about the pathetic arrogance of men who think they are in control, not only of their own lives but the lives of others weaker than they?
One moment this young, politically and religiously powerful man on a mission is breathing out his threats, probably going over with his men the plan he has in his head for rounding up the heretics in Damascus, reaching into his cloak and stroking the precious documents there that authorize his determined acts of terror…
…the next moment he is writhing in the dirt, blinded, shaking, confused, helpless, uncertain, his mission all but forgotten. IN A FLASH!
And God did it with a light from heaven.
So do you have this picture in your head? They are all fallen to the ground; Paul said that to Agrippa in chapter 26 also, and then Saul hears this question put to him. By name. It’s for him and no other.
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”
Uh, oh…
If someone has the power to envelope me with light, blind me, knock me to the ground without touching me, the last thing I want to hear from his mouth is the accusation that I’ve been persecuting him. Y’know?
If I was writing this as a fictional account the next thing I would have had Saul say is, “Whoa now, let’s talk about this before you do anything rash!”
Instead he asks a very interesting question. I’ve thought about this question in the past and I think that as I prepared and studied for this sermon it struck me in an entirely different way than ever before.
You see, Saul immediately asked, “Who are you, Lord?”
It has always struck me as a little bit ludicrous, to ask ‘who are you’, and then say ‘Lord’. If you know it’s the Lord, Saul, why ask ‘who are you’?
As I pondered this question anew for this sermon though, a little light came on in my own head and instead of blinding me I think it helped me see.
Saul knew it was God talking to him. Only his God could have done what had just been done. What Saul wanted to hear was a name!
He didn’t ask, ‘Are you the God of the Jews?’ He didn’t say, ‘I think you are the Lord of Israel; is that true?’ He asked, “Who are you?”
Because the voice just accused him of persecution and the people he was persecuting were the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, so he needed to hear a name.
If the answer was “I am the Christ” or “I am the Messiah”, that would have fit right into Saul’s theology, because God had promised a Messiah, Christ in the Greek language, and Saul might have said, “Oh, no Lord, I do not persecute You, but the heretics who are going after this false Christ who was crucified some time back.
But that wasn’t the answer he got. He needed a name and he got a name; the name of a Man.
“I am Jesus whom you are persecuting”.
And Saul’s theology changed forever. There, in the dust of the Damascus road, Saul ceased to be a Jew and became a Christian.
He went down to the ground an Avenger of the Law of Moses and the Temple and the Traditions of the fathers of the faith, and came back up an Apostle of a resurrected Christ, with his first set of orders. Go into the city and wait and you’ll be told what to do.
Saul’s entire world was turned upside down in a moment. Gone was the Law, gone was Gamaliel, gone was his status as a Jew among Jews, a Hebrew of Hebrews, his emphasis on his heritage as a Benjamite, and replacing all that was an empty cross and a risen Lord.
He waited for three days, and what a three days that must have been as God downloaded a whole new program in his brain, overwriting the old and updating it and giving him a new heart by it, then Ananias arrives and prays for Saul who regains his sight. Then we’re told that he stays right there in Damascus for a while and spends his whole time in the synagogue there, verse 22, ‘…confounding the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Christ”.
Wow! Again, try to put yourself in Paul’s place. And I’m going to call him Paul from here on out because as soon as he stepped out under God’s orders to be the Apostle to the gentiles he began using his Greek name, probably for more ready acceptance by them.
But try to put yourself there where he was. Do you know what most of us would do? We would hunker down in the comfort of the company of Christians there in Damascus. We’d go to church where we could have fellowship and pot lucks.
C’mon, you know I’m right.
“Ok folks, I was a persecutor but now I’m a believer and this whole thing is kind of confusing. I need a Bible study. I need some reassurance. Can someone point me to some good commentaries that will explain some things to me?”
Not Paul the new soldier in God’s army. He goes straight back to those who just days ago would have helped him round up Christians and herd them back to Jerusalem, and he probably opens up whatever scrolls they have there of the Law and the Prophets, and using their own scriptures, shuts their mouths with proofs that the Messiah has come, that He was crucified in Jerusalem, but that He is alive from the dead.
And right at the center of his message is the cross!
CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED
11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Gal 1:11-12)
Paul knew his Bible. How his heart must have been crushed when after being confronted by a resurrected Jesus, he remembered the declaration from Deuteronomy that everyone hung on a tree is cursed of God.
But this was to be his central message for the rest of his life; the message that consumed him and yet gave him strength to endure any suffering and any loss and any hardship.
To the Galatians he wrote: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’ – in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
Paul now understood that the cross was the center of it all. That place of shame and humiliation on top of Calvary’s hill was the place that fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. It was the place where in Paul’s new theology God’s Christ died for Paul.
So personal was it in Paul’s own heart that His Lord shed His blood and died to remove the sins of Paul forever, that he claimed it for himself throughout his epistles.
The man least likely to become a Christian, in a moment on the Damascus road became the greatest example in history of the transforming power of the message of the cross of Christ.
20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. (Gal 2:20)
My friends and family in Christ, let this say something to you today about the plethora of tripe filling up the book stores and pouring out over so many pulpits that dizzies and dazzles but offers no real help whatsoever in relation to the message of the gospel and bringing anyone around to believing in a crucified and risen Christ.
Here was this highly educated man, attested to even by his enemies who claimed that his ‘great learning’ had driven him insane. (Acts 26:24)
He could have waxed eloquent. He could have had his place of honor among the greatest philosophers of the Greek world. He could have lived in comfort and surrounded by wealth and prestige and influence.
But his life had been reduced to the simplicity of having one single message, one single mission, one God-appointed goal and that was to preach Christ and Him crucified.
22 For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (I Cor 1:22-24)
Christian, please do not give your time and resources to listen to a bunch of nit wits expounding on the need of the church to effect social change, or trying to wow you with their predictions of the last days of earth and whether Arabs and oil are accelerating the coming of those days, or trying to calculate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or any of the other nonsense that’s out there vying for your attention.
The power of God for salvation, the wisdom of God that shames the wise of this world, is Christ and Him crucified.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, (I Cor 15:3-4)
That’s it! That is the good news for modern man, and you cannot make it better by adding to it and you dare not take away from it. The power of God to save all who believe is that Jesus was crucified, died, was buried and rose bodily from the grave on the third day, and all of that was predicted in the Old Testament scriptures and came to pass in the New.
No one has to have any more information than that, in order to be born into God’s eternal family and take their place before the throne of grace to sing the song of the Lord’s redeemed.
9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. (Rev 5:9)
People, it’s all you need to know and it’s all you need to tell. God’s Holy Spirit will do the rest and if there is no one least likely to become a Christian than Saul of Tarsus, God has nothing more to prove.
24 and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. (I Pet 2:24)
Pass it on.
