Taking A Risk For Jesus Series

ENGAGE

I’m going to begin this morning with a question: How many of you want to be like Ananias?

No one? That is probably because many of you either thought to yourself “Who is Ananias?” or else you were thinking of the Ananias back in Acts 5 who was immediately killed by God when he and his wife Sapphira lied about how much of the proceeds from the sale of their land that they had given to the church. But the question I asked was actually a trick question because there are actually 3 people named Ananias in the Bible, so before you answered the question, you probably should have asked me “Which Ananias?”.

The first Ananias mentioned in the Bible is the one in Acts 5 and I’m pretty sure none of us want to be like him. The third one mentioned is the high priest named Ananias who brought charges against Paul when he was brought before the Roman authorities in the last part of the book of Acts. So I doubt any of us would like to be like him.

The second Ananias mentioned in the Bible is the one we’re going to look at this morning and if you’re not familiar with him, you’re not alone. He is one of those people in the Bible who appears on the scene briefly and who never appears in the Scriptures again. We saw that a couple weeks ago in Acts 6, where only 2 of the 7 men appointed to serve the Hellenist widows are ever mentioned again in the entire book of Acts.

It’s really easy to just kind of skip over the account of this Ananias and just assume that because he is not heard from again that he really didn’t have any kind of important role in the early church. But, as we’ll see this morning, nothing could be further from the truth.

TENSION

Perhaps you’ve felt like that yourself at times. You feel like because nobody really takes much notice of you that you don’t really have an important role in the church. And I can assure you that you’re not alone in feeling like that. I often feel that way as a pastor.

This past couple of weeks, I’ve been a part of two meetings with other pastors and church planters from throughout the state of Arizona. At one of those meetings I listened to a pastor from Phoenix describe a church planting network in the Phoenix area that has helped plant a number of new churches that have experienced explosive growth and who had hundreds, or even thousands, of people attending those new churches within only a short period after they were planted.

At the other meeting, I was sitting around a table with leaders from churches here in Tucson, most of whose attendance is many times what we have each week and who have large staffs serving those churches.

And when I’m in meetings like that and see the tremendous things that God is doing through these other pastors and churches, I have a tendency to begin to wonder whether what I’m doing here at TFC really matters at all to the kingdom of God. So if I feel that way at times, my guess is that probably many of you do too.

TRUTH

If that’s the case, then I pray that the passage we’re going to look at this morning will be real encouragement to you like it has been to me this week.

Last week we left off in Acts chapter 8 as Philip leaves a thriving ministry in Samaria to go bring the kingdom of Jesus near to an Ethiopian eunuch who is traveling on a desert road on his way back home.

As chapter 9 opens, we see the account of Saul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Saul, who had earlier watched approvingly as Stephen was murdered, was on his way to Damascus to arrest any Christians he found in the synagogues there. Jesus confronts Saul and strikes him blind and the men who were traveling with him take him to Damascus, where for three days he remains blind and goes without food and water. Most people are probably at least somewhat familiar with Saul’s conversion there in the first part of the chapter. But my guess is that most of us are far less familiar with what happens next. Let’s pick up the account in verse 10.

[Read Acts 9:10-18]

The only other time this Ananias is ever mentioned in the Bible is in Acts chapter 22 where Paul is recounting his conversion experience and he calls Ananias a devout man who was well spoken of by all the Jews who lived in Damascus.

Ananias, is described here as a disciple of Jesus. It’s important to note here that just like Philip, he is just an “ordinary” Christian. He is not an apostle nor does he hold any position of authority in the church. But God uses him here to play an extremely important role in the early church.