How the Persecutor Turned Into a Preacher [Part 3]

Pastor, author and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Being a Christian is not something that you do. It is instead a revelation of who Jesus is. And when you see it, you believe it.

And when you believe it, you begin living totally differently because of what you believe. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Galatians as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina.

You're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program. I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month made to Alan Wright Ministries.

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877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Gets blinded by a glorious light, led around by a hand for three days, can't do anything for himself, and has to have one of the people he'd hoped to arrest to come and pray for him in order for him to get his eyesight back and then to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I mean it's just you can't even you can't even describe the layers of irony in what God did.

That's his story. So when you when you come back over into Galatians it makes some sense of what he's saying here in chapter one. I did not receive it verse 12 from any man nor was I taught it but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. The transforming power.

Listen to this. The transforming power of the gospel unto you not only begins with but continues with the revelation of Jesus Christ. Revelation.

It is an apocalypse. That's what the Greek word is. It means an unveiling. This is this is what we say is distinct about what it means to be a Christian as opposed to other religions. It is not just that we say Christianity is not a man-made construct which other religions are but it is to say something more than that. It is to say that God has always existed as a triune God Father Son and Holy Spirit and that this same God who has never changed and never will change has been throughout history progressively revealing himself revealing himself to Abraham through his promises revealing himself to Moses through the Torah revealing himself through the prophets revealing himself through wisdom literature revealing himself increasingly until the time came of Jesus of Nazareth who was God in the flesh and in him in him we have a full and complete revelation of who God is and so when you come to know God you come to know God because of the revelation of Jesus. That day when Saul of Tarsus was coming into Damascus and he said he said who are you Lord? He didn't mean who are you Lord in the sense of the way we use Lord as if knowing that this was Lord and Savior. Lord could also be used almost to say sir. He is overwhelmed by this glorious vision and he says who are you?

Who are you? And the Lord Jesus speaks to him and when he speaks he says it is I it's Jesus whom you were persecuting and in that moment Saul realized two things that would change his whole life. Number one if Jesus was speaking to him it meant Jesus was not dead. It meant that he had been crucified but he was raised and it meant that he was alive. The second thing that Saul realized that day was that the Jesus who was speaking to him was so closely aligned with the people that Paul that Saul was persecuting that Jesus said you're persecuting me. So in other words he realized Jesus was alive and he realized Jesus was alive in the church.

Don't you worry one moment about this economy this political landscape or anything else in this world about this economy this political landscape or anything else in this world. Jesus is alive and he is alive in you. The authority that Saul of Tarsus thought he had was an authority that had come from men. He had papers.

A lot of good the papers did when he was blind and couldn't even read them anymore. And he's saying I preached to you a gospel that was not conceived by any man. It was a revelation of the Son of God. It was a revelation of Jesus Christ.

He says I received it. It is being a Christian is not something that you do. It is instead a revelation of who Jesus is. And when you see it you believe it and when you believe it you begin living totally differently because of what you believe.

That's what happened. He is saying if you want to understand authority the authority is in the gospel revelation and therefore let the gospel stand by its own power. Let the gospel stand by its own power. And this is to us such a beautiful word of glorious hope that we church do not need to jazz up our gospel. We don't need to add anything to our gospel who we don't need to fret over those that do not receive this gospel. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is authoritative and life-giving and saving in and of itself. What could I ever do to add to this gospel? Oh I love the gospel.

I am intoxicated with the gospel filled and infused with this one message. This is what happened to Saul of Tarsus so much so that he would later say if you want me to boast I'll boast in my weakness. I won't boast in any of my strength because the greatest time of my life was when I was led by the hand and I was blind and I couldn't do anything and this voice spoke from heaven and I realized that Jesus was alive and I realized Jesus is alive in his church and I realized that there is nothing in addition to Jesus that's needed and there's nothing besides Jesus that's needed.

I resolved to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. This is what shaped him. His urgency to the Galatians. You got to know how powerful this gospel is. I want to show you something else that's remarkable about Saul's conversion and this is I think as much as anything I have to say today a specific word from the Lord for some of you. Saul of Tarsus was advancing.

Paul looked back and said I was advancing in the religious ranks. I was you know what he was saying? He's saying my life was good. I liked it. You know everything was fine and dandy.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you I love you. I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church the Apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12 message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastorallan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. It's interesting that we often say that a person needs to you know hit rock bottom before they'll really come to Christ or you know why didn't that person come to Christ? Well they wait until they go through a crisis or um but Paul doesn't just think about this. Saul of Tarsus had been through no divorce. He hadn't lost his job. He wasn't talking about having wayward children. He wasn't in a lawsuit. He wasn't in a relational dispute. He was climbing the ladder in his vocation and he was well thought of and he was super educated and he had means.

I mean he was going pretty good for him. Years ago when we started a ministry called Verge, this is probably eight years ago, part of what we were doing in preparation to to reach young adults who are outside the body of Christ with the gospel and starting an innovative coffee house ministry, we went to talk to young people if we could find them on the street and if they'd let us interview them and ask them a few questions and then we'd go to church and ask them a few questions because we were trying to learn how they're thinking and I'll never forget when we were in front of the former Borders bookstore and some students from the school of arts were out there drinking coffee on a beautiful afternoon and we asked if we could talk to them and maybe video them as we interviewed them. They said sure and we began to speak to them. One of them went to church or were Christian and I'll never forget talking to this one young man, very nice guy, enjoyable person and said, do you ever think about God much? He said no, not really. He said something about one of his parents had been sort of a nominal Jew and another had been maybe a nominal Catholic or some other, you know, he just had some faint reference to some religious stuff in his background but he said no, I don't think about God. I said well, do you ever think about going to church? And he said well, no.

He said it's just, all that about God and church to me is just sort of a moot point and I didn't know whether to bust out laughing or just throttle him about the head and shoulders because you just called God a moot point but we kept the video rolling and I said well, let me ask you this, what is you think the purpose of life? And he said to be happy and I said are you happy? And he said yeah, man, I'm happy. Yeah, I'm happy.

What do you say to a guy like that? You know, I mean I'm walking away from it and I was like okay, well, you know, be happy but I mean you're kind of walking away thinking here's what's going to happen, dude, is one day you know you're going to hit up against a big crisis in your life, someday when you're not happy, that's the day you're going to reach out and you're going to find Jesus that day. You know, I mean you don't have anything that you feel like what do you say to a person like this and we tend to think that a person's got to be at some crisis or some low ebb or some reason to reach out for God and that's happened to so many of us in this room but Saul is the perfect example to refute such thinking. God does not need for you to be at rock bottom or even in a crisis or at a low ebb or in any other way unsuccessful or unfulfilled.

God doesn't care whether you've got a felt need or not. He can reach you by the revelation of the Son of God at any moment. It's a word, it's a word, moms, and you're praying for that child that's not walking with the Lord.

They don't have to wait till they get some low rock bottom place. Paul said it pleased him to reveal to me the Son of God. Lord, let it please you to reveal the Son of God. God, what Paul is saying is his saving force through the gospel is so much bigger and more powerful than what you've ever conceived of. He puts it in terms of that which has, verse 15, he had set me apart before I was born, called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. I want you just to see that the conversion of Saul is inextricably linked to the commission of Saul. We minimize the gospel if we make it to be about this.

You pray a prayer, a sinner's prayer, and accept Jesus, and then you know you're going to heaven. And there are moments in our lives and everyone's life where there's a moment in which faith is awakened within you by a miracle of God. And it is important that you receive and you act.

And for some of you, maybe today is that day. But I want you to see what really the transformation was about. He said this began long before me, before I was born, and he called me by his grace. There was a call that was at work long before I went to Damascus. If you don't have a beautiful, dynamic, living relationship with the Lord Jesus right now, He is already at work in your life. God is already at work in your life. He is already at work in your life. God is not being caught off guard by the events of Saul's life.

He knew it. I'm going to take the guy that is the Jew of Jews and Pharisee of Pharisees and the persecutor of all the church, and at the right moment, I'm going to reveal to him my son. Your whole life is linked, not just with a saving moment in which you pray a prayer, but what He's saying, it was linked also that I might preach Him among the Gentiles. You are saved, not just so you go to heaven, but so that the purpose and destiny of your life may unfold.

If you're here, or you're under the sound of my voice now, and you're very much like a guy in front of the Borders Bookstore, and you're like, well, I feel like I'm happy, and it all seems like a moot point to me, because nothing seems to be going too wrong for me, and I don't have felt needs where I need a Savior in my life right now. If you have any feeling like that, what the Gospel would ultimately say to you is, yes, you could be like Saul, and you could be secure in yourself, not realizing that you're living a life that is absolutely contrary to your ultimate destiny and the good plans that God has for you. It wasn't just about Saul becoming a Christian so he could go to heaven, this was about Saul becoming a Christian so that he could proclaim the Gospel of the Lord Jesus.

So that I would be an apostle to the Gentiles. And then he says in verse 23, they only were hearing it, and they said, he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy, and they glorified God because of me. In other words, Paul's saying, if you look at my life and what happened to me, I was the enemy of Jesus, and I have fallen so in love with Jesus, so consumed with the Gospel, that you would face any amount of persecution. He's saying to the Galatian Christians, don't be bewitched by these Judaizers. If you think that they're going to add something to your inheritance, or some guarantee by telling you you need to be circumcised, I want to remind you, the Gospel is powerful beyond words. Look what it did to me.

Look what it did. Charles Cowser was my New Testament professor, and I studied the book of Galatians under Charles, and until I've gone back looking at his commentary this week, I'm like, I need to call him up and tell him I didn't know enough back then to know how good it was what you were saying. And this is one of the things he said, after the resurrection of Jesus, no single event affected the course of the church's history so much as the call of Paul. Other individuals were converted, Constantine even baptized an empire, but the change which occurred for Paul calls for reverberations, many of which are still resounding in the church. His revolutionary insight, for example, into the place of women in Galatians 3 28, not only is there the deposit of his letters in the New Testament canon with their subsequent influence in later history, but there is also the bold mission to Greece and the west, while not solely Paul's doing, nevertheless opened up new frontiers for the expansion of Christianity.

Lloyd Ogilvy put it even more succinctly. The former chaplain of the senate said Paul is the most important human being who ever lived. The most crucial event of history for which Jesus Christ lived, died, was resurrected and glorified, was his infilling of a new humanity, the body of Christ. The second most strategic event was the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. In other words, the greatest irony of this story is that it was a Pharisee who at one point in his life would have wanted to imprison you.

It is probably the reason that you and most of us as Gentiles are even here. How great is our God. That's the gospel. Alan Wright. In today's teaching, how the persecutor turned into a preacher.

Stick with us. Alan is back here in the studio in a moment with additional insight for us today for your life and a final word. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at PastorAlan.org. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well, just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the Apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the Gospel of Grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12-message audio series trumpets the power of the Gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the Gospel. Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastoralan.org. Alan, this is not unlike our story individually, right?

I mean, we can identify here. Yeah, you know, and I think the first place you think about Paul's life and how much, well, if God could use Paul, God could use any of us. And how the providence of God has been at work throughout history, not just in Paul's life but in everyone's life and everyone who's listening right now.

God is at work in your life. The message of the Gospel is so pure, it's so simple. God loves you.

He died in your place. He was raised from the grave and proves his victory over death. And he's at the right hand of the Father and he's your advocate. And it's a pure and simple and beautiful message. That's what Galatians is all about. And that's what the Gospel is all about. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastoralan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastoralan.org. That's pastoralan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.