Saul's life was turned upside down in that moment on the road to Damascus, and because his life was turned upside down by the power of God the Holy Spirit, so the world was turned upside down. And so we have been turned upside down through the testimony that God put in his lips and in his pen that feeds the church even to this day.
There are no boring testimonies. Every soul saved is a miraculous work of God. Yet the conversion of Saul of Tarsus is dramatic, and the record of it in Acts should encourage us to continue to pray for unbelievers, even the most ardent opponents of Christianity. Thanks for joining us for this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. Every Lord's Day, we feature sermons from the preaching ministry of R.C. Sproul, who served as the first minister of preaching and teaching at St. Andrew's Chapel and founded Ligonier Ministries, which produces this daily outreach, Renewing Your Mind. We're currently in a short sermon series in the book of Acts, and if you'd like to study the entirety of Acts, I encourage you to request a copy of R.C. Sproul's expositional commentary at renewingyourmind.org with your donation of any amount. So what happened that turned Saul of Tarsus from a persecutor of the church to one who would be persecuted for defending and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ?
Here's Dr. Sproul. You recall that when we looked at the martyrdom of St. Stephen that Saul of Tarsus was briefly introduced as the one who gave consent to that murderous act and who stood by and held the garments of those who murdered Stephen. And then briefly Saul passes from sight and from interest as Luke goes on to fill us in on the narratives of the ministry of Philip among the Samaritans and to the Ethiopian eunuch. And now Luke returns to his narrative of this man, Saul of Tarsus. And he begins chapter 9 by telling us this, then Saul still breathing threats and murders against the disciples of the Lord, comma. Let me just comment on that first clause that Saul is described here as one who's breathing out fire as some other translations render it, making us an image of a dragon who goes around seeking whom he may devour.
But more technically if we examine the word here in the language that the verb that is used for breathing does not refer to breathing out, but it refers to breathing in. And that may sound strange to us that somebody can breathe in threats of murder and destruction. But the idea here is that Paul is so passionately determined to carry on his persecution against the nascent Christian community is that he's like a wild beast who snorts before he attacks. You can think of a bull in the bull ring who paws the earth, and then he snorts. And if you want to try to imitate a wild animal snorting, wait until after church, please.
But you're going to find you're going to have to breathe in to get that sound rather than breathe out. So that's the image that Luke is giving us to describe the intensity of the fierce hostility that Saul is manifesting as he makes his way towards Damascus. But before he leaves, he goes to the high priest, and he seeks authorization to carry out this persecution that he's already initiated in Jerusalem to those who might be in the northern regions up in Damascus, which is one of the oldest cities in the history of the world, was known even to Abraham in antiquity. We know there was a very large settlement of Jews in Damascus because during the reign of Nero, Nero killed ten thousand Jews who were assembled in Damascus. And so Saul, suspecting that some of those Jews who were in that community in Damascus had already been seduced by the proclamation of these Christians about this person named Jesus, that he went and got the necessary papers that he could carry with him to Damascus and go to each of the synagogues that were located in that area and have the legal authority and justification from the theocratic leader of Israel, the high priest, that he could then bind these people, place them under arrest, and then bring them kicking and screaming, as it were, back to Jerusalem for further punishment, perhaps even execution.
And so that's the picture that we have as Saul is journeying, and I might add that this is only one of several accounts of the conversion of Saul that we find in the book of Acts, and there's a reason for that. One of the most serious questions that the early church faced was the question of the legitimacy of the apostleship of Paul, because all of the other apostles had been members of the original twelve. They had been eyewitnesses of the resurrection, and all of the other apostles had their authorization to being apostles by the direct and immediate call of Jesus. Now, this is completely in line with biblical history. In the Old Testament, for somebody to be a prophet, he didn't just go to school and get a degree in prophecy and then became ordained by the Jewish community to be a prophet. To be a prophet in Israel with a capital P required that you have your call directly from God. That's why people like Jeremiah, Amos, and Isaiah are careful to give the circumstances of their call when God set them apart and made them prophets. Likewise, in the New Testament, to be qualified to be an apostle, one would have had to have been called directly by Christ. And since Paul was not of the twelve, not an eyewitness of the resurrection, this occurrence on the road to Damascus becomes of supreme importance to validating his authority in the early church. You can imagine how much the first Christians trusted Paul when he comes back and assumes the role of leadership in the church. His reputation had preceded him.
This is like Osama bin Laden coming on and asking to be a model of patriotism in the United States. And so here we have Saul getting his chief credential, being called directly and immediately from Christ, and so that call is repeated a couple of more times in the book. It's said that Luke, one of the reasons why he wrote Acts was not simply to tell us of the marvelous activity of the Holy Ghost, but also one purpose in writing this book was to provide an apologia, an apology for, again, the credentials of this man, Saul of Tarsus, or from now on we'll be referring to him as Paul. So in any case, as he journeyed, he came near to Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven.
Let me just pause there. He's almost to Damascus. He's on the Transjordan Road, which is the desert road, and if we fill in the gaps with some of the other records in the book of Acts, we can say it's about noontime when the sun is at its apogee, when the sun is shining at its very brightest, that this light now appears from heaven that is so blazing, that is so bright that it virtually obscures the light of the sun. Now it's hard for us to imagine how anything could be brighter than the sun itself. The word that is used here when it says that this light from heaven shone on Paul is the same word that is used in the Greek language to describe the light that comes with a bolt of lightning. Now we in central Florida, some of you who are from out of town may not know this, but central Florida is the lightning capital of the world. More bolts of lightning strike central Florida each year than in the whole rest of the United States combined. So we know what lightning is like. You know you can be out in the dark night and have a bolt of lightning flash, and if you can imagine the brightness of that flash, it only lasts a second.
But here the intensity of a lightning flash is enduring for several moments, and it's clearly something that is of a supernatural origin, and Paul is thrown to the ground. And immediately after this blinding, refulgent light of the glory of God throws him to the ground, he hears these words in Hebrew, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Now I hope that some of you will remember that I preached the whole sermon on one occasion here at St. Andrews and also referred to it in our adult class on what I call the double knocks, the fifteen or so times in all of sacred Scripture when someone is addressed by the repetition of their name. You remember that anyone?
Let me say thank you very much to somebody. Go back to the days of Abraham when Abraham goes to Mount Moriah with Isaac, and he raises the knife to plunge it into the chest of his son, and at the last possible moment God calls to him saying, Abraham, Abraham, lay not thy hand upon thy son, for now I know that you trust Me. And the same message is given when Moses is called in the Midianite wilderness and out of the burning bush God speaks to him saying, Moses, Moses, put off thy shoes from off thy feet and so on. We see it when God calls Samuel when he's under the tutelage of Eli, in the Midianite calls, Samuel, Samuel. We see it when David gives his lament with the news of the death of his son, the rebel Absalom. And David beats his breast and cries out, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son. Or Elisha, when he saw his tutor Elijah being carried into heaven, he cries out, my father, my father, the chariots of God. And so throughout the Old Testament, into the New Testament, Jesus speaks tenderly to Martha when He rebukes her, Martha, Martha. When He weeps over Jerusalem, He says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would gather you to Myself as a hen gathers the chicks, but you would not. Even on the cross, our Lord cries, Eloi, Eloi, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? So the fifteen or so times that we see this in the New Testament and the Old Testament indicates a form of address that is intensely personal, underscoring again the warning that Jesus gave to His hearers when He reached the climax of the Sermon on the Mount, when He said many would come on the last day, saying to them to Him, Lord, Lord. And Jesus said to those who will cry to Me, saying, Lord, Lord, I will say to them, depart from Me, you workers of iniquity.
I never knew you. But He's indicating that people will claim not only to know Him by name, but by the repetition, Lord, Lord will be claiming to know Him personally and intimately. But what is so amazing to me is that when in the sovereignty of God and the sovereignty of His Christ, Christ decides to give the special grace of election, where He pours out this personal and intimate love, He chooses not Pilate, He chooses not Caiaphas, but He chooses Saul of Tarsus, and He addresses Him in these terms of personal intimacy. That staggers the imagination that Jesus could have any love whatsoever for this man in light of His singular passion to destroy anything and everything that had to do with Christ. But Paul hears His name in Hebrew called from heaven with a question, Saul, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
Well, Jesus has already ascended to heaven. His persecution has been completed, but now He says to Saul, why are you persecuting me? Because Jesus so identifies with His church, so identifies with His people that anyone who is in Christ Jesus, one who is persecuted for Christ's sake is one who is at the same time identified with Jesus, and Jesus is saying, if you persecute My people, you persecute Me. The saints right now in Sudan that Peter Hammond has told us about who are daily under attack and being killed at the hands of hostile and violent Muslims are being persecuted for Christ's sake, and those that are persecuting them are persecuting Jesus. And we can look at different places in the world and different places in church history where the attacks against the people of God were, in fact, an attack against Jesus.
But we're not involved in that sort of thing, but we can come bring it down to a much smaller degree, but nevertheless real. Recently I read that on any given Sunday morning seventy-five percent of the people who belong to a given congregation are in church, while on average twenty-five percent are missing. Now they may be missing because they're out of town. They may be missing because they're providentially hindered. They may be missing because they're too ill to be there, but that will never explain the full twenty-five percent. The reason why is this, that some people come every Sunday no matter what they're going to be there. Some people come once a month, others twice a month, some three times a month.
When it all averages out on any given Sunday, you can figure that twenty-five percent of the sheep are going to be missing even though our Lord has said, Don't ever, ever neglect the coming together of the saints. But why do we do that? Well, because sometimes we'd rather be doing something else. We'd rather be playing golf.
We'd rather be going to the beach. We'd rather sleep in on Sunday morning than to be in the presence of God bringing honor in Christ. There's not one person in this room who hasn't done that at one time or another.
I know there are lots of times I want to sleep in. I'll never forget an experience that I heard from the lips of a man who had been a vicar in a church in Australia, and he served with the bishop of his area. And one morning the young vicar came into the church, and he wasn't shaved. And the bishop looked at him and said, you know, how are you fixed for blades? What did you do, forget to shave this morning? And the vicar said, Oh, no, sir, he says, the Spirit didn't lead me to shave this morning. He says, Every morning I get up and I wait for the leading of the Spirit, and the Spirit leads me to shave, I shave. If the Spirit doesn't lead me to shave, I don't shave. And this morning the Spirit didn't lead me.
So the elderly bishop said, Son, let me give you some advice. Why don't you from this day forward, as a matter of principle, clean your face before you go to work, and make it a matter of principle, as a matter of discipline, and quit bothering the Holy Spirit to determine the insignificant details of your life. Now, what's the application?
The application is this. Don't wait for the Spirit to lead you to church on Sunday morning. Make it a matter of principle. Say, from now on, I'm going to stand with my Lord, and I'm going to be present for His sake and to honor Him whenever I possibly can be there for that occasion. Now, Paul hears these words, and the question, why are you persecuting me? Now, he knows that who's ever addressing him out of this blinding light and this sound that he's hearing is not some average person coming from Damascus.
He knows that he's in touch with a supernatural someone, but he's not sure of the identity. And he asks the question, who are you, Lord? I don't know who you are, but I know whoever you are, you're Lord.
Paul is obviously not using the term curios here in the lower sense of simple, polite address, but is rather using it in the supreme, imperial sense. He knows that he's being addressed now by the sovereign one of heaven, but he doesn't know what's going on and says, who are you, Lord? And the answer comes to him, I'm Jesus, the name that Saul hated more than any name in the world.
I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Saul, isn't it hard for you to kick against the goads? That obscure reference may not be meaningful to us, but in antiquity much of the produce was hauled on ox carts, and sometimes the oxen, just like the mules, could get very stubborn, and they'd have to whip them a little bit to get them moving, and sometimes that would just make the oxen all the more stubborn, and they would kick against the ox cart and could shatter the ox cart, and so they mounted these goads or spikes in the front of the ox cart, so that if you switched the ox, and the ox kicked against the goad, that would get him moving. But sometimes the ox would be so stubborn, so angry, that when he would kick against the goad, and the goad would pierce his foot and cause him more pain, he'd get more angry and kick it again, just like the person that goes and bangs their head against the wall repeatedly and say, why do you do that?
He'd say, because it feels so good when I stop. So it is with what Jesus is doing. He's saying, Saul, he said, do you have any idea how stupid you are? You stupid ox! You're like the ox who kicks against the ox goad the ox goad when you carry on your hostility towards me. You know, it's not just sinful to resist the lordship of Christ. It's stupid, because God has raised him from the grave and has placed him at his right hand, given him all authority on heaven and earth, and has called every person to bow their knee before him.
And to resist him is foolish. So now Paul, trembling and astonished, says, Lord, what do you want me to do? Is there any other response that you can have when you're converted to Christ?
Can you remember back to the days of your conversion, the first time you were on your knees before Christ and you knew by experience that you had been forgiven? What do you say? Like Isaiah, here am I, send me. What do you want me to do?
Now, all of a sudden, the agenda changes dramatically. Paul had established his own agenda in going to seek out and destroy in this mission to get rid of Christians. Now, trembling and astonished, he says to Jesus, what do you want me to do? And the Lord said, here's what I want you to do.
Arise and go into the city, and there you will be told what you must do. Now the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no one. And listen to this, then Saul arose from the ground. And all this time he had kept his eyes closed tightly. He didn't dare open his eyes in light of the brilliance of that light that had come from heaven, but now as things abate, he gets up and he chances it, and he opens his eyes. But he doesn't see the bright light. All he sees is blackness.
He's lost his vision. He's completely blind from the light from heaven. When his eyes were opened, he saw no one, but they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. I can't help but wonder whether the Christian community had their spies and whether the word had already spread throughout Damascus.
That fire-breathing guy Saul is on his way. He's just a little bit outside of the city, and this sense of terror and fear grips the citizen Christians of Damascus, and they look up and they see this man being led by the hand, blind as a bat, into the city who was a threat to no one. But they led him by the hand and brought him to Damascus, and he was there for three days without sight.
Neither did he eat nor drink. Three days in darkness, in hunger and thirst. Three days for Saul of Tarsus to contemplate what had happened to him on the road to Damascus. You see, ladies and gentlemen, Saul's life was turned upside down in that moment on the road to Damascus, and because his life was turned upside down by the power of God the Holy Spirit, so the world was turned upside down. And so we have been turned upside down through the testimony that God put in his lips and in his pen that feeds the church even to this day. And in being turned upside down, in truth, we have been turned right side up, haven't we?
That was R.C. Sproul on this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind, preaching on Paul's conversion as recorded in the book of Acts. These sermons and his decades of study would lead to his expositional commentary on Acts, and you can add the hardcover edition to your library when you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or when you click the link in the podcast show notes. Line by line, Dr. Sproul will walk you through Luke's account of the early church and will highlight the theological insights and practical application for you and me today. So give your gift at renewingyourmind.org while there's still time as this offer ends at midnight. Next Sunday, R.C. Sproul will conclude our time in Acts, so be sure to join us then here on Renewing Your Mind. you
