June 19, 2000
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July 9 Lesson
Chosen to carry the Lord's message to the world
___Acts 9:1-22, 26-28
___1Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest 2and 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. 3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He 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."
___7The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. ...
___17Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord--Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here--has sent me so that you many see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit." ...
___26When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was really a disciple. 27But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. 28So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.
___By Rick Willis
___I went to school with a man who had a dramatic conversion experience while in high school. His father was in critical condition in a hospital, and my friend felt desperation grow inside him because of the crisis. He went out to the parking lot alone, and with half-hope and half-defiance, he cried out to God for help--in case there was a God. There, the Lord made himself unmistakably known.
___My friend says he heard the Lord in a clear voice. And in one sudden sweep, my friend was sure Jesus is Lord, everything would be OK and he was called to Christian service. He currently serves as a missionary in South America with his wife and kids.
___I became a Christian as a grade-school boy through my mother's witness gradually taking root. We knelt together at my toy box, and I asked Jesus into my heart. It was all pretty quiet and natural. My response to God's call to ministry has been more of a steady crawl than a sudden sweep.
___The book of Acts gives accounts of different kinds of conversion experiences. Yet behind every one is the same Jesus, the same forgiveness and transformation, and the same purpose.
___Saul, the enemy of believers
___The conversion of Saul the Pharisee stands out as one of the most compelling evidences of the power of God's grace in Jesus Christ. We first meet Saul as he supervises the fatal beating of a Christian preacher in Jerusalem. But as we already know, this same man would become known as the Apostle Paul, one of the greatest heroes of Christian faith and writer of one-third of the New Testament. Following Acts 9, I'll call Paul by his Hebrew name, Saul, in the commentary.
___According to this week's text, Saul breathed threats and murder against the disciples. Why did he hate them so? The New Testament takes for granted the reasons for Saul's hatred of the believers and never really spells them out. However, we still can put the answer together from what is clear in the gospels and Acts.
___To begin with, he hated them for the same reasons the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem hated Jesus and plotted his execution. They saw Jesus as a blasphemer because he equated himself with God and as a rebel against the laws of Moses. They considered him a threat to political stability in Palestine.
___The followers of Jesus likewise maintained his equality with God. They also were beginning to reinterpret the Old Testament in the light of Jesus. We get a glimpse of this in the accusation that Stephen said Jesus would change the customs of the Old Testament and make the temple obsolete (Acts 6:13-14).
___The old joke asks how many Baptists it takes to change a light bulb, and the response is a cry of panic: "Change!?!" To the established religious leaders in Jerusalem, the changes happening among the disciples of Jesus were no joke.
___To Saul the Pharisee, it was apostasy, and he likely believed that left unchecked it could even bring God's judgment on Israel. Like the Old Testament hero named Phinehas (Numbers 25:6-11), Saul was determined to root out the corruption from Israel. So he got extradition papers to chase down believers, just like Philip the evangelist, who had fled from Jerusalem after the stoning of Stephen. He set out for Damascus, 150 miles away.
___Saul, the believer
___All of this says a lot about the character of Saul the Pharisee of Tarsus. Smart, committed, tireless--he was just the kind of person you'd want to enlist for your cause. You certainly wouldn't want him for an enemy, because for the sake of the cause he could be ruthless. Saul let the love of ideals in his head crowd out the love of real people in front of his face.
___That was Saul's character until he was faced with the person who transformed him forever.
___Saul's conversion is the prime knocked-down-turned-around conversion experience recorded in the New Testament. The story is repeated three times in the book of Acts (in chapters 9, 22 and 26), indicating its importance in the early churches. Before arriving in Damascus, Saul was confronted as an unbeliever by a vision of the risen and glorified Christ. The rest of the conversions pictured in Acts came after preaching and personal witness. Some were a little more sensational than others, but every one is a miracle of grace. Whether in the quiet of a comfortable living room or in the aftershocks of an earthquake, every time a person receives Christ, the heavens tremble with awe and joy.
___Certain sticky theoretical questions are highlighted by Saul's conversion. When Saul fell to the ground before the glory of Jesus Christ, blinded by holy light and called by name, how much choice did he have to resist believing? On the other hand, he spent the rest of his life enduring hardship and mortal danger for the sake of persuading others to choose to believe the gospel, saying, "I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22).
___Does God have all laid out in advance who gets saved and who remains lost? If that's what predestination means in the Bible, then why witness and support missionaries? Baptists historically have agreed to disagree about detailed doctrines of predestination, content to give greater attention to loving the real people in front of our faces--love that includes telling them the good news of Jesus Christ and trusting God to do the converting.
___'Brother Saul ...'
___We don't know the first thing about how Ananias became a believer. The Bible picks up his story as an established disciple in Damascus. Maybe his conversion was one of the quieter kinds without a startling vision. In his case, the vision came later, during a simple daily devotional or while he was washing his face.
___Again the risen Christ appeared; and he instructed Ananias to go to a specific address where Saul of Tarsus was praying and receiving the other end of the vision. There Ananias would heal and encourage Saul. Of course, Ananias already had been warned of the approach to Damascus of Saul, the enemy of believers. The Lord's instructions sounded a lot like God telling Moses to pick up the snake by its tail, so Ananias hesitated before risking a painful bite.
___The Lord assured Ananias he would be in no danger from Saul. The Lord revealed to him that Saul himself would be a disciple, and he would preach the message of Jesus to Gentiles as well as Jews, even before kings. The New Testament phrase used to describe Saul literally is "a chosen vessel of mine."
___With that, Ananias went and found Saul just as the vision had instructed. There he stood before the man who, just days before, would have taken him in chains to Jerusalem. But now as they faced each other, they had in common their encounter with Jesus. With his earlier fear and reluctance melted by God's Spirit, Ananias reached out and said, "Brother Saul." God released Saul from his blindness, and in the company of disciples Saul was baptized.
___Ananias shows us conversion is just the beginning. To be a Christian is to keep growing in faith. New discoveries keep coming, discoveries of what God is up to all around us and what he has for us to do. Ananias found courage he didn't know he had as he obeyed the Lord. So can we.
___A chosen vessel
___When the Lord directed Ananias to go to Saul, he described Saul as a chosen vessel. That description reveals something important about salvation. The word for "vessel" referred to tools or clay pots, not to ornaments. A chosen vessel was an instrument for a specific job. Applied to conversion, being chosen is the great blessing of acceptance by God and reception into God's loving relationship. Being a vessel is the responsibility of submitting to God and fulfilling the "good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10).
___The reason Saul was converted was to become the Apostle Paul, missionary to the Gentiles and all the way to Rome. Saul quickly began to fulfill his calling by preaching about Christ in the synagogues of Damascus. In the words I heard as a teenager in Bible studies and Sunday sermons, Saul was saved to serve. The Bible says all Christians are saved to serve, to walk in those good works prepared by God for each of us.
___The Lord also revealed to Saul he would bear suffering as a follower of Jesus. The zealous Pharisee from Tarsus already knew too well the disciples faced violent opposition. He had instigated much of it himself. The world still finds times and places to persecute Christians for their faith. And disciples still endure with the strength the Holy Spirit provides and with the joy of being chosen to carry the name of Christ.
___Relationships required
___At Damascus, Saul found acceptance and support from Ananias and the other disciples. He must have looked at these believers with new eyes in more ways than one after his conversion. As they talked together, as Saul listened to the other disciples and as he ate with them, how could he keep from thinking about what Jesus said to him on the road: "Saul, Saul. Why are you persecuting me?" The believers were one with Christ. To persecute them was to persecute Christ. In Christ, they were one body.
___At Jerusalem, according to the latter verses of Acts 9, Saul tried to associate with the disciples as he did at Damascus. But he hadn't yet won their trust. He had done a good job of terrorizing them before he was transformed. They still were better acquainted with the old Saul. He needed another Ananias.
___Saul's new mentor and encourager came into the picture in Barnabas. Barnabas evidently was a wealthy and prominent disciple in Jerusalem. He had the trust of the disciples there, having contributed a lot in spirit and in physical resources. He was willing to take a risk on Saul. Barnabas embraced Saul as a brother in Christ, and he became Saul's advocate with the other disciples. In consequence, Saul continued to fulfill his work as God's chosen vessel in Jerusalem.
___God chose Ananias and Barnabas to help shape Saul the Pharisee into Paul the Apostle. I can name specific people whom God has used to mold my life as a Christian vessel. Zelma, Barbara, Ron, Wallace, D'Anne, Roland--these are just a few. Some pressed me forward. Others polished. Each has left a distinct mark. God keeps adding formative individuals to my life, and I guess he's let me have a hand in some others. That's the way it works.
___Each of us in Christ is a chosen vessel, converted for a purpose, saved to serve. We find clues and inspiration for fulfilling our own ministries. God has placed them there in our conversion experiences, in our encouragers and mentors. Reflect on how you received Christ. Remember your baptism. Take another look at the people God has used to shape you. You may not see a blinding light. But you may see an assignment from Christ--as if scales fell from your eyes.
For thought and discussion
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