SPEAKER_00: Church.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Kyle Morse, and I'm a little bit hoarse.
SPEAKER_00: I took my kids to the swimming pool, and most of the time I just watch, but occasionally the inner 12-year-old rises up in me.
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, I play pretty hard in the pool, and uh I guess I ingest a decent amount of chlorinated water, which my body doesn't like.
SPEAKER_00: So you'll have to bear with me, my shoulders all out of whack.
SPEAKER_00: But it was a good time.
SPEAKER_00: It was a good time.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Cameron, can we have the lights up just a little bit?
SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure we can see our Bibles this morning.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, we're gonna be in Acts chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what we're gonna be talking about this morning is cooperating with God.
SPEAKER_00: Who wants to cooperate with God in their life?
SPEAKER_00: Uh this morning, you have the opportunity to cooperate with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And I know for me, I want to cooperate with the Holy Spirit because I know that the Holy Spirit wants to lead me to places, and he wants to lead us as a church to places and to people that need him, and he's looking for cooperation.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning we're we're gonna hopefully open our hands and just be willing to cooperate wherever God might be leading us.
SPEAKER_00: I was not looking for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in my five years at Abilene Christian University, up until the point I'm gonna talk about this morning, I had not thought much about Jesus or church or anything spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: And that's pretty difficult to do when you're required to take Bible classes.
SPEAKER_00: I was content with living my life, a life of drinking and drugging and making destructive decisions.
SPEAKER_00: I have I had very little sensitivity in my conscience, if any.
SPEAKER_00: But I can remember to the day that that all changed in Abilene, Texas, in the winter of 2003.
SPEAKER_00: I was six months away from graduation where I had basically cheated my way to a business degree.
SPEAKER_00: I had no dreams or plans or aspirations for my life, and my greatest concern was where I'm gonna get my next high.
SPEAKER_00: The best way that I know to describe what happened on that particular day, it's almost like this dark storm cloud just stopped over my life.
SPEAKER_00: Like that storm cloud pulled the emergency break.
SPEAKER_00: It ain't going anywhere, and I could not shake it.
SPEAKER_00: And I was a fun, loving, gregarious guy that was always up for whatever, but this dark cloud, it filled me with anxiety and depression.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever I would drink or whenever I would smoke, it would just make things worse.
SPEAKER_00: I would feel more out of control.
SPEAKER_00: I was plagued by daily panic attacks that left me questioning my will to live.
SPEAKER_00: I would literally go to my college classes and I would have to leave in the middle of the class because I was having a panic attack.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't suicidal mostly because I was afraid of dying and I knew that there was a God, but I didn't know him.
SPEAKER_00: And so for me, the six months from the winter of 2003 to the summer of 2003 were the darkest days I have ever faced in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I felt lost, abandoned, without any hope, without any thought that life could be better, that I could be better.
SPEAKER_00: But looking back on that dark time in my life, I realized now that without that utter darkness, I would have never seen the light.
SPEAKER_00: As I think back on that time when I questioned whether God was real, whether I had done too much wrong, whether I could ever be forgiven or if I could ever be loved.
SPEAKER_00: It was actually the very love of God that was driving me to that dark place of despair in order to prepare me for the hope that was to come.
SPEAKER_00: He was literally and graciously removing all my security, taking away all my control in order to rescue me from a darkness that had imprisoned me, most of the darkness that I had brought upon myself.
SPEAKER_00: He was showing me the reality of my darkened heart while at the same time showing me the measure of his grace.
SPEAKER_00: My sin was great, but his grace was greater.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, this morning, as we look at this profound story of people who cooperated with you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that this would be said of us individually but collectively as a church.
SPEAKER_00: Would we continue to cooperate with you, God?
SPEAKER_00: Your spirit is moving in this church, your spirit is moving in the bridge, your spirit is moving in our global partners across the world.
SPEAKER_00: And God, we want to keep cooperating.
SPEAKER_00: We want to keep listening to your spirit, we want to keep saying yes.
SPEAKER_00: And so, would we see this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Would we see the cooperation of these two men in the story and how it changed the landscape, not just of the early church, but the world?
SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So Acts chapter 9, we're gonna go there in just a moment and we're gonna look primarily at the story of Saul as well as the story of Ananias, an early disciple in the church.
SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, I want us to remember back to Acts chapter 7, verse 58, because we met Saul just very briefly as Stephen was about to be stoned for his testimony of Jesus Christ before the religious leaders, we are given this very small detail by the author of the book of Acts, Luke.
SPEAKER_00: It says that those who stoned Stephen that day, they laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when you laid your cloaks at the young man of a feet uh young wow, when you when they laid their cloaks at Saul's feet, that was a sign that Saul had authority among that group.
SPEAKER_00: It was a sign of respect.
SPEAKER_00: That what was about to be done was at Saul's order.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Saul, he maybe never threw a stone at Stephen, but he gave the green light for him to be killed.
SPEAKER_00: And so now we have this same Saul who is sticking around Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And what he's doing in Jerusalem is he's literally dragging men and women out of their homes in order to arrest them.
SPEAKER_00: And Saul's goal for his life in this moment right now is very clear.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to eradicate the spread of the early church.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to stamp it out.
SPEAKER_00: But he didn't put out the fire.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he inadvertently cooperated with God in order for the fire of the church to spread across the world.
SPEAKER_00: You see, all these Christians who left Jerusalem because of the stoning of Stephen and the persecution of the church, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: They left Jerusalem and they went back to the places where they had lived before Pentecost, and with them they brought the message of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so we pick up the story there, Acts chapter 9, beginning in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Luke tells us that Saul was from Tarsus later in the story.
SPEAKER_00: This was a common way to identify people in the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_00: Like when we hear Mary Magdalene, the person is telling us that this is Mary from the city of Magdala.
SPEAKER_00: So I would be Kyle of Helotus.
SPEAKER_00: Tarsus was a very significant place.
SPEAKER_00: It was one of the centers of intellectual thought and higher education.
SPEAKER_00: So if you were from Tarsus, you were thought of as intellectual.
SPEAKER_00: You had Ivy League caliber, and this was true of Saul, as we see in other places throughout the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: He was highly educated.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but he had dual citizenship, which was rare.
SPEAKER_00: He was a Jewish citizen, but he also was a Roman citizen.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but he spoke Greek and Hebrew and Latin.
SPEAKER_00: So we need to see Saul as an upper elite, even among his Pharisee peers.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, we find out that Saul was taught by a guy named Gemael.
SPEAKER_00: Gemael was a huge deal among Jewish rabbis.
SPEAKER_00: He was the best of the best.
SPEAKER_00: He was the Yoda of rabbis of his day.
SPEAKER_00: And so Gemael was basically like, hey, Saul, come under my wing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to mentor you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to disciple you.
SPEAKER_00: And so you got the best of the best in Pharisee life who is learning from the greatest of the greats.
SPEAKER_00: So that's Saul's pedigree.
SPEAKER_00: And Saul knew that.
SPEAKER_00: In Philippians 3, 3 through 6, he said this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, he says, I have more, circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: As to the law, a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_00: As to zeal, a persecutor of the church.
SPEAKER_00: As to righteousness under the law, blameless.
SPEAKER_00: So we need to see Saul in this light.
SPEAKER_00: Luke here in these first few verses, he gives us a window or a picture into Saul's heart.
SPEAKER_00: Not only did he hate the church, but he's breathing out murderous threats against anyone who is associated with the way.
SPEAKER_00: This was the nickname of the early church.
SPEAKER_00: They were called the way.
SPEAKER_00: And we know this from the book of Luke that Jesus said of himself, I am the way, the truth, the life.
SPEAKER_00: No one comes to God or no one comes to the Father except through me.
SPEAKER_00: And so Saul was going around looking for anyone who was a part of the way.
SPEAKER_00: And now all the Christians, except for the apostles, had fled out of Jerusalem and they had gone throughout the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_00: And it's likely that Saul caught word that some of these Christians made their way to Damascus, into the synagogue where they were beginning to tell their friends and brothers and sisters about Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ was the long-awaited Messiah that the Jews had been waiting for, the one who would come and rescue them and redeem them.
SPEAKER_00: And so Saul gets word of this, and he goes to the high priest.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes to the high priest and he asks the high priest for letters of permission to basically be able to travel to Damascus, which was about 150 miles away from Jerusalem, to find any Christians in Damascus, literally chain them and walk them a hundred and fifty miles back.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what's scary about what Paul is or Saul is doing here.
SPEAKER_00: Saul was actually convinced that he was doing the work and the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: Saul was a Pharisee, meaning Saul, his whole life was dedicated to the purity of Jewish law.
SPEAKER_00: He was dedicated to making sure that the people of Israel followed God's law perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: And when they didn't follow God's law perfectly, that was the purpose of the sacrificial system.
SPEAKER_00: That was the purpose of animals being sacrificed for the sin of the people in their place.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can imagine that as Saul heard about this Jesus who claimed to be the fulfillment of the law, who claimed to live a perfect life, who claimed to be the final sacrifice, the final atonement of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, Saul, he's stepping up on behalf of God and making sure that this lie doesn't spread any further.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the nature of deception is you can be doing what you believe is right and still be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: So this is Saul of Tarsus.
SPEAKER_00: His mission is clear eradicate the church off the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him.
SPEAKER_00: And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Who are you, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
SPEAKER_00: But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.
SPEAKER_00: The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.
SPEAKER_00: Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.
SPEAKER_00: So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus, and for three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.
SPEAKER_00: Now I just want to say right at the outset of this section of scripture, um, it's hard for me to exaggerate to you how much hope there is in what we just read.
SPEAKER_00: Saul is literally traveling 150 miles to Damascus to arrest men and women, to put them in chains, and then walk them 150 miles back to Jerusalem to put them in prison.
SPEAKER_00: Like this is wicked.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, even Saul was not too far gone to be rescued by Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Saul was on a search and destroy mission, but he met Jesus, who was on a search and rescue mission.
SPEAKER_00: Saul was not on the road to Damascus searching for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He was on the road to Damascus trying to get rid of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't looking for him, but Jesus was looking for him.
SPEAKER_00: You see, there's power in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is why there is always hope.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is for everyone.
SPEAKER_00: And if this story shows us anything, it's that if there is hope for Saul, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: There is hope for all.
SPEAKER_00: If there's hope for Saul, there is hope for all.
SPEAKER_00: I love this section of Acts because we see these personal encounters that people have with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritans, a couple weeks ago, right, they saw the power of Jesus Christ as Philip entered into their town, and the demons and the evil spirits, they were just leaving people because of the name of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The Ethiopian that Tim talked about last week, he's literally on a desert road, thousands of miles from home, reading the prophet Isaiah that's describing Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And through that, Philip says, Hey, the guy that you're reading about, that's Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so he is powerfully transformed through the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And now we have Saul on a 150-mile road to Damascus, almost to the city, and he encounters the very presence of Jesus, a blinding light that radically changes his life forever.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, Jesus is still searching for broken and lost people.
SPEAKER_00: He is the hound dog of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I love the way John Stott says this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Why I am a Christian is due ultimately neither to the influence of my parents and teachers, nor to my own personal decision for Christ, but to the hound of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That is, it is due to Jesus Christ Himself, who pursued me relentlessly, even when I was running away from him, in order to go my own way.
SPEAKER_00: And if it were not for the gracious pursuit of the Hound of Heaven, I would today be on the scrap heap of wasted and a discarded life.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to stop here for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes when we read stories like this, or even when I think about my own conversion story, we think of conversion stories as these instantaneous moments where God saves someone who was lost and all of a sudden they're found.
SPEAKER_00: And we think of it like a snap of the fingers, and in reality, conversion is not mostly instantaneous.
SPEAKER_00: And I say that to say because a bunch of you right now, you're praying for people in your life.
SPEAKER_00: A bunch of you right now, you have prodigals who have run away.
SPEAKER_00: And you've prayed and you've prayed and you prayed, and at the look of their lives right now, you're like, ah, God must have given up on them.
SPEAKER_00: They must be too far gone.
SPEAKER_00: They must be extended beyond the reach of God.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I would say to you: Saul and what we see on the road to Damascus was part of the process that Jesus had started with him long ago.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to Acts chapter 26, verse 13, there's something that we see that Saul says when he's giving his testimony before Agrippa.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for some of you in your Bibles, in Acts chapter 9, when your Bible says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, depending on your translation, there's a little statement right after that.
SPEAKER_00: And the statement says, It is hard for you to kick against the goats.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone have that in their translation?
SPEAKER_00: Most of us have the ESV journal Bible, so you don't, yes, one in the back.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason why this isn't in the ESV translation is because that sentence isn't in the oldest manuscripts, but it's in a lot of the copied manuscripts.
SPEAKER_00: And so translators have to make a decision: are we going to put this in or are we not going to put this in?
SPEAKER_00: Here's how we know that whether it's in your translation in chapter 9, it happened on the road to Damascus.
SPEAKER_00: Gail Gossark, would you mind grabbing me some tea?
SPEAKER_00: This is this just sounds like I'm angry at y'all.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have that ESV journal, flip over to Acts 26.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you have a Bible, flip over to Acts 26.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to read verses 13 and 14.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, this is, what I'm about to read is red letters in your Bible, meaning Jesus said it.
SPEAKER_00: This is Saul standing trial before Agrippa, and he's giving testimony to what he experienced on that day.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he said At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven brighter than the sun that shone around me and those who journeyed with me.
SPEAKER_00: And when he, and when we had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
SPEAKER_00: It is hard for you to kick against the goads.
SPEAKER_00: Now we read that as modern-day 21st century people, and we're like, what in the world does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: What's a goad?
SPEAKER_00: In antiquity or in the ancient Near East, every single person who heard that knew exactly what Jesus was saying.
SPEAKER_00: Because they they knew what it was like to see a couple of stubborn oxen who were pulling a heavy load that were pulling precious cargo, and these oxen would often get stubborn, and what they would do is they would kick their feet, and sometimes in the process of kicking their feet, they would kick the cargo or they would kick the cart so hard that they would break it.
SPEAKER_00: And so what the owners of the oxen did is they would put these sharp, spiky things called goads.
SPEAKER_00: And so when the oxen chose to get stubborn and the oxen would kick the goad, the goad would pierce the foot of the oxen.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a reminder to the oxen that the oxen was not the one in control.
SPEAKER_00: Why would Jesus say that to Saul?
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that to Saul to say this, hey Saul, I've been working in your life for a very long time.
SPEAKER_00: And you've been kicking the goats, kicking the goats, kicking the goads.
SPEAKER_00: You haven't been cooperating with me.
SPEAKER_00: You've been working against me.
SPEAKER_00: You see, there's nothing in Saul's life up until this moment that would ever lead you to believe that he's about to encounter Jesus Christ and that his life is going to be radically changed.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
SPEAKER_00: He's authorizing the stoning of Stephen, an important church leader.
SPEAKER_00: He's literally going and dragging women out of the homes and putting them in prison.
SPEAKER_00: How low can you get?
SPEAKER_00: And yet Jesus says right here, hey, I've been working the whole time.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I'm pausing here is because some of us in this room, we've lost hope.
SPEAKER_00: You got a prodigal in your life like I was a prodigal.
SPEAKER_00: And you've lost hope.
SPEAKER_00: And you're looking at your kid, and your kid is kicking against the goads, and you're just assuming that they're kicking against the goads.
SPEAKER_00: God's not working.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you right now, he's working.
SPEAKER_00: He's working in the darkness, he's working in the despair.
SPEAKER_00: He's working in his kindness and his graciousness to bring the person that you deeply love to the end of themselves.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's what he did with Saul in this story.
SPEAKER_00: I love this.
SPEAKER_00: Story because it's not like Saul fell to the ground and got up and walked away, and all of a sudden he was fine.
SPEAKER_00: He was blind.
SPEAKER_00: Like this dude with all kinds of swagger, with a company of people following him as he is confidently on the road to Damascus to till to kill Christians.
SPEAKER_00: He gets knocked down to his knees, and guess what?
SPEAKER_00: God humbles him to the point where he can't even walk into Damascus on his own.
SPEAKER_00: He has to have somebody lead him by the hand.
SPEAKER_00: There are things that God is doing right now in the lives of people that you know and the people that you love and the people that you've given up hope on.
SPEAKER_00: They may be your children, it may be a friend, it may be a family member.
SPEAKER_00: And I need you to know that God is working even in the darkness and even in the despair.
SPEAKER_00: He's working.
SPEAKER_00: When I left Abilene after graduating, filled with anxiety and fear, I moved back to San Antonio where I ultimately encountered Jesus Christ and I gave my life to him.
SPEAKER_00: And after I gave my life to Christ, I found out that my best friend's mother had done a 40-day challenge where the pastor at her church invited the people who went to the church to fast and pray for one person for 40 days.
SPEAKER_00: And I was that person.
SPEAKER_00: And so Nancy Smothers, Nancy Smothers chose me, and by faith she began crying out to God to rescue me.
SPEAKER_00: Don't stop crying out.
SPEAKER_00: Stephen, as he was being stoned by Saul and his henchmen, guess what Stephen was doing?
SPEAKER_00: He was crying out for the salvation of Saul.
SPEAKER_00: Don't give up.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is alive and he is working.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine what's going through Saul's mind here.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's on the wrong side of history.
SPEAKER_00: He's in deep trouble.
SPEAKER_00: He thought he was defending God's honor.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine thinking that you were serving God only to find out that you were attacking him?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 says that he was blind and that he was led into Damascus for three days, which, how long was Jesus in the grave?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a symbolism here to what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: There's a resurrection that's happening in Saul.
SPEAKER_00: Where he'll begin to go by a different name.
SPEAKER_00: He'll go by his Greek name, Paul.
SPEAKER_00: And God's doing something.
SPEAKER_00: So what is what is what is Saul doing for three days?
SPEAKER_00: He's fasting and praying.
SPEAKER_00: Why is he fasting and praying?
SPEAKER_00: He's fasting and praying and thinking, I think for a few different reasons.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta understand that Saul, because he studied under Gemael, because he was the Ivy League kind of caliber of student, like he knew the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that as he sat there for three days fasting and thinking, I think he began to make connections in the Old Testament to Jesus that he had never made before.
SPEAKER_00: He had just assumed when Jesus showed up, Jesus would overturn the Roman rule and would give the Jews the keys to the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: He hadn't considered that maybe just maybe God would send a weak and suffering Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And then he started thinking for three days and started putting the two and two together.
SPEAKER_00: That Isaiah talked about a suffering servant over and over and over again, that the Messiah would be the one who would suffer greatly, who, as Sam said, would take on the sin of not just the Jewish people, but the sin of the world.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's part of what Saul was thinking about.
SPEAKER_00: I also think that Saul in this moment was confronted with the reality of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And I say this all the time, and I don't say this that you might feel bad about yourself, but in order to understand the good news of the gospel, so in order for the gospel to console you, the gospel first has to confront you.
SPEAKER_00: The confrontation is listen, every single one of us in this room and watching online, we are worse sinners than we think we are.
SPEAKER_00: That is the confrontation of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And for many people, they don't want to look at that light, they don't want to admit that.
SPEAKER_00: And so they they move to a road of self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if there is a God, how do I please him?
SPEAKER_00: Because I know I'm a sinner deep down, but how do I find my way to make myself okay before God?
SPEAKER_00: You see, that's the confrontation.
SPEAKER_00: The confrontation is we all are worse sinners than we think we are.
SPEAKER_00: The consolation of the gospel is that we are loved far more than we could ever imagine.
SPEAKER_00: I think Saul's sitting in that reality, sitting in the reality of what he has done, how he has persecuted the church.
SPEAKER_00: And yet somehow, in the midst of his grievous sin, you see, Paul, he gave himself a nickname in his later writings of the epistles.
SPEAKER_00: You know what it was?
SPEAKER_00: Chief of all sinners.
SPEAKER_00: I think he's sitting in this reality.
SPEAKER_00: He's worse than he thought he was, but oh my goodness, this God loves me more than I could ever imagine.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard the song Amazing Grace.
SPEAKER_00: And many of you, you know the story of the man who wrote it, John Newton.
SPEAKER_00: Before entering ministry, John Newton lived a rebellious life.
SPEAKER_00: He worked actually in the transatlantic in slave trade.
SPEAKER_00: But during a severe storm off the coast of Ireland, his ship nearly sank.
SPEAKER_00: And in desperation, John Newton cried out to God for mercy, and the crew survived.
SPEAKER_00: And he viewed at that moment God saving his soul as the impetus for writing these words.
SPEAKER_00: Amazing grace.
SPEAKER_00: How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
SPEAKER_00: I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see.
SPEAKER_00: Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.
SPEAKER_00: How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.
SPEAKER_00: See, I think for three days Saul sat at the intersection of his sin and God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: And Saul in this moment, he cooperated with Jesus Christ and was changed forever.
SPEAKER_00: We are worse than we think we are, but more love than we could ever imagine.
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, Jesus appears to another man, a faithful disciple named Ananias.
SPEAKER_00: And he also has a message for Ananias.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias, and he said, Here I am, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said to him, Rise and go to the street called strait, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, and he has seen a vision.
SPEAKER_00: A man named Ananias come in and lay hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.
SPEAKER_00: But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priest to go bind all who call on your name.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.
SPEAKER_00: So Ananias departed and entered the house, and laying his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight.
SPEAKER_00: Then he rose and was baptized, and taking food, he was strengthened.
SPEAKER_00: For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to see what Jesus does here immediately for Saul.
SPEAKER_00: He immediately surrounds Saul with spiritual community.
SPEAKER_00: He sends a disciple named Ananias to meet Saul in his greatest moment of weakness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want us to go back into that verse that I just read, and I need you to see the specificity at which Jesus speaks to Ananias.
SPEAKER_00: Look back at the text.
SPEAKER_00: Listen.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said to Ananias, Rise.
SPEAKER_00: Go to the street called straight, to the house of Judas.
SPEAKER_00: Look for a man from Tarsus named Saul.
SPEAKER_00: You'll know it's him because he's praying.
SPEAKER_00: And he has seen a vision in a man.
SPEAKER_00: He's seen you in a vision, Ananias.
SPEAKER_00: You talk about clarity.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jesus could not have made it any more clear to this guy what he was supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: Straight street.
SPEAKER_00: House of Judas.
SPEAKER_00: Saul of Tarsus.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to be praying, and guess what?
SPEAKER_00: He'll already know your name, man.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you would expect in that moment Ananias to go, yes, Lord, I'm heading out the door right now.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we would do, right?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: There's resistance.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, we often think that if we could just hear God's audible voice one time, we would be the most faithful, obedient, God cooperating people ever.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought that?
SPEAKER_00: God just put it in the sky over there.
SPEAKER_00: If you do, I'll never turn my back.
SPEAKER_00: I'll walk with you perfectly and faithfully.
SPEAKER_00: See, the human tendency is to think if we just had a little bit more info from God, we'd be a little bit more obedient.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is filled with people who got really clear words from God.
SPEAKER_00: Moses.
SPEAKER_00: God showed up to him literally in a talking bush.
SPEAKER_00: Moses responds by saying, I don't talk that good.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: God says, Go and preach my gospel to these people.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah said, I don't like those people.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: I needed to prophesy in my name.
SPEAKER_00: I'm too young.
SPEAKER_00: See, whether God speaks in a burning bush, tells a prophet to go to Nineveh, human resistance is always the response to God's instruction.
SPEAKER_00: We kind of think we know better.
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, I don't blame Ananias here.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm gonna talk out of both sides of my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: On one hand, Ananias had all of the information and could have easily chosen to be faithful.
SPEAKER_00: On the other side of my mouth, this was a huge leap of faith for Ananias.
SPEAKER_00: This is the church's public enemy number one.
SPEAKER_00: Like this is the this is the guy that's dragging people out of their homes in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: This is the guy that authorized the stoning of Stephen.
SPEAKER_00: This is the guy who now has been given permission to come to Damascus and to completely destroy the church.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Ananias obeyed.
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't without great cost.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of the cost to Ananias.
SPEAKER_00: He likely knew some of the people who had died at the hands of Saul, some of the people who had been imprisoned by Saul.
SPEAKER_00: He likely knew the people who had been dragged out of their homes against their will, screaming and yelling.
SPEAKER_00: Let me paint this picture a little bit clearer.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember this picture that I shared a few weeks ago?
SPEAKER_00: This is a picture that was taken in 2015.
SPEAKER_00: This is a group of Coptic Christians, 21 Coptic Christians from Syria, who were working in Libya in order to provide for their families.
SPEAKER_00: They were arrested by ISIS.
SPEAKER_00: They were marched out to a beach where they were forced to get on their knees and where they were publicly executed for their faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a radical story.
SPEAKER_00: On one hand, that dude in the middle, the one that's pointing his dagger.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going on, but he's clearly different than the other guys.
SPEAKER_00: The radical nature of this story today in 2026 is this is Saul.
SPEAKER_00: That God's love rescues him.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's what Ananias is being asked to do.
SPEAKER_00: He's being asked to go back to all of the families who have been murdered and captured and to say, hey, here's Saul.
SPEAKER_00: Same guy that was a part of the execution, same guy that was a part of the imprisoning.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna be our leader.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yippee! I mean, let's talk about the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ again.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel can change anyone and everyone.
SPEAKER_00: That means that the same grace that God gives us, we don't like this, but he's inviting, and I would say he's demanding us to give it to other people.
SPEAKER_00: He's demanding us to follow the example of Ananias, not perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: Ananias is not perfect in this story, but faithful and obedient.
SPEAKER_00: See, the only way that you can do this is if you've experienced the reality of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The only way that you would ever be able to extend forgiveness to an enemy and an enemy of this sort if you've is if you've sat at the intersection of your own sinfulness and brokenness and God's love and his grace.
SPEAKER_00: And Corey and her family, if you're not familiar with her story, they used their home to hide and protect Jews during Hitler's reign of terror.
SPEAKER_00: She had a sister who was eventually arrested and put in a Nazi camp where Corey survived.
SPEAKER_00: And shortly after the war, Corey Tinboom, she was speaking at a church in Munich, Germany, about the love and the forgiveness of God.
SPEAKER_00: And after the service, a man came forward to speak with her, and he smiled as he extended his hand to greet her.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Corey, in this moment, she recognized this man immediately.
SPEAKER_00: He had been one of the most hateful guards at the Ravensbrook concentration camp where she was.
SPEAKER_00: He had been responsible for her and her sister suffering deeply.
SPEAKER_00: And so he came up to her and said, Hey, I've encountered Jesus Christ, and I believe that God has forgiven me for all of the stuff that I did back then, but he wanted to hear forgiveness from her mouth.
SPEAKER_00: And as Corey gave account of this moment, she said, I froze.
SPEAKER_00: All the memories, all the PTSD flooded back.
SPEAKER_00: Betsy's suffering, the cruelty, the shame, the grief.
SPEAKER_00: And she later admitted in an interview she actually couldn't forgive him.
SPEAKER_00: But in the moment she prayed, Jesus, I cannot forgive him.
SPEAKER_00: Give me your forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And as she reached out her hand, she experienced what she described as the love of God flowing through her.
SPEAKER_00: And she took his hand and said, I forgive you, brother, with all my heart.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't within her to forgive the man.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't have the power.
SPEAKER_00: She couldn't do it, but the love of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, compelled her to forgive.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look next week and in the coming weeks, and what you're going to see is this Saul character who really, for the rest of his life, will go by the name of Paul, which is his Greek name.
SPEAKER_00: Paul wrote 13 of the 27 New Testament books.
SPEAKER_00: And as we looked at in our study of Romans chapter 8, which Paul wrote, everything that Jesus said to Ananias came true.
SPEAKER_00: We know that Saul, who would become Paul, he suffered greatly for the name of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a couple things here that I think we can't miss.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, Saul cooperates with God.
SPEAKER_00: There's a moment in time where Saul stops kicking against the goads and he surrenders his life.
SPEAKER_00: And there are some of you in this room right now, you are not followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You're watching online, you are not followers of Jesus, and you've been kicking against the goads for years.
SPEAKER_00: And this is yet again another invitation from the God who created you and the God who loves you and the Jesus who saved you to respond and to receive Him as your King and as your Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Don't kick against the goads any longer.
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, this is a reminder that your loved one, that your child, that your friend, that your family member, whoever it is that is near and dear in your life, that you can and should have hope for that person.
SPEAKER_00: That as long as that person has air and breath in their lungs, God is working.
SPEAKER_00: He is the hound of heaven that does not give up on a scent.
SPEAKER_00: For some of us in this room, there are people in our life like God is God has invited us and been inviting us to extend forgiveness to people, even people who have harmed us and hurt us badly.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just say this right at the outset: forgiveness does not mean reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness does not mean that this person who has hurt you or harmed you has access to your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what that means.
SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness is to trust God, to extend the love and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, trusting that God is the just one.
SPEAKER_00: That you don't have to vindicate yourself, but you have one who has vindicated you.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna ask us as a church to stand.
SPEAKER_00: I believe this is a holy moment.
SPEAKER_00: I don't say that every Sunday, but I believe this is a holy moment.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe God's inviting us to cooperate right now.
SPEAKER_00: And you get the choice.
SPEAKER_00: You get the choice.
SPEAKER_00: You can keep kicking against the goads, you can keep trying to do life on your own, you can keep trying to be good enough or righteous enough to please God, but you're wasting your energy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has already pleased God on your behalf.
SPEAKER_00: You get the choice.
SPEAKER_00: You get the choice whether to withhold forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to tell you right now, what if Ananias would have withheld forgiveness from Saul?
SPEAKER_00: What would have happened?
SPEAKER_00: How much does God want to do through your life?
SPEAKER_00: And how much does God possibly even want to do through the lives of those who've hurt you?
SPEAKER_00: And he's asking you to cooperate.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean the relationship's restored.
SPEAKER_00: It means that you are asking, you can even say, God, I can't forgive this person, but in this moment right now, I need the power of your spirit to help me forgive.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's what I wanted to want you to do symbolically.
SPEAKER_00: If you're here this morning and you're like, I'm tired of kicking against the goads, if you're here this morning and you have a prodigal in your life, or someone that's lost that you love, or if you're here this morning and you're withholding forgiveness and you're like Corey and you're like, I can't forgive that person, but I know God's calling me to, and I need his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I'm gonna invite you to bring whatever it is to the cross on either side.
SPEAKER_00: Typically, we have prayer team members who are gonna pray with you.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna do that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna ask you to come up and I'm just gonna ask you to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that God would give you a deeper hope for the person that you've been praying for.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that God would bring the person to the end of themselves so that they might experience the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that God would give you the power by his spirit to forgive.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna ask you by faith to cooperate and to come forward.
SPEAKER_00: And so as Sam leads us through this last song, I want to invite you to just come up.
SPEAKER_00: And then I'll come up at the end, and I'm just gonna pray a prayer over all of us who are laying this before God today.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ, my goodness.
SPEAKER_01: The God is out for me to wear my skin by a side.
SPEAKER_01: I love you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You are blown every day.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ.
unknown: Then came the irony.
SPEAKER_02: Let's deal with the promise.
SPEAKER_02: Your very body began to breathe.
SPEAKER_02: Out of silence.
SPEAKER_02: The roaring wine declared the grave has no dream on me.
SPEAKER_02: Then came the morning.
SPEAKER_00: Just as a church for on your own, you can say it out loud if you want.
SPEAKER_00: Would you just pray?
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people came forward, and as a family, can we just pray for each other?
SPEAKER_00: Pray for people to receive and follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for salvation for those who are on the lips of our people who are crying out this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that we would lean into the Spirit to empower us to forgive in places we can't.
SPEAKER_00: So we just pray.
SPEAKER_00: Individually, and then I'll close this out.
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you that you are a God who is working.
SPEAKER_00: You're working in the lives of those who are seeking you.
SPEAKER_00: You're even working in the lives of those who aren't.
SPEAKER_00: God, would we walk out today knowing that we are working with you?
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for the power of your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this morning, Lord, as you've reminded us of people maybe that we've given up on or where we've lost hope.
SPEAKER_00: Or you've reminded us of people you've given us a face or name of somebody who has hurt us or harmed us, or maybe it's somebody that we need to ask forgiveness for something we've done.
SPEAKER_00: God, would we be faithful to cooperate with your spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I just have this sense that you want to do something through our church, but we gotta cooperate.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, that we wouldn't quench the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever in this moment you're inviting us to do, that we'd be faithful to do it, not in our own strength, but in yours.
SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask the band to stick around, just play for a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: If you didn't get a chance to come down and you'd like to, uh please feel free to do that.
SPEAKER_00: We'll also have prayer team members on both sides.
SPEAKER_00: If you want someone to pray for you, we'll be happy to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Before we go, this is how we end our service.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that God the Father sent Jesus the Son to a lost, dying, and broken world, and that Jesus took on the full weight and wrath of our sin in our place so that we wouldn't have to.
SPEAKER_00: And now, with the power and the strength of the Holy Spirit, God has given us an invitation to follow Jesus to cooperate with his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so this week, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's live and love like Jesus right where we are.