SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Mud Creek, how are we doing this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad you came to church today?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: No, I said, Aren't you glad you came to church?
SPEAKER_00: David, the psalmist, said, I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I've known times when I've gone to church sad.
SPEAKER_00: I've known times when I've gone to church mad.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm glad to be in God's house this morning.
SPEAKER_00: David said, I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad I didn't come by myself today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad that you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Most of all, I'm thankful that the Lord is here and his presence is speaking to us today.
SPEAKER_00: For those of you that may not know me, my name is Jesse, and I am blessed to be the lead pastor here at Mud Creek, which means that you are going to hear me yell at you about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Well, really until I stop.
SPEAKER_00: But I am glad that you are here.
SPEAKER_00: If I have not had the chance to meet you, if you're visiting with us today, I do want to welcome you on behalf of our congregation.
SPEAKER_00: And as you leave today, I will be located at our lobby in the entrance right behind you.
SPEAKER_00: Please come by and introduce yourself to me.
SPEAKER_00: I would love to get to know you.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to get to know your family.
SPEAKER_00: And if there's any way that I can pray for you, I'll do my very, very best to do that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask you to take your Bible this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Join me in the New Testament book of Acts, chapter number nine.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Acts and the ninth chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter number nine.
SPEAKER_00: We will begin our reading today in verse number one.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter nine and verse number one.
SPEAKER_00: We are studying this wonderful book of Scripture together, verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph, story by story on Sunday mornings.
SPEAKER_00: And today we read about one of the most momentous, important moments, not only in the book of Acts, not only in the Bible, but truly in the history of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because this passage tells us the story of the conversion of a man we know as Saint Paul.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say, when this story begins, Paul is not a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: But when it ends, he is a new believer in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And because this story is about a Christian conversion, I think it forces on us the duty of wrestling with one of the most difficult questions in all of human life.
SPEAKER_00: It's a question that you've struggled with, that I still struggle with, and that is this question.
SPEAKER_00: Can people change?
SPEAKER_00: If you would catch me on a day when I would be honest, which I try to be every day, but you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: If you would catch me on a day when I was going to be really, really honest, and you were to ask me, can people change?
SPEAKER_00: I would say, well, kind of.
SPEAKER_00: But not really.
SPEAKER_00: They don't always have the best track record.
SPEAKER_00: Now, yes, we can change it different ways.
SPEAKER_00: Like, like we can change the scenery of our lives, and sometimes you need to change the scenery, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: I know for some of you here this morning, you've under so much stress at work and so much stress at home that if you don't get to see the ocean soon, you're gonna end up in the kind of hospital where you can't have shoelaces.
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
SPEAKER_00: It's either vacation or insanity that's in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: We can change the scenery of our lives, we can change our bodies to some degree, right?
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know genetically we're limited, but you could join the gym, you can eat a little bit healthier, you can melt away some unsightly pounds and inches, you could break up with Ben and Jerry.
SPEAKER_00: I know that's hard to do, they're so good to us.
SPEAKER_00: But you can make some changes and you could change your body.
SPEAKER_00: You can finally get the Dale senior mustache or the Dell Junior tattoo.
SPEAKER_00: You can do a lot of things to change your body, but there's more to us than just our bodies.
SPEAKER_00: Can people really change?
SPEAKER_00: We can change relationships, we could even perhaps go to therapy and we could psychoanalyze our relationship with our mom because basically all of your problems are probably her fault, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you could establish some new boundaries and you could maybe figure out a way to cope and to be better.
SPEAKER_00: Can't we really change?
SPEAKER_00: We change jobs, even change careers.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have done that, are contemplating doing that.
SPEAKER_00: We could change spouses, end a relationship with one, start a relationship with a new one.
SPEAKER_00: And yet when we do that, too often we find that the problems in the old job follow us to the new office, right?
SPEAKER_00: The problems with the first husband or wife, they find their way to the second, to the third.
SPEAKER_00: Can we really change?
SPEAKER_00: Can the alcoholic whose life has been dominated by that craving for alcohol ever really get to the place where they no longer desire it?
SPEAKER_00: Can that abusive husband or the nagging wife, can they ever actually soften and practice kindness?
SPEAKER_00: Can that teenager who's so problematic and rebellious ever get around to the pesky business of just growing up?
SPEAKER_00: Can people change?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are here this morning because you're looking for a change.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, maybe the reason you came to church this morning is because you felt like church is a good place to turn over a new leaf, to start fresh.
SPEAKER_00: We're glad you're here if that's you.
SPEAKER_00: Others of you are here today in church as proof that you don't need to change.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of us maybe need to, but you've got it pretty well locked down and figured out, and we're really happy for you today.
SPEAKER_00: Most all of us have probably given up on the project of ever changing anybody else, haven't we?
SPEAKER_00: If you're still trying to change people, just quit.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be a lot happier.
SPEAKER_00: You'd be a lot happier if you quit trying to change everybody in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Can we change?
SPEAKER_00: Can people change?
SPEAKER_00: As Christians, we believe that people can change.
SPEAKER_00: Not because they can change themselves, not because they can change a few habits, but because the Bible compels us to believe that God, in all of his power and in all of his love, is able in a moment to reach into the deepest part of our hearts that habits cannot touch, that therapy cannot reach, that even church left to itself cannot adjust.
SPEAKER_00: And God is able to transform people in their hearts and their minds and make them entirely different creatures altogether.
SPEAKER_00: God is able to change people, no matter how good they are, no matter how bad they are.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe that as the Apostle Paul undergoes this radical transformation that we would call Christian conversion, that this happens in his life in part to prove that nobody is so good that they don't need Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And yet nobody is so bad they can't have him.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody is so good they don't need Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And nobody is so bad that they can't have Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read this text together.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 9, verse number 1.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God says, Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogue of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: As he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Then he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Who are you, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
SPEAKER_00: It is hard for you to kick against the goats.
SPEAKER_00: So he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what do you want me to do?
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said to him, Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.
SPEAKER_00: And the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no one.
SPEAKER_00: Then Saul arose from the ground, and when his eyes were opened, he saw no one.
SPEAKER_00: But they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus, and he was the three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
SPEAKER_00: The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord abideth forever.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Acts, which records for us the story of the growing early Christian movement, referred to by that sort of archaic terminology here in Acts chapter 9, those followers of the way, those people walking in the way of life, following Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_00: This book is the story of that growing movement of people that are following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so the book of Acts is a book that is about people.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of different people appear in this book.
SPEAKER_00: I would wager that the main person in the book, the main character, the main hero of the story is the Lord Jesus himself.
SPEAKER_00: That what this book actually records is Jesus' ongoing life, his ongoing mission and his ongoing ministry, and the people that love him, trust him, obey him, follow him, and proclaim him.
SPEAKER_00: But because this is his story, lived out in their lives, this is also their story.
SPEAKER_00: And there are a number of people that rise to prominence in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps chief among them in the beginning is a man by the name of Simon Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Simon Peter was an early follower of Jesus, who at a critical moment of pressure abandoned the Lord and walked away from him.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter is salvaged and redeemed and becomes an early leader in the church.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Acts tells us the story of people like Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who found in the message of Jesus something so life-giving that he did not think he was losing anything to give his life up for the sake of our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: People like Philip, we read about in Acts chapter number eight, who's just a simple, faithful, ordinary Christian going around telling everybody that he can about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But nobody in the book of Acts casts a larger shadow, nobody in the book of Acts leaves a deeper footprint than the man we've read about here in Acts chapter number nine.
SPEAKER_00: The man the Bible describes here as Saul of Tarsus, the man we call the Apostle Paul or Saint Paul, the man who would become the most outspoken and influential mouthpiece of the message of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It is not an overestimation to say that the Apostle Paul is one of the handful of most important people who have ever lived in the history of our planet.
SPEAKER_00: His name goes right up there with people like Muhammad, with people perhaps in a negative sense, like Adolf Hitler, these people that have shaped and made history, Paul is one of those people.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul's story starts somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: All stories have to begin somewhere, right?
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's story begins here in Acts chapter number nine.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham Lincoln's story began in a log cabin in Kentucky.
SPEAKER_00: Dolly Parton's story began in a log cabin in Severeville, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00: Stories start somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to talk about the beginning of Paul's life and his conversion to Jesus as he becomes a Christian on the road to Damascus.
SPEAKER_00: And really what I want to do is look through the entirety of Acts chapter 9 on the next few Sunday mornings and build sort of a comprehensive biography of Paul's life.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to do this by looking at four different volumes.
SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to consider volume one.
SPEAKER_00: And I see this first volume breaking down into three chapters, each of which are instructive for us today, as we realize that yes, every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
SPEAKER_00: And part of that means recognizing that nobody is so good they don't need Jesus, and nobody's so bad they can't have him.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at chapter one of Paul's life.
SPEAKER_00: And I would entitle this chapter, if I was writing his biography, I would entitle it The Man in the Arena.
SPEAKER_00: The man in the arena.
SPEAKER_00: It was Theodore Roosevelt, former president, hero of the Battle of San Juan, who said that it's not the critic who counts.
SPEAKER_00: He said it's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
SPEAKER_00: He says the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, the person with the blood and the sweat and the dirt on their face who's fighting the fight.
SPEAKER_00: When you come to Paul's story in Acts chapter number nine, he is the man in the arena.
SPEAKER_00: He is the man of action.
SPEAKER_00: He is the man who is making things happen.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see about him in these verses is that the apostle Paul has an enemy.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that his enemy is the church.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says there in the opening verses that he is breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say that the Apostle Paul is living and breathing to wipe the Christian movement off the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, when the Apostle Paul, and forgive me, I know he's not the Apostle Paul yet.
SPEAKER_00: He will be later in Acts.
SPEAKER_00: But that's just how I know him.
SPEAKER_00: So just forgive me.
SPEAKER_00: Saul of Tarsus, when Saul of Tarsus went to bed at night, the last thing on his mind was, how can I remove the name of Jesus from history?
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that he thought of when he woke up in the morning is, What can I do to destroy the church?
SPEAKER_00: As he brushed his teeth, he was thinking, What can I do today to make sure nobody ever preaches Jesus again?
SPEAKER_00: As he shaved, which he probably didn't, but as he shaved, he thought, how can I eliminate this gospel message?
SPEAKER_00: He's a passionate man.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, for the most part, we admire that kind of passion in people, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: It was passion that drove Michael Jordan to be the greatest basketball player of all time.
SPEAKER_00: It's passion that drove Nick Saban to be clearly the greatest college football coach in the history of the game.
SPEAKER_00: We admire the passion of people that allows them to excel at the highest level in their chosen field, and Paul's that kind of man.
SPEAKER_00: And I would say to you today, there are a lot of things about Paul that we really should admire.
SPEAKER_00: What do we know about this man?
SPEAKER_00: Let's build a biography of Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Well, first look at his name.
SPEAKER_00: His name here is not Paul.
SPEAKER_00: That's really the same name, but it's the Greek form of the name that he will take later in life as he's around more and more non-Jewish people.
SPEAKER_00: But his Hebrew name is Saul, Shol.
SPEAKER_00: He's named for the first king of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Saul, the first monarch, this great figure, conflicted figure, but an important figure in Jewish history.
SPEAKER_00: His name means something.
SPEAKER_00: We used to name kids names that meant something, right?
SPEAKER_00: We used to name our little boys names like George Washington Smith, Thomas Jefferson, whomever.
SPEAKER_00: Now we just name our little boys these impronounceable alien names like Zaphod Bebel Brocks, and our names are meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: But this name, Saul for a little Jewish boy, this is like naming your kid George Washington.
SPEAKER_00: It gives him something to look back on and something to aspire to.
SPEAKER_00: He matters, right?
SPEAKER_00: And Saul seems to imbibe that in his life, embracing patriotic fervor and nationalistic zeal for his people Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He's deeply, deeply entrenched in the traditions of the Jewish people, so much so that he's even educated, we know from what he tells us later about himself and his early life, he's educated at the feet of the most brilliant legal and theological scholar of his day, a man by the name of Gamaliel.
SPEAKER_00: He's brilliant, hard worker, passionate.
SPEAKER_00: Even more, he's extremely type A, extremely competitive, and it's good, I guess, in some ways to be competitive, but you know what's better than being competitive?
SPEAKER_00: Being a winner.
SPEAKER_00: Paul was a winner.
SPEAKER_00: He's a shark in a guppy's world.
SPEAKER_00: And he knew it.
SPEAKER_00: He would write about this period of his life in Galatians chapter number one, that he was performing above and beyond all of his contemporaries in Judaism in Galatians chapter 1 and verse number 14.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I was more zealous.
SPEAKER_00: I cared more, I tried harder, I had the eyes of the important and powerful people on me.
SPEAKER_00: I knew my place on the ladder, and I was not afraid to pull somebody down if they were climbing higher and faster.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's a competitor, and he knows there is no competition.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to make something of himself.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that he's going to do it is by persecuting Christians that he believed were blaspheming the traditions and the scriptures of his ancestors.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's an interesting figure.
SPEAKER_00: Because Paul is a weird mix of good, admirable qualities that have curdled and soured like milk, that have turned very, very dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: Because his commitment and his passion has turned into violence as he is persecuting the church, placing people in prison, consenting and probably leading the charge for the death of Stephen back in Acts chapter number 7.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That Paul is a mixture of admirable qualities and abominable qualities.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying to you today, that's the truth for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: That's the truth for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: There are things about us that maybe we should admire, and there are things about us that we should hate.
SPEAKER_00: We're complicated, conflicted beings.
SPEAKER_00: Here's an example.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago I had a friend of mine whose father, or excuse me, his grandfather was a, how do you say this?
SPEAKER_00: Very successful, hardworking, competent moonshiner.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not uncommon in this part of North Carolina.
SPEAKER_00: Like all of us are kin to moonshiners and preachers, right?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's the same person.
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, that's just like moonshiner first, get saved, then preach.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what your family was right, but he was kinning to this moonshiner, right?
SPEAKER_00: And this dude ran from the law, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Um during prohibition, he was doing the illegal work of selling liquor and all this, all this kind of stuff, had his steel and his sour mass recipe, but whatever he's doing, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he told me one time, he said, Yeah, my granddaddy was a moonshiner.
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, he sold liquor and made a lot of money, and that liquor caused men to be abusive, it caused them not to work, and it caused them to beat their wives and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: He said, But my granddaddy hated a thief.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I remember one time me and my papa, I think it's what he called it, me and my papa were walking beside this apple orchard, and some apples had fallen off the trees.
SPEAKER_00: And I ran over to grab one of those apples.
SPEAKER_00: I was going to eat that apple, and he said, My papa smacked me upside the head and said, Boy, don't you ever steal from somebody that's not your apple, because I hate a thief.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I hate thieves too.
SPEAKER_00: I've also got a pretty strong stance against running liquor.
SPEAKER_00: But that's us, right?
SPEAKER_00: This weird mixture of good and bad, good things that turn into terrible things, bad things that need to be redeemed.
SPEAKER_00: And this is Paul.
SPEAKER_00: He is a man in conflict because he is a man who is trying his hardest to make something of himself.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to say to you today that for all the ways we can define sin, we can define sin biblically as guilt, and it is.
SPEAKER_00: We can define sin as shame and it is.
SPEAKER_00: We can define sin as brokenness and it is, as blindness, and it is, as ignorance as it is.
SPEAKER_00: We could define sin in the great words of the Book of Common Prayer, which concretize the concept of sin for English-speaking Christians for centuries by saying that sin is not doing what we ought to do and doing those things which we ought not to do.
SPEAKER_00: That is sin, yes, but the essence of sin underneath all of us, the problem inside all of us, is that like Paul, we are trying to make something of ourselves instead and let God make of us what He will.
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to make ourselves successful like Paul.
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to make ourselves comfortable like others, we're trying to make ourselves matter, make life what we want it to be.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, you are not the maker of life.
SPEAKER_00: You are not the maker of yourself, you're not the shaper of your destiny, you're not the one who designed your person.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the reason we end up down all of these rebellious highways and sinful byways is because we are all running on the main thoroughfare of I am going to determine my own course, the way Paul is here in this passage of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And as Paul tries to make something of himself, he makes enemies of the church, trying to destroy them.
SPEAKER_00: But his conflict is not just with the church of Jesus Christ, his conflict is with the Jesus of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Because when the Lord speaks to him, and we'll look at this in just a second, Jesus says this statement to him.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Paul, it is hard for you to kick against the goads.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Hard for you to kick against the goads.
SPEAKER_00: That's a figure of speech that's foreign to us, but would have been familiar to Paul.
SPEAKER_00: This is talking about the technology and the practices of farming in that day.
SPEAKER_00: But we we're familiar enough with it because we know what it means to goad somebody, right?
SPEAKER_00: I figured out that 75% of my job as a dad is just goading my kids.
SPEAKER_00: Just aggravating the devil out of them.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm trying to do.
SPEAKER_00: That's how I'm gonna give them to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Aggravate the devil out of them.
SPEAKER_00: And we goad people, we pick, right?
SPEAKER_00: Nitpick, goad, and push.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that comes from the idea Jesus is talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: And it comes from farming in the ancient world where they would use oxen to farm, oxen to pull loads, oxen to do different things.
SPEAKER_00: And an ox weighs what?
SPEAKER_00: 2,000 pounds?
SPEAKER_00: Average farmer back then probably weighed 150, 160.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't terribly like nourished really well like we are, so they're smaller people.
SPEAKER_00: And if a 150-pound man is trying to drive a 2,000-pound ox, that ox can be stubborn.
SPEAKER_00: It's not always going to want to do and go where the farmer wants it to go.
SPEAKER_00: And so the farmers knew that.
SPEAKER_00: And so the farmers developed a means to make the oxen go where the farmer wanted them to go.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the goad.
SPEAKER_00: And the goad was basically just a long pointed stick with a metal point on the end of it.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that the ox bucks up and gets stubborn.
SPEAKER_00: Then you take the tip of that stick and you jam it into that ox.
SPEAKER_00: And you jam it into the hinder part of his, how do I say this, says the pastor, his flank, his hip area.
SPEAKER_00: And that ox may be dumb and stubborn, but he knows he doesn't want to hurt.
SPEAKER_00: And so what does an ox do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he submits and goes where you drive him.
SPEAKER_00: Or if he is rebellious and very stubborn, he will kick against that goat, trying to get the pain out of his hip.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing that happens.
SPEAKER_00: As the ox kicks against that goat, trying to escape the pain of the goat, the goat drives deeper into his flesh.
SPEAKER_00: The harder he kicks, the worse it hurts.
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus says to Paul is this Paul, you don't realize this, but I have been goading you and prodding you your entire life to get you to the moment where you stop trying to make something of yourself and allow me to make everything of you.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to say this to you today.
SPEAKER_00: Some of y'all are very, very stubborn.
SPEAKER_00: Most all of us have that way about us, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We have a hard time bowing.
SPEAKER_00: We have a hard time listening.
SPEAKER_00: We have a hard time yielding.
SPEAKER_00: We think we call the shots and we think that we set the destination.
SPEAKER_00: And yet many of you do not realize that God has been stubbornly prodding you your whole life to bring you to this moment today where you hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ preached clearly and faithfully to give you the opportunity to submit and respond to him in obedience and faith.
SPEAKER_00: See, some of you have been, over the past few months, enduring a lot of pain.
SPEAKER_00: You've had a lot of loss, and you've been hearing about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's more and more on your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Questions more and more about the Bible, questions more and more about heaven, questions more and more even about hell.
SPEAKER_00: And you wonder what in the world is happening to you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you what's happening to you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening to you.
SPEAKER_00: And God has been driving you through pain and driving you through loss, and some of you are still stubbornly kicking against the goats, saying to your God, it will not be your way, it must be my way.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to tell you this morning from the word of God and from my own experience that our God is more stubborn than you are.
SPEAKER_00: He knows how to get you exactly where he wants you to be.
SPEAKER_00: He knew how to take the patriarch Jacob and wrestle him down into the ground.
SPEAKER_00: He knew how to take Nebuchadnezzar off the throne of Babylon and make him eat grass like a donkey for seven years.
SPEAKER_00: Our God knows how to put you in the dirt where you look up and say, Lord, I have no hope but you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what he's gonna do for Paul.
SPEAKER_00: So let's move to the second chapter.
SPEAKER_00: If chapter one is the man in the arena, I call the second chapter an idea whose time has come.
SPEAKER_00: The idea whose time had come.
SPEAKER_00: The French author Victor Hugo said that no army in the world is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.
SPEAKER_00: Now on the road to Damascus, the man Paul and the idea of Jesus the resurrected Savior come together, and Paul and the world change forever.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says as he travels to the city of Damascus, that all of a sudden, and we know from Paul's later telling of this event, that this happened at lunchtime, the brightest, hottest part of the day.
SPEAKER_00: While the apostle Paul is probably just being rocked to stillness riding whatever mount he had, horse or donkey.
SPEAKER_00: While he's probably oblivious to everything around him, the Bible says that a light shines through the heavens that outshines the sun.
SPEAKER_00: And it's so bright that when the apostle Paul sees it, he loses his ability to see anything.
SPEAKER_00: He hears a voice speaking to him, not only speaking to him, but calling his name.
SPEAKER_00: And the Apostle Paul, so trained in the Old Testament scriptures, knows exactly what's happening to him.
SPEAKER_00: He knew about God appearing to Moses on Mount Sinai.
SPEAKER_00: He knew about Jehovah appearing to Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6 in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: He knew about this God that Ezekiel tried his best to describe, flaming wheels on top of wheels.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that their God would occasionally break through the fabric of the created order and reveal himself to humanity.
SPEAKER_00: He knew he was in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so he asks, he asks, Who are you?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
SPEAKER_00: And the response, as the lights went out for Paul, he's trapped in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: This is when the light flips in his soul.
SPEAKER_00: Who are you, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: I am Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Apostle Paul recognizes that everything the Christian said was true.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that Jesus had declared about himself was right.
SPEAKER_00: He had knew that Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He believed him to be a blasphemer.
SPEAKER_00: But now what does he hear?
SPEAKER_00: He hears that the one who is crucified is alive.
SPEAKER_00: And not only is he alive, but he is seated in the right hand of God on high, speaking with the voice of his Father Himself, saying, I am Jesus, I am your crucified God, and I am your resurrected Redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Friend, I want to say to you today that for every person that ever truly becomes a Christian, not just in a vague cultural way, but whose heart is transformed to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: For every one of those people, whether they are saved out of years and years of addiction, whether there are outstanding warrants at the time they trust Jesus, whether there are broken marriages and broken hearts and broken homes, or whether they simply pray a simple prayer after Bible school at eight years old because they know they love Jesus and Jesus loves them.
SPEAKER_00: There comes a moment in every Christian's life when they realize the things that Paul realized here.
SPEAKER_00: It may not be as dramatic, it may not be as flashy or emotional, it may not, and typically is not, accompanied by these heavenly visitations and visions.
SPEAKER_00: But all of us come to the place where we realize that Jesus has died for us and that he has conquered death, that he is God's Son, and that he is our only hope for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: This is all crucial to our lives.
SPEAKER_00: It's crucial that we answer the question the Lord asks of Paul.
SPEAKER_00: He asks him, Why are you persecuting me?
SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
SPEAKER_00: Paul, why are you on the road of life that you're on?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: It's a question I would pose to all of you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Are you where you are?
SPEAKER_00: And I don't just mean like, well, it's like 11:30 on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be at church in North Carolina.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: But why has your life taken the direction it's taken?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you where you are?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you who you are?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: What is the explanation for you?
SPEAKER_00: For Paul, he was trying to make something of himself.
SPEAKER_00: All of us have tried to make something of ourselves without God, but now everything is about to be changed.
SPEAKER_00: Because he asks Jesus, who are you?
SPEAKER_00: I am Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what the Lord responds to him.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe this response to Paul from Jesus on the road to Damascus.
SPEAKER_00: I believe this is what shaped the Apostle Paul, his thinking, his writing.
SPEAKER_00: I believe everything that he would be, everything that he would give us, everything that he would do comes from this reply from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why this is so monumental.
SPEAKER_00: Paul never persecuted Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: As far as we know, they never met.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't stone Jesus, he helped stone Stephen.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't put Jesus in handcuffs, he put other Christians in handcuffs.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he hears from the Lord, Paul, I am so united with my people that when you attack them, you attack me.
SPEAKER_00: They are so wrapped up in me, Paul, that what you do to them, you do to me.
SPEAKER_00: And what you do to me, you do to them, because I am one with them.
SPEAKER_00: And over and again, the Apostle Paul's main contribution to the world of Scripture, to the truth of Scripture, is that God's people do not merely believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We believe into Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That we become united with him.
SPEAKER_00: We become one with him.
SPEAKER_00: To use his own words, our life is hidden with Christ in God.
SPEAKER_00: That everything that is his is ours.
SPEAKER_00: That as far as God is concerned, everything that he is, we are.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that he did in life, God looks and says, that I have done.
SPEAKER_00: You see, friends, this is what the gospel tells us.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us that we are saved by participating with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Not that we actually have done what he's done, but we receive it as a free gift of God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: Here's an example of this.
SPEAKER_00: I want to press this point because I want you to get it.
SPEAKER_00: The other day we were, the other night, rather, we were sitting at the table eating supper, and I said something.
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what we're even talking about, but I said something, and Priscilla, my little Pharisee, said, Oh, Daddy, Daddy, you lied.
SPEAKER_00: Daddy, you lied.
SPEAKER_00: I said, What?
SPEAKER_00: She said, You told a lie.
SPEAKER_00: I said, honey, your daddy may be a lot of things, but he's not a liar.
SPEAKER_00: And she had misunderstood whatever it was I had said, and so she's accusing me of lying.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, honey, you're wrong.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what I said.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't lie.
SPEAKER_00: Daddy would not lie to you like that.
SPEAKER_00: And then she said, This.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you have told lies before.
SPEAKER_00: And so now I'm faced with a crisis of, okay, do I admit the truth and tell my daughter that I've lied?
SPEAKER_00: Or do I lie now and say, no, no, Daddy's never.
SPEAKER_00: Never.
SPEAKER_00: They would never do that.
SPEAKER_00: So I told her, yes, honey, I have told lies before.
SPEAKER_00: And then she responds with, you know, liars go to hell, right, Daddy?
SPEAKER_00: And that's in the Bible, y'all.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: I said, yes, honey.
SPEAKER_00: But then I said this.
SPEAKER_00: I said, honey, do you know why?
SPEAKER_00: Even though Daddy has told lies, daddy is not going to go to hell.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, here's why.
SPEAKER_00: Because even though I've disobeyed God, Jesus never disobeyed God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus always obeyed God.
SPEAKER_00: And even though I deserve hell for my lies, Jesus took that for me when he went to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And I tried to explain to her what I want you to understand this morning: that when we trust in Jesus, everything that is his becomes ours.
SPEAKER_00: When I trust in Jesus, when you trust in Jesus, his righteous life becomes yours.
SPEAKER_00: So that God today, if you're in Christ, God does not look at you and see your sin.
SPEAKER_00: God does not look at you and see your disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: God does not look at you and see your failures.
SPEAKER_00: God looks at you and sees the perfect obedience of the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: He sees you loving others.
SPEAKER_00: He sees you doing good.
SPEAKER_00: He sees you perfectly obeying the law of God that is yours if you are in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God looks at you today and believes that you have already died to your sin because Jesus died for it.
SPEAKER_00: So that there is now, therefore, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus because Christ was condemned in our place.
SPEAKER_00: And bless his name, he looks at you and says that the resurrection of the Lord after he robbed the grave that first Easter morning, that resurrection is yours too, so that you are as alive eternally now as Christ is.
SPEAKER_00: Child of God, you are an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ before the throne of the God who sees all and knows all.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that is Jesus' is yours, and everything that he has to offer is yours freely.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the gospel is.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is not come to church and do better.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is not use church or morals or ethics to make something of yourself.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is Christ in your place.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is union with him.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter three.
SPEAKER_00: Tap out.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a fan of cage fighting and MMA, or it's much superior older brother professional wrestling.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I know my audience.
SPEAKER_00: It means to quit, to give up, to surrender.
SPEAKER_00: What does Paul do in this passage of scripture?
SPEAKER_00: He taps out.
SPEAKER_00: And so it may not be very helpful of an exercise to try and pinpoint the exact, precise nanosecond that any of us were born again or moved from death to life.
SPEAKER_00: But if we were going to do that for the Apostle Paul, I think it occurs between verse 6 and verse number 8 because once he realizes this about Jesus, Jesus has crucified, He's resurrected, He is the Son of God, He's trembling and astonished, saying, Here's his question.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, what do you want me to do?
SPEAKER_00: The Lord tells him, it's very simple, arise and go into the city, and you'll be told what to do.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 8, Saul arose.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, what do you want me to do?
SPEAKER_00: Saul arose and did it.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Paul has become a Christian because he's no longer trying to make something of himself.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, Jesus, make of me what you will.
SPEAKER_00: Make of me what you will.
SPEAKER_00: There's more to come for the life of the Apostle Paul that he's been through a lot this morning, so we're going to leave him alone for a week.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where some of you are this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are here today still trying to make something of yourself, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00: You're trying to make something of yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And yet you believe at some level that Jesus has come, he's died, he's risen again.
SPEAKER_00: And yet you're still stubbornly resisting, like Paul was, you're resisting his claims on your life.
SPEAKER_00: And so the invitation for you today is simple.
SPEAKER_00: Simple.
SPEAKER_00: It's this.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you need a white flag of surrender, I've got one you can use.
SPEAKER_00: To quit trying to make something of yourself and allow Jesus, your Lord, who died in your place and rose again, to make something of you.
SPEAKER_00: There's a story, and I don't know if this is actually truthful or not.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure my daughter will lecture me when I get home over it.
SPEAKER_00: There are some stories that preachers use over and over again that even if they're not true, they ought to be true.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of those stories, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if this is actually true, Priscilla Ann, but it communicates the point that I would like to end with today.
SPEAKER_00: And that is, years ago, the aircraft carrier, the Harry S.
SPEAKER_00: Truman, the largest aircraft carrier in the history of the world, the pride of the American Navy, the greatest Navy, the greatest nation that have ever ruled the seven seas.
SPEAKER_00: That they were conducting a training exercise, I want to say off the coast of Spain.
SPEAKER_00: And that as they were going through their training exercise with their carrier fleet around them, the battleships, destroyers, and all this kind of stuff, they're heading towards a certain trajectory, a certain course that they've plotted, however many knots they were traveling, and they see a light in the distance from an approaching ship.
SPEAKER_00: And they say, okay, this ship needs to adjust its course, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't, we'll collide and we'll all die.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what we're here to.
SPEAKER_00: And so they radio ahead to this vessel and they say, Unknown Spanish craft, this is the USS Harry S.
SPEAKER_00: Truman on a trajectory for whatever, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: You must adjust your course.
SPEAKER_00: The Spanish reply responds back and says, Harry S.
SPEAKER_00: Truman, message received, unable to adjust course.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, Americans, we don't like it when people tell us, especially from other parts of the world.
SPEAKER_00: We don't like it when they tell us we're not going to do what we told them to do.
SPEAKER_00: And so the radio operator comes back and he's a little bit more heated.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is the USS Missouri.
SPEAKER_00: You will adjust your course.
SPEAKER_00: Or such and such will be the consequences.
SPEAKER_00: The radio operator comes back and says, USS Missouri or USS Harry S.
SPEAKER_00: Truman.
SPEAKER_00: Message received, unable to comply, unable to adjust course.
SPEAKER_00: Now the captain gets on, or the admiral, whoever's in charge of this thing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a Navy guy, but whoever's in charge of this craft gets on and says, unidentified Spanish craft.
SPEAKER_00: This is the USS Harry S.
SPEAKER_00: Truman, the largest, most capable aircraft carrier, surrounded by our carrier fleet.
SPEAKER_00: We have the means and the capacity to unleash monumental apocalyptic destruction on you if you do not comply with our orders.
SPEAKER_00: And you will face the full wrath of the United States Navy and the United States government if you do not adjust your course.
SPEAKER_00: The message comes back from the other craft.
SPEAKER_00: USS Harry S.
SPEAKER_00: Truman.
SPEAKER_00: This is a Spanish lighthouse.
SPEAKER_00: We are unable to adjust our course.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you that story.
SPEAKER_00: Because some of you are right now stubbornly readying back and forth with God, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00: You better adjust your course.
SPEAKER_00: You need to change.
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna like what I do if you don't do as I tell you.
SPEAKER_00: And you're arguing with God, and God is continually saying to you, I will not adjust my course.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you are headed to disaster because you're on a stubborn collision course with the Lord, like Paul was.
SPEAKER_00: And God's continued message to you is submit, repent, obey, turn around.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, I want to encourage you to do that today.
SPEAKER_00: I've just sensed this morning that there are people here that are stubbornly fighting against the Lord, resisting Jesus and his claims for your life.
SPEAKER_00: Prince, today's the day to throw the white flag of surrender.
SPEAKER_00: Say, Lord, I tap out.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to make something of myself.
SPEAKER_00: Make it me what you will.