Sermon Tone Analysis

If you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it.

We’re gonna be in Acts 9:1-18 tonight.

Counting tonight, we’ve only got about 5 lessons left in Acts so that’s disappointing but we’re going to make the most of our time together and after this week, we’re going to be covering a lot of ground relatively quickly.

I think over the next few weeks, we’re going to be covering multiple chapters or stories in each lesson but there is something important that happens in Acts 9 that we need to slow down and look at closely because it is one of the most important events in human history.

I talked several weeks ago about turning points in history and how the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was definitely a turning point but I would also say that what we are reading today is a turning point as well.

Let me ask you this: Can one person make a difference in the world?

Who are some people that you can think of that have single handedly made a dent in this world, either positive or negative.

On the positive end you could think of people like Nelson Mandela or Thomas Edison.

On the negative end you have someone like Adolf Hitler who definitely did not make the world a better place.

What about Christians?

Do you think there are any Christians in the world that have almost single-handedly made a huge difference in the world?

I know that no single person makes up the Church but there have been people that God has used to steer the ship of Christianity for the best.

These are people like Martin Luther who kickstarted the Protestant Reformation, St. Augustine who stood against the Pelagian controversy in the 6th century, and Athansius in the fourth century who literally stood against the world and was exiled 5 different times because he stood for trinitarianism which is the belief that God is 3 in one.

Those men all did incredible things and stood faithfully against false teachings and the world but none of them would have been able to do that if it had not been by the conversion and influence of one man: Saul of Tarsus who also goes by the name of Paul the Apostle.

The conversion of Saul, and the Greek version of his name is Paul so I will probably refer to him several times tonight as either Saul or Paul and both are correct, was a turning point for the church and his conversion is important for us for several reasons but I am going to narrow it down to really this one point: the conversion of Saul shows that Christ is able to save to the uttermost all types of people and I will explain why later on.

Let’s first dive into these verses and read Acts 9:1-18

Who is Saul?

Before we really dive into Saul’s conversion, I think it’s important for us to have a little bit of background info on who this guy is and why he is so important.

He’s so important that basically from this point on, the focus of Acts shifts from Peter and John to Paul almost exclusively.

Saul at this time is a young up and coming Pharisee who was trained by a man named Gamaliel, who himself was a well-respected Pharisee.

Saul has a Roman citizenship and is also from the Jewish tribe of Benjamin so he is really the perfect bridge between the Jew and Gentile world.

To put it as simply as I can, Saul was incredibly gifted and incredibly intelligent, a fact that even his rivals acknowlged, and they saw that he was a man of great learning.

Saul was someone who to the best of his abilities followed the Law perfectly, in fact he later would say in his letter to the Philippians that when it came to the Law, he was blameless, and this means that in his estimation, he followed the Law as perfectly as anyone could.

As we have seen in the verses that we have read both tonight and our last time together, Saul is a Pharisee that despises the Christians and Saul makes it his mission to extinguish the flame of the Church as much as he can.

He hates these people so much that he literally goes to the high priest and asks if he can go the almost 150 mile journey from Jerusalem to Damascus to round up any that were Christians and bring them back to be imprisoned or executed.

Saul is not someone that is indifferent to Christians, he hates them!

Yet it is by God’s providence that this very man would carry the Gospel to the Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel.

So, that is who Saul is but that is not who Saul continues to be.

Saul the Persecutor becomes Paul the Apostle by God’s pure grace and pure mercy.

Mankind’s Problem of Religion

Now some will look at Paul and see a conversion experience that is fairly uncommon and to a certain degree they are right.

Chances are if you are a Christian today, you were not blinded by a great light and verbally spoken to by the Son of God but you, Saul, and the rest of mankind all suffer from the same basic problem and that is a problem of religion.

Believe it or not, every single person in the world is religious in some way.

What about the atheist that doesn’t believe in God?

He or she is religious as well.

What do I mean then?

How is it that every single person has a problem of religion?

You see each and every one of us have an issue with affections.

There is something that we love more than anything else and we often believe that if we can just possess that one thing, we’ll be complete.

Maybe it’s a job or a person or money or a title or love, but there is something inside all of us that says, “If I can just have A then I’ll have all I need.”

The issue now is when you get a hold of A and then you say, “Now wait a minute, where is the joy that this was supposed to bring?

Where’s the fulfillment that this was supposed to bring?

Where’s the sense of completion that was supposed to come with this?”

And now you’re left with 2 potential problems: You are so distraught that you give up on looking for anything to fill that void or you try to fill that void with something else only to run into the same old problems.

You spend all of this time trying to earn love, earn value, earn worth, and don’t you see how that sounds very religous?

It’s a religion!

And everyone goes through it!

Everyone from the intellectual to the religious zealot faces this same issue, they are looking to have a great need satisfied by an outside source but the need is never satisfied.

We make choices every single day that are catering to their problem of religion.

Every religion in the world, be it the religion of atheism, to the religion of Islam, to the religion of Buddhism, you name it, it all focuses on be better and maybe you’ll be rewarded, maybe you’ll feel satisfied, maybe your great longings will be fulfilled, so in a way they all teach the same thing.

If you want to be loved and you want to be valued and you want a purpose, you need to do this, that, and the other.

Not so with Christianity.

What do I mean?

We see it with Paul, and it is certainly applicable to all Christians as well.

God chooses us long before we choose Him.

God sees us long before we see Him.

God loves us long before we love Him.

You see with Christianity, we don’t work in the hope that we might obtain satisfaction.

We don’t serve Christ because of what He offers us.

We serve and love Christ because we know that He loved us first.

We praise Him because we know He is worthy of praise and not just out of an obligation but of a true recognition of His worthiness.

In Christ, the search for fulfilled affections is finally complete.

Saul is Both the Younger and Older Sons

Now I mentioned earlier that Saul shows us a perfect example of how Christ is able to save to the uttermost all types of people and I want to demonstrate this to you by referencing the parable of the Prodigal Son and I am going to assume that you are at least somewhat familiar with that parable in Luke 15.

In a way, Paul represents not just the younger son or the older son but both sons simultaneously.

If you aren’t familiar with the parable, Jesus teaches about a younger son who tells his father to give him his portion of the inheritance and the father actually gives it to him.

This younger son takes his inheritance, goes into a distant land, lives a worthless life, becomes homeless, and begins begging in a pig pen and eventually he comes to his senses and decides to go home and ask his father for forgiveness and he goes in with the mindset of not even asking to be reinstated as his son, but as a servant.

As the son is returning home, Jesus says that the Father is outside and he notices his son coming up over the horizon and the father rushes off and picks his son up and holds him in his arms.

The father yells to the servants to bring the best robe of the house and put it on his son, to grab a ring and put it on his hand and a fresh pair of shoes and if that wasn’t enough, kill the best fat calf and prepare a feast and let’s celebrate because his son was dead and is alive again, he was lost, and is found.

That’s the younger brother but there is also an older brother in this parable.

The older son, when the younger son comes home becomes incredibly angry at the father because of the grace and mercy that he shows the younger son.

The older brother even refuses to go to the party but the father still goes and talks to the older brother.

Luke 15:28-32 says,

The problem with the older brother was his own self-righteousness.

He believed that if he worked hard enough, he would deserve good things from the father.

He acted very religious but did not love like he should.

Tim Keller said of the two brothers, “The hearts of the two brothers were the same.

Both sons resented their father’s authority and sought ways of getting out from under it.

They each wanted to get into a position in which they could tell the father what to do.

Each one, in other words, rebelled- but one did so by being very bad and the other by being extremely good.

Both were alienated from the father’s heart; both were lost sons.”

Where does Saul come in with this and where do we all come in?

First off, how is Saul the younger brother?

It is because he has such a deep seated hatred for Christ and the Church.

Just as the younger brother wished that the Father was dead, Saul himself wished the Church was dead.

Christ is so closely connected to His people that their persecution is treated as if He Himself is being persecuted.

Saul on the one hand, represents those that truly hate God and hate Christianity.

On the other hand, Saul represents the older brother because he believes that he is living as rightly and religiously as possible and because of this, he will be accepted with open arms into the kingdom of God.

You can act very moral and very religious and be just a hair’s length away from hell.

Saul shows that you can look very good on the outside but just be a pit of despair on the inside.

You can do things in the name of God without having a true love for God.

Now what about you?

Where do you come in with all of this?

To be honest, I don’t know what your heart is like.

What I do know is that every person in here at one point in their life was a lot like Saul.

You either hated God and wanted nothing to do with Him or wanted to even destroy Him or you have been trying to live a life good enough to get into heaven by your own works, your own righteousness, your own merit, I don’t know which one you might be but at some point in your life you were one of them.

And you may still be one of them tonight.

If you have not come into the loving embrace of Jesus Christ, if you have not seen Him as that which your soul has longed for all your life, my prayer is that tonight is the night that you would.

That tonight is the night where you either stop hating God or trying to create your own god in something or someone or stop trying to earn something you could never earn in the first place.

I’m hoping that for someone here tonight, that you recognize that the God of all creation has set His sights on you and has loved you before eternity began.