Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome & Announcements

Free Movie Night on January 27th, 2023, at 7pm.

We’ll be showing Amazing Grace (2006), which is a historical retelling of the life of William Wilberforce, who sought to end the British slave trade in the late 1700s.

Admittance, popcorn, snacks, and drinks will be provided free of charge.

Let me remind you to continue worshiping the Lord through your giving.

To help you give, we have three ways to do so, (1) cash and checks can be given at the offering box.

Checks should be written to Grace & Peace; debit, credit, and ACH transfers can be done either by (2) texting 84321 with your $[amount] and following the text prompts or (3) by visiting us online at www.giving.gapb.church.

Of course, everything you give goes to the building up of our local church and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Call to Worship (Ps 70)

Our Call to Worship this morning is Psalm 70, which is a short psalm of David, which was utilized for what he calls the memorial offering.

In it, David calls for the speedy destruction of the wicked while requesting the preservation of the godly.

Please stand and read with me Psalm 70, I’ll read the odd-numbered verses; please join me in reading the even-numbered verses.

Congregational Singing

Brethren, We Have Met to Worship (334)

His Mercy is More (Lead)

In Christ Alone (177)

Scripture Reading (Gen 15)

Preaching of God’s Word (Acts 9:1-31)

Introduction

Please turn your Bible to Acts 9:1-31.

As we’ve been working through the book of Acts we’ve seen a few constants in our study.

We keep seeing God working in amazing ways through His apostles, we see the apostles proclaiming the Gospel and teaching the truth, and we see thousands of people hearing this message, repent, and believe in Jesus as the Christ.

Likewise, there have been a few other constants through the historical account of Acts—for instance, not everyone believes the message proclaimed by the apostles and disciples, and there are certain people who have had an absolute intolerance towards the message—like the Sadduccees, Pharisees, most of the Sanhedrin, and the High Priests.

There’s also another person that we’ve seen from time to time throughout the text whose name is Saul—our first introduction to him was during the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 6, 7, and 8.

We see Stephen proclaim the Gospel, the people become irate with him, pick up stones, and stone him.

The account of Stephen’s martyrdom ends with the people placing Stephen’s belongings at the feet of Saul, who approved the execution of Stephen.

In Acts 8:3, we read about Saul dragging people from their homes, arresting them, and ripping families apart and his intention behind squashing Christianity doesn’t end there—it continues at the start of this passage.

Let’s read Acts 9:1-31 but please know that we aren’t working through the full text this morning—we’re only working until Acts 9:19—we’re just reading the full text to help us keep it all in context.

Again, this morning, we’re looking specifically at vv. 1-20 and as we study these verses together, we’re going to break it into two parts: (1) Saul Sees Jesus (1-9) and (2) Saul Meets Ananias (10-20).

In these two sections, we see how Jesus calls Saul to repentance and belief in Jesus; and we see Saul’s commission to be an apostle to the Gentiles.

In the case of Saul, his conversion is shocking and surprising; and it results in a complete change of mind, mission, and vision for Saul.

Or put another way, Saul genuinely repents and when he repents, he changes his thinking about everything.

This morning, we’ll see just how powerful the Gospel is as someone who literally murdered Christians, hears the truth, repents, and changes drastically because of the Gospel.

Prayer for Illumination

Saul Sees Jesus (1-9)

Saul, despite his zeal for God, has so far missed the Gospel to the extent that in his ignorance, he’s persecuting the true church of Jesus Christ.

We read in v. 1, that Saul was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples and had gone to the high priest to ask permission to literally kidnap men and women belonging to the Way to bring them to Jerusalem for trial.

Saul, though he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees didn’t have the authority to make the decision to bind up people and drag them to Jerusalem, so it makes sense that he needed to ask permission to do this—and in this case, he seeks to do it at the synagogues at Damascus.

You can tell just how much the high priests hated the idea of Christianity because they definitely gave him the approval to persecute this new religious movement, which might cause you to wonder about something—why would they do any of this?

And the reasonings rather simple—the high priests were the religious leaders of the Jewish people and they were corrupt in their sin.

They cared more for power, authority, and money than they did about the truth—so, when Jesus came along, they used the guise of Jesus supposedly being a blasphemer to murder him.

When the disciples and apostles came along, the high priests utilized the guise of them blaspheming to try to end the movement that was started by Jesus.

It’s worth noting that Christianity at this time had started gaining a reputation, so much so, that they’ve started calling it the Way.

In the book of Acts, we see Christianity referred to as the Way five different times (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22).

You might be curious as to where the name comes from.

Patrick Schreiner, suggests that it comes primarily from Isaiah and is connected with the idea of the Exodus.

He says, “The identification of the community of Jesus followers as “the Way” is derived from Isa 40:3, which tells of the way on which the Lord will travel when Israel is restored from exile.

“The Way” in Isaiah is new-exodus language and out-of-exile imagery (Exod 13:21–22; 23:20).

It is the path on which God takes them out of Babylon and therefore has an appropriate geographic focus.

Acts refers to the way of salvation (16:7), the Lord (18:25), and of God (18:26)” (Patrick Schreiner, Acts, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2021), 297)

Christianity is being called the Way by those outside of the church because of the Christian understanding that there’s only one way for salvation and once you find salvation in Jesus Christ, the life that you now live is dedicated to living a certain way.

And its all predicated on the simple truth that Jesus is Christ.

Of course, someone who is zealous in the way of the Pharisees like Saul is, his mindset is that anything like the Way, which diverts away from Judaism and draws Jewish people out of what he considers the proper understanding of truth is heretical, blasphemous, and deserves punishment.

Even if Saul is motivated by the desire to keep power, authority, and money like the high priests seem to be, he’s still motivated with a wrong understanding of the truth—and thus, he seeks to end what he sees as a diversion from the truth.

And unsurprisingly, the high priests grant him the permission to do this.

Saul’s mission was to persecute anyone who belonged to this new Way found through Jesus Christ.

It is on his way to Damascus to do this, that he has a life-changing confrontation with the Jesus whom he’s persecuting.

In vv.

3-4, he is approaching Damascus, when suddenly “a light from heaven shone around him.

And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’”

Just consider what this must’ve been like for him—this is not a natural light and we know this from his response.

For instance, consider you’re driving down the mountain to go into State College as the sun rises or sets.

You’ll find a few spots where the sun is bright and directly in your eyes—do you suddenly drop to the ground?

— I hope not, since you’re driving down the mountain.

The light that Saul sees is blinding to him and it engulfs him and causes him to collapse—it definitely sounds a lot like the handful of times that we see throughout Scripture when people see the glory of God.

Moses on Mount Sinai, some of the apostles on the Mount of Transfiguration and it seems that this revelation of Jesus to Saul only happened to Saul—as in, only he saw the light, which we’ll get back to in a few minutes.

When a voice speaks, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

This had to be terrifying and it had to cause great fear, we can see this fear in the reaction to the men who were traveling with him in v. 7, they “stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing [nothing].”

This voice asks “why are you persecuting me?”

And Saul responds with, “Who are you, Lord,” before this voice responds with “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting . . .

rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”

Note, that at this time, Saul’s use of the word Lord doesn’t necessarily mean that he believes, but rather, it means that he understood that this voice and this light demanded honor and respect.

The use of the term Lord refers to honor and respect, not necessarily belief.

But also note, that when he recognizes that this voice is Jesus, he doesn’t try to argue or plead his case—he simply obeys what the voice tells him to do.

In vv.

8-9 we see that Saul heard this voice, “rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.

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.

Again, consider the unique aspect of this light—it literally blinded him.

And again, consider the similarities behind this light and the handful of times that people in the Bible saw the glory of God.

Moses sees God’s glory and it transforms his face in such a way that he literally reflected the light.

Some of the disciples see the transfiguration of Jesus and it’s described as a bright light that was blinding to them.

The implication being that when Saul is confronted by Jesus in Acts 9, he sees Jesus and the effects of seeing Jesus face to face blinds him.

So, Saul is now in Damascus, blinded, and refusing to eat or drink.

Our text continues by shifting our focus to someone named Ananias who was a disciple of Jesus at Damascus.—let’s

re-read vv.

10-20.

Saul Meets Ananias (10-20)

So, Ananias has a vision and in this vision, the Lord speaks to him.

In vv.

10-16, we see this conversation between Jesus and Ananias.

It starts with God telling Ananias to go and do something.

In v. 11, “the Lord said to him, ‘Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.’”

Clearly, what’s going on here is miraculous—both Ananias and Saul have visions—Ananias’ vision includes the instruction to go and meet this man named Saul; Saul’s vision is that a man named Ananias is going to come, pray for him, and lay his hands on him so that Saul could regain his sight.

But remember, Saul had been heavily persecuting the church, to the extent that people knew about Saul’s persecution of the church—the news had spread sufficiently enough that people in Damascus had heard of Saul.

And Ananias responds with this bit of pushback in vv.

13-14, “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 priests to bind all who call on your name.’”

From a human standpoint, Ananias’ pushback makes logical sense—if someone had a reputation for hurting Christians and you’re a Christian, what’s the likelihood that you’d want to go see this person?

Slim to none.