Sermon Tone Analysis

Finding Significance in Obscurity

 

October 23, 2005

 

Acts 9:10-19

 

/Focus:// Any life can be significant and meaningful when it’s turned over to the Lord./

/ /

Please open your Bible and follow along as I read today’s text from Acts 9:10-19:* **/“/*/Now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias.

The Lord spoke to him in a vision, calling, "Ananias!"

"Yes, Lord!" he replied.

The Lord said, "Go over to Straight Street, to the house of Judas.

When you arrive, ask for Saul of Tarsus.

He is praying to me right now.

I have shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying his hands on him so that he can see again."

"But Lord," exclaimed Ananias, "I've heard about the terrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem!

And we hear that he is authorized by the leading priests to arrest every believer in Damascus."

But the Lord said, "Go and do what I say.

For Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel.

And I will show him how much he must suffer for me."

So Ananias went and found Saul.

He laid his hands on him and said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me so that you may get your sight back and be filled with the Holy Spirit."

Instantly something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he regained his sight.

Then he got up and was baptized.

Afterward he ate some food and was strengthened.

Saul stayed with the believers in Damascus for a few days.”/

*Introduction: Obscure People*

A. Ananias

B. 99 percent of people today

*I.

Significance Requires a Dream*

u Illustration: Three stonemasons’ perspectives

u Illustration: View from Eagle Rock

u Illustration: The man who led Moody to Christ

*II.

Significance Requires Courage*

u Illustration: Soldiers marching past a crucifix

*III.

Significance Requires Faith*

u Illustration: Blossoms on the far side of the wall

u Illustration: A Sunday school teacher’s impact

*IV.

Significance Requires Action*

u Illustration: “Where’s the piccolo?”

u Illustration: Spurgeon’s conversion

 

*Introduction: Obscure People*

I would expect 99 percent of the people in our society feel very obscure—the kind of feeling that whatever I do doesn’t really matter.

Nobody notices.

If I were gone it wouldn’t make much difference in this society.

It would be an interesting thing to take a poll here this morning and have you respond to me saying either “I feel very obscure” or “I think I’m very important to society.”

Well, we can’t do that, but I expect the vast majority of us feel quite obscure or insignificant to society.

If we add to the poll, “How many want your life to be significant and important?”

just about everybody would say, “Of course I want my life to be significant and important.”

God wants that too.

It’s amazing how wrong are our perceptions of ourselves.

That’s why God said through the prophet Isaiah in his fifty-fifth chapter, “For your thoughts are not my thoughts.

Neither your ways my ways.

As far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

What’s God saying there?

He’s saying your misperception of yourself must be corrected by his perception of you.

How are we going to get hold of this, so that even though I feel obscure in life, I can feel that my life is significant?

Maybe one of the ways to do it is to look at the life of an obscure person.

We have lots of those in the Bible.

I want you to look at one of them with me: Ananias.

We know little about this Ananias (I say this Ananias because there are two Ananias’s mentioned in Acts – the other one was the Ananias of Ananias of Ananias and Saphira, so we don’t want to get the two confused or think that they are one and the same person).

In fact, this-morning you know everything about him there is to know, because I read it.

Of course, the apostle Paul gives a brief synopsis of this event in Acts 22 , but that’s all.

Oh, there are traditions about Ananias.

Some say he is one of the seventy disciples Jesus chose.

Some say he was the first one to preach the gospel in Damascus.

Then he became a bishop of Damascus who was so zealous in his faith that the people seized him, scourged him, and stoned him to death.

But we don’t know that.

All we know is that Ananias was a layman—a Hebrew.

He was respected in his community, and he became a Christian.

That’s all.

Ah, but there’s one other thing: This obscure person had an impact on the apostle Paul, the greatest person—apart from Jesus Christ—to live in all the history of the Christian church.

This obscure man was chosen by God to begin the journey of the apostle Paul in his conversion, his development, and his understanding of the mission and direction for his life.

Imagine an obscure person with that kind of significance.

Now, how can that help you and me?

Let’s look at the elements of Ananias’ life, and maybe that will help us get a picture.

*I.

Significance Requires a Dream*

First, there must be a dream.

Nothing significant in our life ever happens without a dream, a vision, a sense that something bigger could happen to an Ananias.

When God said, “Go to that house and see Saul of Tarsus,” Ananias said, “Oh my, how could I do that?

That man is after the Christians.”

And God said, “My thought is higher than your thought, and let my thought have something to do with your thought, so your vision is big.”

His perspective got bigger.

Henry Blackaby calls this perspective “God-sized”.

Our vision for our church or community needs to be so big that we cannot achieve it without God.

So often, in our feeling of obscurity, we get so little in our thinking.

We focus on the little problems of life instead of getting that bigger picture of life.

Ananias got a bigger picture.

When you drive down the highway, it’s never good to focus your attention on the dirty spot on the windshield.

It’s always good to let the whole vision be in front of you.

Life is so much that way.

We focus on that little thing instead of getting the big picture.

For example: A man came to a construction site, where stonemasons were working.

The man said to one, “What are you doing?”

The stonemason said, “You can see, I’m chipping a stone.”

The man walked over to another mason and said, “What are you doing?”

He answered, “I’m building a wall.”

The man walked over to a third mason and said, “What are you doing?”

This mason answered, “I am building a cathedral.”