Resurrection Ripples - 2 - Personal Conversion

Scripture: Acts: 9:1-20

Acts 9:1–20 NIV

1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” 7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. 10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!” “Yes, Lord,” he answered. 11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.” 13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.” 15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” 17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. 20 At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.

5/4/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Communion

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 1: Communion

Opening Prayer:

God of victory over death,

your Son revealed himself again and again,

and convinced his followers of his glorious resurrection.

Grant that we may know his risen presence,

in love obediently feed his sheep,

and care for the lambs of his flock,

until we join the hosts of heaven in worshiping you and praising him

who is worthy of blessing and honor,

glory and power, for ever and ever. Amen.

Personal Conversion

Imperfect

Nobody’s perfect — according to everybody. I don’t know who came up with the phrase. “Nobody’s perfect,” originally, but it’s been around forever and is about half of what the world thinks the gospel is: nobody is perfect, and the other half is don’t judge and you won’t be judged either. We’re all just a bunch of messed-up people, so don’t draw attention to yourself. I wonder if Adam and Eve came up with that when they were hiding from God in the Garden of Eden. Did they look at each other, realizing they had both messed up, and decide to make a deal? I won’t judge you if you don’t judge me.

It didn’t work out, and the idea of not judging one another didn’t last very long. As soon as the presence of God called out to them, they immediately began pointing fingers, eager to shift the blame away from themselves to someone or something else. The gospel of 'nobody’s perfect, so don’t judge anyone' is not the gospel of Jesus, and it doesn’t work out in the end.

But some pieces of that false gospel sound and feel true to us. We can trace it back to the Garden of Eden, but God‘s people have repeated it throughout time. Saint Augustine, the favorite saint of the early protestants, built much of his Belief about God around the concept that no one is perfect. We are all sinners. He probably picked that up from the apostle Paul from a verse in Romans, where Paul says that all have fallen short of the glory of God. No one is righteous. And Paul probably learned that from King David, who wrote in Psalm 14:3 —

Psalm 14:3 NIV

3 All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.

Over time, these observations become expectations and then harden into rules. So today, many people believe that everything in our world is broken, messed up, and imperfect, and many find themselves just waiting and praying for Jesus to come back with his holy flamethrower and put an end to all of it.

But Jesus speaks a few words into this depressing mess that shakes us to the core. In the Sermon on the Mount, as he teaches us how to understand the heart of the law of Moses, which we know as the Ten Commandments, he summarizes it all in just a few words. And in Matthew 5:48, he says, “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.“

We can say nobody’s perfect, but we also believe God is perfect. The part of that saying that sounds true is mostly when we compare ourselves to God. We can be good sometimes, but God is good all the time, and that’s part of what makes him perfect, and part of why we are not. So, how do we handle this command of Jesus to be perfect? This command is not subjective. Jesus doesn’t tell us to be perfect enough for us or to be perfect most of the time. He tells us, "Look at the standard of God. That’s your standard, too. Be like that."

That command and expectation from Jesus make us constantly unsettled and uncomfortable with ourselves. He forces us to choose each day to either grapple with our imperfections, or to toss that gospel command out of our life, like a hot potato, and go back to the gospel of the First Sinners, telling ourselves that nobody’s perfect and the best thing we can do is not judge each other. The truth is not easy. Jesus calls everyone to surrender and obey HIm.

Struck Blind

Saul, who we know by his Greek name Paul, was the poster child for someone who struggled with this idea of perfection. He lived in a world where the leaders of his people had compromised everything. By birth, he was both a Greek and a Jew —a living compromise. In many ways, he was like Moses, a child born of two kingdoms that were at war with each other. Like Moses, he tried to take things into his own hands and fix them, but unlike Moses, he had the support of a lot of people. He passionately wanted everyone to obey God‘s law perfectly, and believed that if you punish the guilty, those on the fence might be scared and behave better. As a Roman citizen, he had more power than the other Jewish leaders. And so, as all the forces of the Jews and Rome fell upon the head of Jesus and then his followers, Paul became one of the point men, leading the charge to rid the world of them.

I think Paul was blinded by his inner attempts to fix himself and live the perfect life he believed God wanted everybody to live. And he was also led astray by the agendas of the leaders he worked with and respected. I’m sure there were days when Paul wondered why no one else could see things as clearly as he did.

Everything changed the day he met Jesus. Just like Adam and Eve’s attempts to hide completely unraveled when God called out their name, Paul’s perfect vision of life was destroyed when Jesus called out his name. He ended Paul's lifelong ambition with a single question: "Why?".

It was a miracle that blinded Paul, and I also think it’s odd because it is the first story we have of Jesus seemingly harming someone instead of healing. But I think, at that moment, Paul's spiritual eyes were open for the first time, and he could see Jesus for who he was instead of the idea of Jesus he had put together in his mind. Is it better to lose your sight and gain your soul? I think so, and Jesus taught so.

Call and Response(s)

God put Paul in timeout and took away all the distractions. His physical blindness was just the beginning of this time apart from the world, away from his family, friends, and previous work, so that Paul could focus on getting to know Jesus.

God weaves all things together for his purposes. Jesus taught us that we are all called to love God and love others, and God was working in the life of another Christian, crossing those life strands together in a powerful way. While Paul was blind, Jesus called an unknown Christian named Ananias, and He told him to find Paul, bring him home, care for him, and help him regain his sight so that God could bring Paul onto the next stage of his journey.

Jesus was very specific in His directions, and Ananias was very specific in his rejection of that call on his life. He knew that Paul was the one going around having Christians arrested and even executed. He was the worst enemy of the early church. He was the antichrist of Jerusalem. It was beyond foolish for any Christian to have anything to do with this man. But God was weaving together the lives of this enemy of his kingdom in this new disciple, a humble follower of Jesus, in a way that would change the history of the rest of the world forever.

How often does following Jesus put us in places where we have to trust him despite the danger around us, as we find ourselves in the presence of our enemies, hearing the voice of Jesus telling us to love them the way he loves us? If you go back to that sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5, you will find Jesus telling us to do exactly that. Love our enemies. And that’s the verses that come directly before that crazy command that we should be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect.

Jesus called Ananias to practice the perfection He taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus sent him out to love his enemy for real on behalf of Jesus. Ananias doubted and questioned this call on his life at least for a moment. But because Ananias was obedient, Jesus turned the first antichrist of Jerusalem into the apostle who would bring the true gospel to the rest of the world. Jesus could have done this Himself, but he chose to bring healing and love through the hands and heart of one of Paul’s humble victims who had nothing to gain by helping Paul and everything to lose. So the first face that Paul saw after Jesus blinded him was the face of Ananias. The world might forget this humble man who put his life on the line and surrendered to God‘s call on his life, but Paul never would. And when Paul found himself putting his own life on the line to carry the true gospel message to those Jesus was sending him to, he could look back on the face of Ananias and find courage in that example of the love of Jesus that cuts through every barrier.

Conversion

There are some fancy words like justification and sanctification that describe the process of us changing from broken, messy, sinful people into something else. Into perfection? I don’t know. I know I’m not there, and some days I think I don’t get better with age, I get more aware of my faults. People like Saint Augustine and many other Bible scholars across the ages claim that we can never be perfect, and anyone who claims to be perfect is a lying sinner. That makes some sense, I guess. However, there are others, like John Wesley, who started a movement that was the largest denomination in the United States for decades, who believed that a person could become perfect in their lifetime. He never claimed to have attained that himself, but that belief persevered throughout his life. In fact, I would expect that as he got older and more spiritually mature, he would’ve held onto that belief less. But John Wesley believed more in Christian perfection, the older he got.

You see, he, too, was troubled by the fact that Jesus commanded us to be perfect. A loving father does not command his children to do something that is impossible and will always be impossible for them to do. But John also had a keen sense of understanding that the changes in our lives are impossible without God, and they are also impossible if we don’t do our part: surrendering to him and obeying him.

It is like Peter, walking on the water, doing something absolutely impossible for him. He could not have done that on his own. He did not do it until Jesus called him to, and every step he took was a new miraculous act of faith. It only worked when Peter kept his eyes on Jesus, letting Jesus do his part while Peter responded in obedience. We don’t know how many steps Peter took, because it didn’t matter. It could’ve been three steps or 10 or 50. We do know that Jesus had to call and empower Peter, and Peter had to do his part in trusting him with his faith, words, and obedient actions.

That is the personal conversion that happened in the life of Peter, Ananias, and Paul, and every single person who comes to know Jesus. It takes Jesus and us to do the impossible and transform us into whoever Jesus wants us to be for him. If we continue to proclaim, with scripture, that our faith is a relationship with the living Lord Jesus, then he will always have his part, we will always have ours, because every relationship is a two-way street.

Every relationship changes us through layers over time. But it’s not our part to be in charge of managing that change. We can spend our lives striving to be perfect for Jesus and only to find ourselves in the same place as the pre-Christian Paul, backed into a corner, working against him instead of for him because we want to fix everything now in his name. It is not our job to manage sin. It’s not even our job to eradicate sin. Our job is to surrender to Jesus, follow obediently where he leads us, and trust that he is working all that out in and around and through and with us.

We may never know what it feels like to be perfect. In our best moments, we will probably not be paying attention to ourselves. I expect Peter didn’t know how many steps he took on the water because he wasn’t counting or watching his feet. He had his eyes fixed on Jesus and the perfection that he is, and that was all his attention could hold in that moment. When he realized what he was doing, he took his eyes off Jesus and lost whatever perfect moment he had been given. So I won’t tell you following Jesus perfectly is easy because it is not. I won’t tell you that it’s hard because it’s not. I’ll tell you that it’s impossible for you to do. But in Paul’s own words,” I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us.” And the words of Jesus, “with man, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

As you think about the pieces of your life that need to be changed, what piece is God holding up right now?

What is he asking you to do about it?

Are you willing to surrender your life today, one piece at a time, if that’s what he asks, and that’s what it takes?

Closing Prayer

Jesus, we come to you as humble sinners, broken by our own rebellion and powerless against the forces of evil in our world. Yet we know you have overcome the world, and it is a small thing for you to overcome the sin in us. We hear your voice calling us to follow you in ways we could never go on our own. We surrender our lives to you today. Through the ripples of your resurrection power, come and change us. Weave us together and remake us into your image, into the people you know we can be when we find ourselves in you. In your holy name, amen.

Communion Liturgy (Bekah for First Service)

Communion – The Great Thanksgiving II

Christ our Lord invites to his table all who love him,

who earnestly repent of their sin

and seek to live in peace with one another.

Therefore, let us confess our sin before God and one another.

Merciful God,

we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart.

We have failed to be an obedient church.

We have not done your will,

we have broken your law,

we have rebelled against your love,

we have not loved our neighbors,

and we have not heard the cry of the needy.

Forgive us, we pray.

Free us for joyful obedience

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Hear the good news:

Christ died for us while we were yet sinners;

that proves God's love towards us.

In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

Glory to God. Amen.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

It is right and a good and joyful thing,

Always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

And so,

With your people on earth

And all the company of heaven

We praise your name and join their unending hymn:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

Holy are you, and blessed is your Son, Jesus Christ. By the baptism of his suffering, death, and resurrection

you gave birth to your church,

delivered us from slavery to sin and death and made with us a new covenant

by water and the Spirit.

On the night to which he gave himself up for us

he took bread, gave thanks to you, broke the bread,

gave it to his disciples and said,

“Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

When the supper was over, he took the cup,

gave thanks to you, gave it to his disciples, and said:

“Drink from this, all of you.

This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many

for the forgiveness of sins. Do this as often as you drink it,

in remembrance of me.”

And so,

In remembrance of these Your mighty acts in Jesus Christ, we offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving,

as a holy and living sacrifice,

in union with Christ’s offering for us as we proclaim the mystery of faith.

Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here,

and on these gifts of bread and wine.

Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ,

redeemed by his blood.”

By your Spirit,

make us one with Christ,

one with each other,

and one in ministry to all the world,

until Christ comes in final victory,

and we feast at his heavenly banquet.

Through your Son Jesus Christ,

with the Holy Spirit in your holy church,

all honor and glory is Yours, almighty Father,

now and forever.

Amen

The body of Christ, given for you. Amen.

The blood of Christ, given for you. Amen.