Paul: Before Christ

Introduction Good morning, Church! If you’re a guest with us here this morning, we’re so glad that you’re here. My name is Steven, I’m one of the ministers on staff here at Mt. Hope. I’d like to start this morning by showing by showing you some “before and after” pictures. First up, we have a couple of America’s presidents at the beginning and end of their terms. I always find it amazing looking at presidential before and afters. Yeah, I get it, 8 years is a substantial amount of time, but these men just get transformed by the end of their terms. If I didn’t know better, I might think that job is maybe a little stressful. Let’s bring up the next one. This is before an after a Woodstock reunion from 1999. You can see the transition from the lovely grass field into the giant pile of trash. I think this might be an appropriate time to thank our custodian Joey Addington, because people are gross, and the work Joey does around here is saintly. Joey, thank you. Lastly, this is my favorite couple of photos. I have here two pictures from our church’s fall festival that we held in 2012. What I really want to draw attention to is the room in which these pictures were taken. I’m not certain how well you all can see, but these were taken in our old West Wing. I’m sure most of you remember what that room looked like, but for those of you who have recently joined our family or just didn’t walk to the back of the building very often, notice that the walls are very... white. The carpet is the same as the rest of the building. There are those metal cabinets back there. It wasn’t a bad room really, but it was designed as a multipurpose room. So, it didn’t have a lot going on, so that it was appropriate for various occasions. Then last fall, we decided to dedicate that room as a space for our children’s ministry. So, now it looks like this. Now, it’s been a couple years since I was young enough to go to Kingdom Kids, but I still get excited when I walk into that room. Do you realize that the average number of children back there each week has more than doubled since we transformed that room? I’m so excited to be at a church that invests into our children. Bridge But my question for you this morning is this: if we took before and after photos of your life, before you met Jesus and after, how extreme would your transformation be? For those of us who grew up with Christian parents and in godly households, the transformation may have more to do with maturity than anything else. Yet, for those who didn’t have that head start in the church, the change can be a little more dramatic. This morning, we’re going to begin our six-week series focusing in on the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul. I’m incredibly excited for this series because Paul is probably the most important figure in Christian history, save Christ himself. But if you’re familiar at all with Paul’s story, then you know his “before Christ” picture is perhaps the most dramatically different of all. That’s the part of the story we’re going to focus on this morning. As we go through, we’ll pull out three key observations about Paul BC. Body This morning, we’ll be working primarily out of the beginning of Acts 26. Let’s look at what Paul says in verses 4 and 5: [Acts 26:4-5] Similarly, he says in Acts 22: [Acts 22:3] Here we pick up a few quick facts about Paul. First, he was born in the city of Tarsus, in modern Turkey, but was then raised in Jerusalem. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons God chose him to be the apostle to the Gentiles, since he already had a natural connection with them due to his background. You’ll notice Paul wasn’t just any Jew, but he was Jew who was zealous for God. In the chapter 26 account, it says he was a Pharisee. That will be our first of our three key observations about Paul before Christ. He was a Pharisee. If you’ve been around church for a while you’ve probably familiar with the pharisees. Jesus had a lot to say about them. I went ahead and picked out my favorite thing Jesus said about the Pharisees, found in Matthew 23: [Matthew 23:27-28] That’s pretty harsh, right? Side note, next time someone asks you what Jesus would do, just remember that calling someone a “whitewashed tomb” is one of the possible options. I think because Jesus had such harsh words for this group of people, as a kid who grew up in church, I had this caricatured picture of what the Pharisees were like. While Paul says in one verse that he was a Pharisee, in the other he just says that he was “zealous” for God. That sounds like a good thing... right? If you were a Jew at the time of Jesus, the pharisees wouldn’t have been the evil, caricatured supervillains. They were the religious leaders. In our modern context, they aren’t the heathens. They’d be the ministers, the bible college professors, the people highly educated in scripture, the conservative evangelicals. Their problem was not that they didn’t love God, but they spent so much energy on studying scripture, they missed the God who wrote it. [1 Corinthians 13:2] Truth without love makes us nothing. Truth without love makes us Pharisees. Can I get a little personal this morning? Are you a Pharisee? Maybe you aren’t overall, but do you have pharisaic moments? Maybe with those other churches who misunderstand baptism. Maybe with people who struggle with sexual orientation or gender identity. Maybe with people who don’t understand the absolute nature of truth. Do you ever find yourself so devoted to what God says about these things that you forget to love the people God died for? Because if that’s you this morning, that’s okay. Paul was there too. He was probably worse. But if that’s you, find me after service and let’s pray about that. Let’s look on to verse 9 in chapter 26: [Acts 26:9-11] Again, he says something similar in chapter 22: [Acts 22:4-5] Paul wasn’t just a legalistic Jew, he was a murderer. A terrorist. In fact, the first time Paul is mentioned in scripture is during the murder of a Christian leader when Stephen was stoned.... sidebar, when its spelled with a “ph” like that it’s pronounced “STEFF-in” because “ph” makes a fff sound. Anyway, I digress. Acts 7:55. [Acts 7:55-8:1] Paul approved his execution. That will be our second observation this morning, Paul was a persecutor of the Church. You know our student ministry is blessed to have a lot of students who come from unchurched backgrounds and sometimes those backgrounds are kind of rough. Often as we get close to the time where the student starts to think about committing their life to Christ, the student becomes concerned and they’ll say “I’ve done a lot of stuff. What if it’s too much for God to forgive?” I think my favorite response to that question is “are you worse than Paul? Because Paul not only killed people, but he killed people specifically because they followed Jesus. What have you done that’s worse than that?” I know on the last point I asked if you struggle with being a pharisee. I’m not going to ask if you struggle with genocide... I’ll leave that to Adam Blankenship. But I do want to ask you, do you have sin in your past, or maybe your present, that you’re holding on to? I know I have stuff I want to forget. Things I wish I could go back and change. Things I don’t like to talk about because it’s just too much. But whatever it is you’re holding on to this morning, you need to understand that Jesus died for that. Jesus died for bad tempers. He died for hatefulness. He died for alcoholism. He even died for unfaithful marriages, pornography, and homosexuality. Best of all, he rose. If you listen to K-Love or New Life Radio you may have heard the song “Resurrecting King” by Elevation Worship. The chorus goes like this: By Your spirit I will rise From the ashes of defeat The resurrected King is resurrecting me In Your name I come alive To declare Your victory The resurrected King is resurrecting me Romans 6:5 says this: [Romans 6:5] The Resurrection wasn’t a one-time thing. When you’re baptized into Christ your old self dies and you become a new creation. If you’re having some trouble believing that this morning, I’d love to pray with you after service. I think what I find the most remarkable about Paul’s life before Christ is that he doesn’t keep it a secret. Later in his life, Paul writes to the Galatians: [Galatians 1:13-14] As he’s ministering to these people, as he is teaching about Christ to others, he is open and honest about his past life. In the text we’ve looked at this morning, where we have seen Paul describe plainly his crimes and sins before Christ, you’ll notice that in both chapters 22 and 26, Paul is speaking publicly to a crowd. I have to wonder, if I were to come up here and start listing off the worst of my sins, how would you all react to that? To be clear, unlike Paul I’ve never murdered anyone, so perhaps my past sins are relatively mild, but I still would never dream of publicly proclaiming my sins like Paul did. Paul doesn’t consider his past to be a source of shame. He doesn’t hide his faults. Instead, he uses his past life of sin to lead others to Christ. Because if the grace of God was powerful enough to change a man a lost as Paul, how much could it change us? As Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians: [2 Corinthians 12:9-10] We can and should use our humility to glorify God. We brag about our failings, so that we can brag about how greatly Christ has saved us. In fact, it seems that by emphasizing how anti-Christ he was, Paul adds validity to his testimony. Of course, Peter and John say they Christ rose from the dead, they were there when He predicted that He would. But when the Church’s biggest foe says that he saw the risen Christ, is that not much more convincing? Paul’s past proves the truth of the Resurrection. That will lead us to our third and final observation about Paul’s life before Christ: it prepared him for ministry. That seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? That sin would prepare a person for ministry. I think next time someone asks if I went to Bible college I’ll say “nah, man. I just sinned.” Jokes aside, when I find myself in a frustrating situation I’ll often just say to myself, “that’s okay, it’ll be a sermon illustration someday.” I’m sure you’ve heard preachers tell self-deprecating stories from the pulpit, right? You’ve seen how that can build connections for people to the lesson and build trust between the congregation and preacher. While this is a well-accepted practice for ministers, I want to suggest something this morning: You can do it, too. You can boast of your weakness, too. Now, there is such a thing as over-sharing and I’m not suggesting that, but I do want to suggest that sharing your story, even the painful parts, could help someone else know the love of Christ better. Confessing your sins and declaring Christ’s deliverance from them could help someone else find that same hope in Jesus. My family and I were at the Technology Student Association national conference last week and the keynote speaker was a friend of ours named Guy Cecil. One of Guy’s main takeaways for the students was “what makes you different makes you special.” What makes you different, might be what makes you able to reach out to that one certain person. The things you went through, might help someone else going through the same thing Conclusion Have you ever heard someone say, “everything happens for a reason?” I’m going to be honest with you, church. I don’t believe that. I’m a mathematician, I’m a pretty big believer in probability theory, but I also just think that’s bad theology. But while I don’t think everything happens for a reason, I also think anything can be redeemed. I don’t think God planned all of your trials and hardships, but I do think he can redeem them for His glory. If you have some part of your life that needs redeeming, I invite you to find myself, Karl, or one of our elders so we can pray with you. Let’s pray as a family now. [Prayer]