“Bad Vision, No Vision, God Vision.”

“Bad Vision, No Vision, God Vision.”

Series – impACTS

Week 8 of 9 – Title: “Tested, Scattered, and Gathered.”

Bob Morgan - Sunday, February 21st, 2021

I have a question for you this morning, who is the “GOAT”. Who is the greatest of all time? That may be an unfair question without some kind of context. So let me ask it with a little more focus.

· The Greatest Boxer of all time – Muhamad Ali

· The greatest football player of all time - Tom Brady

· The greatest basketball player of all time - Michael Jordan

· The greatest baseball player of all the - Babe Ruth

· The greatest authors of all time - William Shakespeare

· The greatest scientist of all time - Isaac Newton

Each of those categories are open for debate. Everyone has an opinion about what it takes to be the greatest at anything. Intelligent opinions are established by an individual’s expertise or study of any given discipline. If you are going to ask who the greatest gymnast of all time might be, then you need to ask someone who had extensive knowledge of the history of gymnastics. By the way according to learned authorities on gymnastics the greatest gymnast in history was a Romanian woman named Nadia Comăneci. In the 1976 Olympic Games at the age of 14, she was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score.

This is the chapter I have been fearing since we started this study in Acts. I m afraid of it because you take on a tremendous responsibility when you attempt to communicate the truth about the G.O.A.T, the greatest of all time in any given field. But in the realm of Christianity if you ask who is.

· The greatest theologians of all time

· The greatest missionary of all time

· The greatest evangelist of all time

· The greatest pastor of all time

And second only to Jesus who was

· the greatest person to ever walk the earth

That title belongs to the Apostle Paul. Theologians have written volumes about him and the events of Acts 9 only to come up short of recognizing his full impact. When you consider his life both before and after his conversion, accounting all that God utilized him to accomplish on behalf of the early church and the Gospel itself you come away with the undeniable conclusion that the Apostle Paul is the undisputed G.O.A.T, the greatest of all time.

From this point forward in this series we will be studying a profile of this man’s character, of his life, of his ministry, of his suffering, and his faithfulness. That may seem impossible to believe when you remember that this is the “coat check guy” at the stoning of Stephen. This is the same person that had persecuted the church so vehemently that it broke apart and sent people running for their lives in every direction.

We are going to spend one morning on what some theologians spend their entire careers studying. In truth we are really only going to get through the first 31 versus of chapter 9 because this is where the conversion of the Paul takes place. The first thing to recognize is over to give Israel contacts we need to establish what he was being converted from. We actually know quite a bit about this man. We know that he was born in Tarsus at a time when that city was occupied by Rome making him a Roman citizen, he and Jesus would have been born around the same time, so they were close in age, he was highly educated and devout in the Jewish tradition, he was a student of the law of Moses to such an extreme that he was considered a zealot. He was single and never married and had some fairly strong opinions about marriage itself. He was a take charge type of person that was confident in his ability to speak to crowds. In modern day terms Paul would be considered an influencer.

Now that you know more about the man before he meets Jesus let’s look at how God transform this zealot Jew into a devout Christian. The events of his conversion step out beyond the natural and are deeply rooted in the supernatural. But don’t get freaked out because unlike the world portrays it today the supernatural doesn’t have to be super creepy. Starting chapter 9.

Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the

high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

-Acts 9:1-2

The better we know Saul the easier it will be to connect to the teachings of Paul. There is a character lesson to be learned about him here. The fact that Saul goes to the high priest to get permission for his persecution says a lot. He demonstrates a deep respect for authority. This is a man that knows the law of Moses and submits to it. From that we learn that disciplined and obedience are ingrained in his character. He may be a zealot, but he is in no way a radical. Zealots care deeply but radicals act irrationally. Zealots have a deep passion to communicate the truth they believe but radicals have an unreasonable passion to impose their will. Saul is a zealot, and zealotry is not a bad thing when it’s purpose is truth. Saul’s respect for authority, self-discipline and obedience become increasingly evident as we learn about him in the chapters to come.

Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and 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?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless,

hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul 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.

-Acts 9:3-9

Saul comes face to voice with Jesus and you should notice how personal Jesus takes the persecution against His people and His church.

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

For Jesus there is no separation between where we are and where He is. When he says “he will always be with us” that’s not meant as a declaration of support, it is a statement of status. An attack on God’s people or his church is an attack on God himself. We have to stop underestimating the depth our connection with Jesus. We may not have physical proximity but there is definitely spiritual unity. He is with us through everything, and he is prepared to defend us and his church when defense is necessary.

Sadly, one of the greatest attacks on the church today doesn’t come from outside the Christian faith it comes from Christians themselves. This attack comes from Christians that say they love Jesus but don’t like church. A lot of Christians don’t understand the depth of our relationship to Christ and church. You may not like a specific church you attended in the past, but the church established by the Holy Spirit is more than of single congregation.

In Ephesians Jesus relationship with the church is parallel to that of a marriage. In some biblical studies the church is even referred to as the bride of Christ. A Christian saying, they hate church would be the same as saying to me, “Bob, you’re great, we’d like to have you over to our house for supper… but man we hate that Janis, so when y’all come over “just leave her in the car.” I mean we are supposed to be caring people so you can leave the car running just in case it gets cold outside, but we don’t want to be around Janis so don’t bring her in. How can you say you love Jesus and hate His bride? That really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but a lot of Christians employ that crazy logic. If you say you love Christ but don’t love church don’t understand the relationship at all. Stop throwing the baby out with the bathwater and judging all churches by the bad experience you had. If you go through life proclaiming Christ, but you are embarrassed by the church, you should understand something, Jesus is more embarrassed by you than you are of him. To love Christ is to love His church and when that happens more doors will open up for us to love one another.

Saul has this blinding experience on the road where he is literally called to the carpet for his persecution of the church. The Bible doesn’t go into great detail that you have to wonder what was going through Saul’s mind for those three days that he was blind. Whatever his internal experience was Saul’s life was changed and Saul’s life change the world. Keep reading with me here.

Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision,

“Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” And 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.” 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.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized;

and taking food, he was strengthened.

-Acts 9:10-19

Okay here is where I run into a personal dilemma. Whenever we start to talk about the conversion of Paul, I always want to spend more time on this man Ananias and subsequently I run out of time not finishing everything about Paul I should cover. Ananias is the living testament of a sacrificial servant. It’s one thing to be thrown into a lion’s den it’s another thing to openly and willingly walk in the one. That’s exactly what Ananias does when he goes to visit Saul. The submission and obedience demonstrated by Ananias is the standard that I hope to live up to in my own life. I would hope that if God asked me to do something as clearly as he asks Ananias I would step up and do it. I wish I could say without any doubt that I would be the kind of man that Ananias is but I guess the only way to know for sure is to look for opportunities that leverage extreme risk for God and then follow through on those opportunities no matter what the outcome. How many of us can say we are going to live our lives taking that much risk and putting ourselves out there that much. For me Ananias is one of my favorite people in all of Scripture. He does one simple thing, but he doesn’t so well that he literally opens the eyes of the man that will carry the standard of Jesus farther than anyone in history other than Jesus himself. For the rest of your lives whenever you study the story please never overlook Ananias.

When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.

And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists. But they were seeking to kill him. And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

-Acts 9:23-31

Saul’s conversion and transformation has taken place and he is starting to prepare himself for the ministry that God has called him to. If you’re wondering when his name will change to Paul, we have to wait a little while longer for that to happen. A lot of people think that Saul’s name changed on the road to Damascus or during the time of his blindness, but the Bible doesn’t say that. First mention of Saul becoming Paul won’t happen until we reach chapter 13 when he is on the island of Cyprus.

1. God has been pursuing you

2. You’ve been blind

3. Your past does not cancel God’s grace

4. Your past does not disqualify your