Saul's Transformation: The Power of Divine Intervention

I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our father’s law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today. I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. [00:00:31]

Now what happened as I journeyed and came near Damascus, at about noon suddenly a great light from heaven shown around me. And I fell to the ground and I heard a voice saying to me, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” So I answered, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said to me, “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.” [00:01:24]

And then a certain Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good testimony with all the Jews who dwelt there, came to me, and he stood and said to me, “Brother Saul, receive your sight.” And at that same hour I looked up at him. And then he said, “The God of our fathers has chosen you that you should know his will and see the Just One [or the Righteous One] and hear the voice of his mouth.” [00:02:31]

The Book of Acts is really quite a short book, and it’s extraordinary, I think, that a book of this length would repeat the same incident three times. Three times in the Book of Acts we are told of the circumstances of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. The first time it is a third person narrative reported to us by Luke, and then the next two occurrences are accounts of Paul recalling those events in times of his defense, first here in Jerusalem and then before King Herod Agrippa. [00:04:46]

I think the reason perhaps lies somewhere else, namely, that the Book of Acts is not merely a historical narrative of what took place in the early church but at the front of this concern of Luke is to give an apologia, a defense, of the authenticity and the genuine character of Paul’s apostleship. He was not numbered among the original twelve. And yet when we look at the early history of the church we see that apart from Jesus the single most important leader was Paul the apostle. [00:06:29]

And Saul would have none of it, and he did everything in his power to stamp it out, who told here in his own testimony that he went from house to house dragging not only men but women, bringing them into the prison to be flogged and not only to be flogged but in many cases to be killed. And he’s reminding the people who were standing there. You know who I am. The high priest does. The Sanhedrin does. [00:11:06]

And then Paul says instead of coming into Damascus in chariots and power he was led groping in the dark as somebody was holding his hand leading him through the alleys and the streets because he was blind, taking him to the house of Ananias. And he tells when he gets to this devout man, who was also known to his audience here in Jerusalem, he said that Ananias welcomed him, called him Brother Saul. [00:14:11]

You know it’s a rare thing in the theological world for somebody who embraces a particular theological position and is militant about that position for a period of years to then suddenly switch and go to the other side of the aisle, as it were. It happens but not very often. It usually takes some kind of dramatic crisis to provoke such a change. [00:15:23]

I said, well, that’s nothing compared to the change that took place with the theologian Saul of Tarsus, the chief public enemy of the Christian church who became the greatest defender of Christianity in the first century and for an century as far as that goes. But I want you to look closely at what Ananias says to him. He said, “The God of our fathers has chosen you that you should know his will.” [00:20:20]

To be a true prophet one had to be called directly and immediately by God and anointed by his Spirit to be an agent of his revelation so that the prophet could say Thus saith the Lord, not in my opinion. And so what we have here is another record of the call of Paul to be an apostle. And that’s important because he wasn’t numbered among the original twelve. [00:21:04]

Now this defense, Paul’s closing arguments in his own behalf at this kangaroo court, converted few if any, because the results of the crowd was the same result they gave to Stephen when he gave his testimony years earlier. And we’re going to have to wait until next week, God willing, to see how the crowd responds in the fullness of their rage against Paul’s defense of his apostolic mission. [00:26:22]

But, beloved, it is a mission that still goes on today. The testimony of Paul reaches every corner of the world today, because God chose him to be the one who spoke his word and who would write his Word and be the apostle to the Gentiles. There is never a time in church history where the church needs more desperately to listen again to this apostle, because the only theology that’s worth having is the theology of Paul. [00:27:22]