World Transformation Happens One Life at a Time

Acts 9:1-22

Over the past couple of months, there has been a lot of talk about God being removed from our schools – last week, despite out-of-town threats of lawsuits, the Jackson School Board voted to keep the picture of Jesus that has hung in the school since 1947.

What began as a rule against a government-sanctioned state religion has been interpreted as a requirement for the government to suppress religion and keep it completely out of the public sphere. We need look no farther than Europe to see the decline of the church’s influence in the public sphere. Sometimes it can be easy to shake our heads at how society has gotten worse and worse.

It can be discouraging enough that it’s tempting to just give up. Transform the world? That’s not my job, and, oh, by the way, it’s impossible. The world doesn’t want transformed. Or, maybe for some of us, it’s a little closer to home – my family doesn’t want transformed.

We’ve begun praying for a whole list of people, many of whom probably don’t want transformed. There are some who are so against Christianity that it can be easy to give up on them.

In the book of Acts, we meet one of “those people.” The new church was growing, but opposition had arisen. In Acts 5, the apostles were arrested and after a unique jailbreak staged by an angel, they ended up getting flogged and ordered not to speak in Jesus’ name. I include this background because some of us work with the assumption that when our bosses tell us not to speak about Jesus, well, we can’t, because our bosses said we couldn’t. Do you think the apostles just gave up? No, The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the Temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord. (Acts 5:41-42)  

So the church continued to grow, and they appointed new leaders, including Stephen, who was soon arrested under false pretenses, and was put to death by stoning. Acts 7:58 records that the witnesses of the stoning laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul, who was there, giving approval to his death. Not only was he there at Stephen’s death, but Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison. (Acts 8:3)

I’m thinking Saul was on some prayer request lists, but more along the lines of: God, protect us from Saul! I wonder if someone was praying for his conversion.

In Acts 9 we catch up with Saul.

Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 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. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 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. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

This is an incredible account of a transformation. Saul was on a mission to destroy the church. He would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. He wasn’t just your average Joe-Doesn’t-Attend-Church. This wasn’t a guy sleeping in on Sunday mornings because he doesn’t like the music or is bored by the sermon. This guy hated the church and was actively persecuting Christians. Saul was worse than Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins – while they ridicule Christians and argue against us, Saul was dragging men and women off and throwing them in prison. This was no three hots and a cot. It was true persecution. But while Saul was on the road to Damascus with the goal of throwing more Christians into prison, he met Jesus, and Jesus struck him blind and spoke to him.

Now, the scripture tells us that nobody else saw Jesus – they heard the sound, but did not see anything. They just knew that Saul was blind and needed led into Damascus. They didn’t know that he was going to become the first and greatest Christian missionary. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Now Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, switches the scene to Damascus, where we meet Ananias.

In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

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. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”

“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

Can you imagine what Ananias is feeling right now? This Saul fellow is not an unknown. He’s not just a local ruffian. Ananias has already heard the reports about Saul and the trouble he has caused and even about his mission in Damascus.  And now God is telling Ananias to go to Saul and to heal him.

I want to pause a moment to reflect that some of the people on our prayer list are really great people. They are our friends. They are in our families. We live with or near them, work with them, hang out with them. And we mourn and grieve the fact that they are on their way to Hell. But there are others, maybe on our list, but probably not, who we would probably be happy to know that Hell is where they are headed. They’re the worst of the worst. They’ve hurt so many people, you included. We deserve justice and they deserve Hell.

Listen to how God responds to Ananias: But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

In other words, you don’t know how God will choose to use this guy… or the baddest of the bad you were thinking of. And here’s something more – when we play the “they deserve Hell” card, aren’t we forgetting something? Are we so quickly forgetting that the debt we owe Jesus Christ is that we, too, deserve Hell for our sinful disobedience and selfishness, but we are saved because of what Jesus did, not because of what we did or how good we were!

God also tells Ananias that Saul isn’t “off the hook” and that he too will suffer for God’s name. I wonder if that had any influence on Ananias. But what I want you to understand is that when Ananias went to Saul, Saul was a bad man. But God had a plan for him, a plan that involved the obedience of Ananias.

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.” Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus.  At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. 

There is something to be made of the scales falling off Saul’s eyes and I could preach for a month on spiritual blindness, but that’s not where we’re going to spend a lot of time today. I just pose that there is a lot more spiritual blindness around us than we would care to realize or admit. All of us have blind spots, and it is uncomfortable, painful even, to admit them. Can you admit that there are people who aren’t on your prayer lists, simply because they’re too bad or because they’ve hurt you too many times? So you’ve just stopped praying for them (or never started in the first place).

But here’s what we see happening: Saul regained his strength, spent time with the disciples, and then immediately began to preach that Jesus is the Son of God. Can you imagine this? The very guy who was persecuting the church, who was breathing out murderous threats against Christians, is now preaching…  And here is how our culture responds: let’s just watch this guy; he’s going to trip up pretty soon and we’ll see what he’s really made of. Those who heard Saul were initially skeptics as well, scripture tells us that all those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.

Ananias’ obedience to reach out to Saul was instrumental in his transformation, and I believe we can be just as instrumental. Sometimes we think that the person who leads someone else to Christ has to be a super-Christian like Billy Graham or at least a pastor, but I would guess that most of us have been led to Christ by everyday Christians who choose obedience. [ask who introduced them to Christ]

Last week I preached about singing a new song. That God is doing new things, and that God will provide the lyrics for that new song. Saul was singing a song of death and persecution, but God changed his tune. What was his new song like?

In Acts 16, we find Saul, now renamed Paul, on a missionary journey with Silas, and they end up on the wrong side of an angry mob. They are stripped, beaten, severely flogged, and dragged to the prison’s inner cell, where they are put in stocks. Listen to Acts 16:25: About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God… Now, in spite of terrible circumstances, the man who we first met breathing out murderous threats against Christians is now in a prison, singing hymns to God.

His life was transformed, and he continues to transform the world. So I wonder today, what is your song? What are you singing? Are you stuck in a self-centered rut? Or are you singing hymns to God in spite of the worst circumstances?