It’s the weekend and in our reading thru the New Testament in a year we come to Acts 9:19-31. It’s one of our shorter readings, so take your time, soak in your imagination all that is happening, and we’ll look at it together once you’re done.
Saul’s conversion was a remarkable event and one that no one could see in advance. In one moment, we saw Saul as the Jewish zealot hunting down Jesus people, and a few days later we see this man standing in the public square declaring Jesus is the Son of God...what is going on? Saul met Jesus. I’ve seen it hundreds of times and experienced it myself. One moment life is going along in a self-designed way and the next moment Jesus becomes the center of life...it’s called conversion. It changes everything... the mind shifts gear and begins to think about God, his word, his ways. The heart beats with a different drumbeat and begins to have different passions, desires, wants. The soul is alive, fed from God’s Spirit and prayer, worship, reading, and sharing what is happening seems automatic.
This is Saul’s experience. A few days into his new-found faith he takes his past life into the future life of serving Jesus. Saul, we find out later, was well-educated in the school of Gamaliel - the very Pharisee who had warned the Jewish leaders in Acts 5, to let the disciples go, for “if this is of God you will not be able to stop them” (5:39). Saul was articulate, smart, skilled in public discourse and willing...that might be his greatest personal trait; his willingness to take his new-found faith in Christ to where he knew it was needed - the Synagogue.
As Saul speaks people become amazed...the apparent contradiction is confusing... “how can this man who raised havoc on these people called ‘the Way’, now be on their side?” “What is going on here?” On the surface, God has found a gem...a man of intellect, ability, and tenacity to share the Gospel...now, all is well!! God may have had his man, but God wanted to do more IN Saul to prepare him...more IN him than THROUGH him at this point in life. So while Saul has immediate success, he soon discovers that God has some other ideas on how to prepare him for a lifetime of service. Just as Saul was succeeding in Damascus he learns that there were Jewish zealots who were plotting to kill him. Saul and his new-found fellowship of believers in the church in Damascus decide it’s necessary to get Saul out of there. Saul had entered the city of Damascus blind, but now he can see...more clearly than ever before what his Jewish past had created in blind jealousy of hatred, but now he exits the city in a basket lowered over the wall. He who once carried letters from the Chief Priests in Jerusalem giving him authority to act in their name now has to hide and flee for his life.
On the surface, Luke seems to be giving a record of events that happen all very suddenly...days, weeks go by in a surface reading. Yet, when we pick up later sections of Paul’s writings where he looks back on all of this we gain a different perspective. For example, according to his letter to the Galatian believers, written years later, Saul mentions a time of retreat in Arabia after his conversion:
“I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days” (Gal. 1:16-18).
Luke’s account between vss 25 & 26 does not mention this three-year distance of time. It’s entirely possible that this three years happened immediately after his conversion, where he then returned to Damascus and began to preach, but Luke’s reference in vs. 20 that “at once” Saul began to preach suggests that Saul’s immediate response to his conversion was to begin to share Jesus with the Jewish Synagogue in Damascus. Then he discovers they had the same kind of hatred of his message he once had before his own conversion. He preached the Gospel, but eventually when a plot to kill him surfaced he fled Damascus, and according to his own account, he went into the wilderness of Arabia for three years, where he spent time studying the Scriptures, praying, learning about his faith from God.
I would suggest that Saul’s faith was in need of training...his success was in need of humility...his passion was in need of discipline. It is a God-way of raising up those who serve him, a.k.a. look at Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, and a host of others. The greatest need of a servant is humility not gifting. God takes Saul to school in the desert of Arabia after his rejection by his fellow Jews in Damascus.
Perhaps Saul thought, “ok God, now that this is done, I can go to Jerusalem and make a difference”. It has been three years since he had been in Jerusalem and his friends and relationships were now completely upside down. Then he was the golden boy of the religious elites...the Chief Priest’s man to take care of “these people”, but now he returns to “these people” - the Church in Jerusalem - which at first is afraid of him. All the church knew of Saul was his previous hatred of them and his desire to arrest them; but now he returns to be a part of the church, and at first, they are not so sure of welcoming him in.
Once again Barnabas enters the scene. Barnabas had sold a field and given the money to the early church leaders (4:36) to help meet the needs of the widows, and others. He was named Barnabas - “the son of Encouragement” - and so he reaches out to Saul to discover that truly, this man has changed. He is the one who brings Saul to the Apostles and tells them of Saul’s conversion three years previously.
Saul had some early success in Damascus before Jewish zealots turned on him plotting to kill him. Now in Jerusalem, his gifts and talents gave him more success in sharing Jesus to Jewish people - Hellenist Jews (vs 29). Yet once again, God would close the door to his ministry in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not where God was going to use Saul, he had other places in mind. Once again Saul, and the church in Jerusalem, discover a plot to kill him. The church leaders sent him off, first to Caesarea, and then on to his home city of Tarsus - way up in the north, out of Israel completely. We find out from Paul’s own record that he is going to spend the next ten years there - out of the picture, out of the early church leadership in Jerusalem...a nobody now, whom God is preparing and will use to soon change the entire known world!
What do we make of this all? A. W. Tozer once wrote, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.” Alan Redpath once said something similar: “When God wants to do an impossible task, He takes an impossible man and crushes him.” This doesn’t mean God takes delight in hurting people, but it is often painful to be disciplined for service. In people God will use, there is a need to take their strength of will, gifting, talents and turn them from a self-oriented “look what I can do”, to a God-oriented “look what God can do”. For Saul, this will take a long time—almost fifteen years!
When, at last, Saul’s strong will surrenders—and he comes to terms with the truth of his own helplessness—God is waiting nearby and his time of real service will begin.
Saul “raised havoc” as an unbeliever, and after coming to faith in Christ, he raised havoc as a believer. His natural abilities had to be trained, changed by God. Saul leaves the nest of Jerusalem, and Luke adds at the end of it all “the church in Judaea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.” It’s a difficult thing to sometimes realize God doesn’t need me to accomplish his will... Saul was learning that.
Peace
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