The Greatest Conversion
“THE GREATEST CONVERSION”
Acts 9:1-9
INTRO: The Apostle Paul declared in 1 Timothy 1:15, “This is a faithful saying,
and worthy of acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners; of whom I am chief.” The Apostle Paul’s conversion is
one of the greatest, most thrilling and inspiring conversions which
has ever taken place. Paul truly was converted. Today we hear much
about decisions, not a lot about conversions! Someone asked a
preacher, “Did you have any decisions last week?” The preacher
replied, “Yes, I had lots of them. Some decided to go to the mountains
and some decided to they would go to the beach instead of coming to
Church.” When Paul got saved he got CONVERTED. What Churches
need today are more conversions, not more decisions! The convers-
ion of the Apostle Paul is a model conversion for all of us to examine.
It is one of the most important conversions ever because of the impact
Paul’s life and ministry had made up Christianity. Why was it so
important?:
- THE MAN OF THE CONVERSION. The man was Saul of Tarsus, a very devout Jew that was thoroughly convinced that Christianity was a threat to Judaism and must be wiped out off the face of the earth. Paul was devout, but a person can be sincere and be sincerely wrong at the same time.
- THE METHOD OF THE CONVERSION. He was actually on his way to Damascus to find Christians. His plans were to bring them back to be prosecuted, when God supernaturally intervened.
Let’s look this morning at----
(1) THE PLAN
Acts 9:1-6
A. THE SEARCHING (vvs. 1-2). Before his conversion, Paul had no love
for God’s Churches whatsoever. But after his conversion, Paul was a
man who had a great love for God’s Churches and prayed for them
continually. One sure way you can tell a person has truly been con-
verted is that their attitude toward God’s Church will change
drastically and dramatically. Paul had been determined to shut down
this religion called Christianity. He sought them out and persecuted
them.
After the death of Stephen, the Christians scattered everywhere. But
Saul heard that some had fled to Damascus, and he went to the high
priest to get permission to find them and bring them back for trial.
Look at verses 1-2. We find him doing two things and he literally
sounds like a mad man.
1) He is “..breathing out threatenings and slaughter against
the disciples.” So ill informed was Saul, that he thought he
ought to do all he could against the name of Christ, and that he
did God service thereby; he seemed to breathe in this as in his
element (Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary). Saul was
consumed with a fierce anger and wrath against Christ and His
disciples. He “breathed out threatenings and slaughter.” The
words “breathing out” in the Greek are really breathing in
(inhaling). The picture is that of Saul breathing in, taking into
his heart the evil of destroying Christ and His disciples. Of
course, what is in the heart is what comes out. Saul actually
hunted down and slaughtered believers—many of them.
2) He is seeking permission from the high priest to go to
Damascus and, “if he found any of this way, whether they
were men or women, he might bring them bound unto
Jerusalem.” Saul was given over to a fierce objective, that of
destroying all the followers of “the Way” of the Lord.
a. He volunteered—actually went to the High Priest and the
Sanhedrin requesting authority to storm after the fleeing
believers—to arrest and bring the believers back to
Jerusalem for trial.
b. He included women as well as men
He had some big plans, but isn’t it wonderful that sometimes God steps
into the plans of ungodly men and ruins those plans?
- Remember when Nehemiah was rebuilding the walls, and Sanballat and Tobiah withstood him and did everything in their power to stop them. The Bible says in Nehemiah 4:4, “Hear, O our God; for we are despised; and turn their reproach upon their own head..” And God did exactly that.
- Remember in the book of Esther that Haman, who despised Mordecai, had built a place to hang him because he would not bow and show him the respect he wanted. God ruined his plans, and he was hung in the very place he had built for Mordecai.
Paul had determined to destroy God’s Church, but God ruined his
plans and caused him to become one of the greatest servants that
Christianity has ever seen! He had meant the Church harm before his
conversion, but probably no man who has ever walked on this earth
(other than the LORD Jesus) has done more for the Church than Paul
did after his conversion.
Before his conversion, he went seeking and searching for Christians to
lay hold of, whether men or women, and wanted nothing less than to
do them as much hurt as he possibly could. Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:
13, “Who was BEFORE a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious:
but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.” The word
INJURIOUS there means to “inflict injury to others for the pleasure the
affliction gives.” In other words, Paul says, “I hurt people and I got
pleasure from hurting people.”
We have looked at THE SEARCHING, now let us look at…
B. THE SURRENDER (vvs. 3-6). God knows how to get our attention. And
sometimes He has to take some drastic measures. Sometimes He may
have to knock us down before He lifts us up. That is what He had to do
with Paul and sometimes He has to do with us. Paul was trembling and
in utter shock (astonished). He was devastated, hardly able to bear up
under the weight of the sin for which he was now being charged. He knew
beyond question he was the most terrible sinner. His only hope was to
turn and obey the Lord Jesus. And, praise God, this he did. He did what
every man must do to be forgiven his terrible sins.
1.He called upon and acknowledged the Lord Jesus.
2.He surrendered to obey the Lord Jesus. He asked the key question:
“Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
3.The Lord commanded him: “Arise and go into the city, and it shall
be told thee what thou must do.” Note that God did not answer
Saul, not right then.
- Saul could not bear it. He was a shattered man. He needed time for prayer and meditation, for straightening out his mind and for assurance from the Spirit of God now dwelling within him.
- Saul needed the maturing witness and contact and companionship of another believer. It was going to take the testimony of a mature believer that Saul had been converted and undergone a radical change for the Christian community to accept him.
C. THE SIGHTLESSNESS (vvs. 8-9). Paul did not eat nor drink for three
days. What happened to Saul in those three days? Saul did just what
the Lord told him: he arose and went into the city. But note several
facts.
1.His eyes had been closed during the whole traumatic experience.
2.His eyes were now blinded for three days. He was helpless and had
to be completely led about by others.
3.His mind would now be shut up in the world of thought alone. He
would be left alone...
- to continue praying over his terrible shame.
- to learn and know beyond question that the Lord had confronted him. Remember: he had three days for the experience to sink in.
- to think through the confrontation with the Lord.
- to wonder what changes there would be in his life now.
- to switch his mind and his thought patterns, his purpose in life from the past life of religion to the present life with Christ.
- to wonder why Jesus was choosing him, the one who had so fiercely opposed the Lord.
- to wonder what Jesus wanted with him and what Jesus was going to tell him to do.
Note that Paul was unable to eat or drink for three days. The trauma
drained all his strength, completely exhausted him. In the Apostle
Paul’s mind were tons of information from the Jewish religion that he
had stored. But God was now entering his mind, and in effect,
deleting the false information and replacing it with His Truth.
We have looked at THE PLANS. Now that God has removed all this
false information from Paul’s mind, we get a vision of…
(2) THE PREACHER
Acts 9:20-22
*Paul was doubtless one of the greatest, if not the greatest, preacher who
ever preached on earth, other than the LORD Jesus Christ. After His
conversion, Paul is preaching something he never preached before: he is
preaching that Jesus is, THE SON OF GOD. Not only was Paul a new man
but also he had a new message.
*The crowd was amazed when they heard Paul preaching this doctrine.
When a preacher preaches the Word of God, it makes God look good, but
it also makes him look good. When a preacher preaches the Word of God,
people sometimes hear him preach and they think, “What a great
Preacher!” But HE IS NOT ANYTHING, but the Gospel which he preaches
is DYNAMITE! They heard Paul preach and they were amazed at him.
Paul was not anything, but the Gospel he preached was Marvelous!
*Verse 21. The Jews were astonished. The Greek verb existanto is literally,
“They were beside themselves; they were struck out of their senses.” (1)
Paul stood as a testimony to the community. The public and leaders of the
synagogue were amazed, astonished, astounded, shocked at what they
were seeing.
1.They were expecting an inflamed antagonist storming the homes and
meeting places of those who “called on the name of Jesus.” They knew
he had been sent to arrest and chain not only the men, but the
women followers of Jesus, and to drag them back to Jerusalem for
treason and death.
2.Instead, they were witnessing a man radically changed, a man...
- associating and identifying himself with those whom he had come to destroy.
- preaching like a flaming evangel, proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah and the Son of God.
When preachers preach about the LORD it will enrich the lives of
Believers.
ILLUS: An unknown person wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper
and complained that it made no sense to go to Church every
Sunday. “I’ve gone for 30 years now,” he wrote, “And in that time
I have heard something like 3000 sermons. For the life of me I
can't remember a single one of them. So I think my time and the
preachers are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all.” This
started a real controversy in the “Letters to the Editor” column,
much to the delight of the editor. It went on for several weeks
until someone wrote this clincher: “I’ve been married for 30 years
now, in that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. For
the life of me, I cannot recall what the menu was for a single one
of those meals. But I do know this: they all nourished me and
gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not
given me those meals, I would be dead today.”
The Bible makes it very clear what Paul preached on. “And straightway he
preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.” (v20) He
preached Christ. He was no longer preaching religion, tradition, ceremony,
or ritual. Neither was he preaching himself or his spiritual experiences, that
is, his visions of the Lord, his discipline, his fasting and praying. He
preached Christ and Him alone. But notice two results of Paul preaching
Christ:
A. HIS PROBLEM. As long as Saul, now Paul went along with the Jews
who hated Jesus, the people of his age had no problem with him. But
when he began preaching the Jesus died and rose again, and that
Salvation can only be found in Christ alone, he got into lots of trouble.
Is not the same true today? As long as men preach that Christianity is
only another religion on the face of this earth, and that everybody is
going to one day die and go to heaven, they will not get into trouble with
lost people nor other “religions” either. But when you start preaching
that Christ is not one among many ways to heaven, but that He is the
ONLY WAY to heaven, then you better prepare for trouble.
ILLUS: Jerry Falwell got in a lot of trouble when he appeared on the
program Night Line with Ted Koppel. He made the statement
about Christ being the Savior, and one of the guests on the
program asked, “You are not saying that a person has to believe
in Christ to be saved, are you?” And Dr. Falwell said very
eloquently, “No, I am not saying that, but the Word of God states
that clearly.”
News of this spread like a wildfire across this nation. And even to this
very day. There are those who try to make Falwell look like an idiot for
making such a statement. But the Bible teaches exactly that. The LORD
said:
- I am THE DOOR, not one of many doors.
- I am THE WAY, not one of many ways.
This is the truth the Bible teaches about Jesus the Christ. But the lost
world needs to hear the Truth of God’s Word, not the ideas and opinions
of man. It is the only thing that will help them.
ILLUS: In the late 1800’s, Charles Berry, an English preacher, became
the pastor of the great Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. One day
Berry described how earlier he had come to Jesus Christ. There
had been a time in Berry’s early ministry when he preached a
weak gospel. Late one night during his first pastorate, as he
sat in his cozy study, there came a knock. He opened the door
to find a typical Lancashire girl with a shawl over her head and
clogs on her feet. “Are you a minister?” She asked. Getting an
affirmative answer, she went on breathlessly, “You must come
with me quickly. I want you to get my mother in.” Thinking it
was a case of some drunken mother out in the streets, Berry
said, “You must go and get a policeman.” “No,” said the girl,
“my mother is dying, and you must come and get her into
heaven.” Berry got dressed and followed her for a mile and a
half through lonely streets in the night. He knelt at the woman’s
side, and he began telling her how good and kind Jesus was and
how he’d come to show us how to live. Then the desperate
woman cut him off, “Mister, that’s no use for the likes of me, I’m
a sinner. I’ve lived my life. Can’t you tell me of someone who
can have mercy upon me and save my poor soul?” “I stood there
in the presence of a dying woman,” said Berry, “And I realized I
had nothing to tell her. In the midst of sin and death, I had no
message. In order to bring something to that dying woman, I
leaped back to my mother’s knee, to my cradle faith, and I told
her the story of the Cross and of a Christ who is able to save to
the uttermost.” The tears began to run down the woman’s
cheeks. “Now you’re getting it.” She said, “Now you’re helping
me.” Berry concluded the story by saying, “I got her in, and
blessed be God, I got in myself.” (Gordon MacDonald, “The
Centerpiece of the Gospel,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 137.)
When people are dying they need to know that they are a sinner and
Christ is the Savior! Paul realized that when he came to know the Lord,
and God’s Word makes it clear that he went everywhere Preaching that
Christ is the Savior! When a man of God gets up and preaches the
Gospel like Paul did not everyone will like it, in fact, some will get angry.
In verses 23-24, it tells us that Paul’s preaching made the Jews so mad
that desired to kill him.
We have looked at HIS PROBLEMS, now look at …
B. HIS PROVISION (v. 25). Every preacher of the Gospel must always
Remember, it is our Job to PREACH, and it is God’s job to PROTECT
AND PROVIDE for us to preach His Word!
CLOSING: Paul, after his conversion, was a NEW MAN with a NEW
MESSAGE. What about you, are you in Christ, a New Man in
Christ Jesus? If you are a NEW MAN, are you proclaiming a
NEW MESSAGE, that Jesus is the Savior? The story is told of a
man who scoffed at the idea of God or salvation, who became very