Read Acts 9:1-9
So why start here tonight in Acts chapter 9? It might seem like a strange place to just jump on in, but there is something here that I think we really need to see. Though before we shoot straight for the application, let’s dial it back for a few minutes and understand a little bit about where we are at in time and in scripture here in Acts 9.
Acts 9 is believed to take place about 4 years after the resurrection and then ascension of Jesus back into Heaven. That means that the early church was about 4 years old as well and the book of Acts up to this point has been a record of its beginnings and the men that Jesus had trained to help lead it. And I mean there have been ups and downs and difficulties recorded in these times, but then you have this guy Saul who comes on the scene and Saul was really bad news for the early church Christians. And this is one of those points in scripture where maybe you know that Saul becomes Paul and all the good that God uses him for later, and I think that sometimes that can cause us to kind of gloss over the seriousness of who he was at this particular moment in history. This was not future Paul, this is Saul. This is Saul who at the end of Acts 7 and into Acts 8 stood approvingly over the murder of Stephan as Stephan used his final words to ask God to forgive his killers. This is Saul who was on a fully legal mission to pursue the destruction of this church and even these people. Legal, because he is a Pharisee, he is part of the religious elite, and you can see at the beginning of chapter 9 here that Saul consulted the high priest and even had letters drawn up and sent before him to validate his attack on the church and on Christians.
So yes, this isn’t 1 Corinthians 13, “love is patient, love is kind, love doesn’t envy, and is not prideful” …Paul. This is, what does it say there? “Still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” Saul. There’s obviously a big difference, he’s not the wiser, transformed by Christ man we know as Paul, instead he’s this well-educated, late 20’s, probably has more power than he needed to have at that age which was going to his head, and was doing some terrible things to people that I’m sure he carried some level of regret for in his later years.
And we find this guy today on the road to Damascus. Damascus which would be in modern day Syria which is about 135 miles by foot from Saul’s last recorded location in Jerusalem in the previous chapter. You’ve got to be serious about a job to walk 135 miles to do it and then knowing that you had to walk back with all your prisoners as well on top of that. That’s like walking from Indio to San Diego which google maps puts at about 140 miles and 47 hours of walking. And it was somewhere along this long stretch of road from Jerusalem to Damascus that verse 3 happens.
Now this is a crazy moment and I’m one who likes to consider what people were going through when we read scripture. We know from verse 7 that Saul wasn’t alone on this trip. So, Saul and this group of other men who likely shared in his same terrible objectives were walking along this road when suddenly as Acts 22 describes it, a “Great light from heaven” surrounded Saul. And Saul falls to the ground. Kind of reminds me of Revelation 1 when John see’s Jesus in a vision and it says that he fell to the ground as though he was dead. And so, we have this crazy light hitting Paul, Paul is now on the ground, the guys around him are frozen, like what in the world is going on, we know from elsewhere that they hear a voice, but they can’t understand it, and now Paul on the ground is having a conversation with the voice they can’t understand and the person that they cannot see. It’s an interesting situation to say the least.
And after all of that, it is here in this conversation that we find our main focus for this evening. And let me ask a question as we prepare to continue forward:
What should our response be when confronted with an Almighty God?
I think we can learn a thing or two from Saul’s responses here. Jesus starts the conversation at the end of verse 4 by saying “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” When you really stop to think about it, that must be a terrible moment to look back on. I mean you have been terrorizing these people, hurting these people, seeking to stop this movement of the church, and now to have Jesus Himself confronting you to ask, “Why are YOU persecuting ME?” The stakes just went up dramatically for this man in this moment. And now I don’t know if he comprehended who exactly was speaking to him at this point, but the supernatural nature of these events must have limited the options running through his head quite a bit and so he responds with a question:
Who are You, Lord?
We can see from how this question is worded that even if Saul wasn’t sure who he was talking to at this point that he definitely recognized that whoever was speaking to him was greater than he was and brought that level of respect to the asking of this question. So “Who are You, Lord?” and now as the response comes there will be no more grey area, because the response is “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” and “it is hard for you to kick against the goads”. Now I think we can all understand the “I am Jesus” part, but what about the “it is hard for you to kick against the goads” part. What does this mean? The goads that Jesus is talking about were simply sharpened sticks that were used to poke livestock to convince them to move in the direction that they needed to go, and the livestock would learn that if they kicked back or kept going a different way that the goads would probably hurt more. You know Saul has been going one way, honestly a terrible way as we have discussed, but probably in complete sincerity, I am sure he thought he was on the right side of things and likely felt it was the right cause to be fighting for. But here at this moment comes Jesus with the sharp stick of dramatic intervention to change the course of Saul’s life.
And now things are really starting to set in for Saul, as if the blinding light, collapsing to the ground, and a hearing a voice from someone he cannot see weren’t enough, he now understands that this voice belongs to the very Son of God. This is Jesus Christ speaking to Saul and He is asking why you are persecuting HIM? The following statement at the beginning of verse 6 says that he was trembling and astonished. And he should be. I mean I wonder what is running through his head at this moment. Has the God that I have apparently been fighting against and working so hard to hurt and imprison His followers come to destroy me? I mean that’s probably the first thing that I would think. I don’t think my first thought process in this situation would be “Yes! God has come to give me a second chance and change the things I have been doing!” I mean I’m literally on my way to destroy His people, His Church so you better believe he is trembling and astonished right now. And with the weight of all of that resting upon him now, he follows up his great first question of “Who are You, Lord?” with a perfect second question of “Lord, what do You want me to do?”. And as he asks this second question, he knows exactly who the LORD is to whom he is asking this question. Maybe he’s trembling and bracing himself to die, who knows, it couldn’t have been a comfortable moment in any case, but now fully aware of Jesus Who he is talking to he says “Lord (Jesus), what do You want me to do?”
It’s these two questions that Saul asks that are the reason that we are in this passage tonight:
“Who are You, Lord?” and “Lord, what do You want me to do?”
I asked a few minutes ago “What should our response be when confronted by an Almighty God?” and these two questions are a really good place to start. You see my concern in observing a lot of the church and Christians today is that we haven’t really understood the answer to that first question and not understanding that has maybe caused us not to ask the second question with much seriousness, or maybe even not at all really. If we went around asking people, asking Christians Who is your God? Tell me about Him. I think we would get some answers that are basically like God is a storybook character and I know all these stories about Him all the way from Sunday School as a child to last Sunday in the church service. I think we would get plenty of answers from people that can give you all types of big theological words, and definitions, and references, and whatever else, but unfortunately the reality might be that they simply have knowledge of God in their head, but their relationship with Him is weak or non-existent. Jesus Himself said plenty of people are going to say Lord, Lord I did all of this in your name, or just maybe (and this is just a thought) oh but I knew all of this stuff about your name. And Jesus might say I never knew you, because there was never a real relationship there. And even more answers I am sure if you listened to what people were saying would actually not be a description of the one true God, the God of the Bible, at all. So many think that the Bible is open for them to just pick and choose the elements of it that they like or that they are comfortable with and in doing this they have created a little “g” god that works for them, that they are comfortable with, and we’re no longer talking about capital “G” God at all anymore.
When it comes down to it how many of us really understand “Who are You, Lord?” How many of us have at the core of our focus:
- The God who is the Maker of Heaven and Earth and all that is within them
- The God who is to be taken seriously who flooded His entire creation and saved one family
- The God who rescued His people from the clutches of tyranny in Egypt, but also let them struggle in the desert for their continued issues
- The God who is completely in control of all things, who causes the rise and fall of world leaders, nations, borders, and so much more
- The God who planned before this very Earth was even made to rescue people from sin and judgement
- The God who inspired people to prophesy of One Who was coming to do just that
- The God who Himself came down in the form of a man to suffer and die in our place
- The God who rose from death in victory, made good on His claims, and paved the path to salvation for us
And there is so much more, this has perhaps only put the faintest scratch into the surface of knowing Him and not to mention all the incredible attributes that He exhibits
And again, these are just words and facts and it’s possible to rattle these off without really comprehending any of the gravity of Who He is. But that’s the thing, we need that gravity, we need to feel the weight of the reality of the Almighty God. Because if we don’t then I am not convinced that we will really, seriously, ask Him “Lord, what do You want me to do?” and plan to follow Him down that path no matter what it is.
Saul here was directly confronted with the gravity of who God is. This moment had to radically transform his outlook on life. And as the weight of the truth of who Jesus is came upon him here, then with respect and seriousness he asked Jesus what he wanted him to do. And Jesus said there in verse 6, “Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” And this is an interesting part as well, because Jesus could have, but did not give Saul the whole game plan right here. He just gave him the next step to follow, and sometimes this is where my struggle is. For me, I’m like I want to know the whole picture, I want to know every element that we’re moving towards, maybe I can strategize or put or thought into it if I know more of the plan, but I have found that often it is very much like this in following Jesus. That there is just a next step, and we’ll learn more when we get there. That can be hard to deal with at times, at least for me, but it forces us into greater reliance upon Him and His guidance through His plan for us which in the end is going to be way better than whatever I was going to come up with anyways.
And so, for Saul here, he gets up off the ground, he’s completely blind, the people around him are likely in some sort of a state of shock and they had to take him by the hand and guide him the rest of the way into Damascus. And there he sat blind, not eating, not drinking, probably in a bit of shock himself as his entire understanding of everything had just been shaken off its very foundations.
Who among us would want to deal with this man? How many of us would write him off as unsavable or too dangerous, or not worth our time? Our view of people must not be limited to our small-minded opinions and preconceived notions, but open to the possibility of divine intervention and transformation. Because who is this God Whom we claim relationship with that would and could save a man like this? Have we stopped recently/constantly to remember “WHO ARE YOU LORD?”. Our faith in the gravity of the answer to that question will likely determine if we ask the next question and actually do something about it. “What do You want me to do Lord?”. We probably won’t ask that often or at all if we aren’t truly in awe of Who He is. Maybe we put forward the facade of it but are we truly doing it and are we listening and looking for His answer. Sometimes His answer isn’t what you are looking for, often it’s not the whole picture at once. It might be an uncomfortable answer, it might be the opposite of what you were planning, it might be a lot of different things, but if you can tell it’s of Him do you have enough faith in Him and respect of Him to act on it regardless? These questions might just define the rest of your life.