[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm wondering, is Darren brought up in a family where we didn't have a Bible in the household and never stepped foot in a church before, fell, fell, fell, I didn't need to know about a lot because I had every one of his fast forward to win all this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably mid-30s, I was living with my best man, my best mate, who's also part of this church, people of all sorts, and one of our very close friends was going through a rough time in his life, and thankfully he happened to stumble upon God and started asking questions of
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been paid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea how to install these questions, never ever been in a church or picking up a blog before during that time of asking some of these big questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say I'm not going to draw a couple from Josephus Witnesses, answered and, yeah, unfortunately, Josephus Witnesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Couple, I basically told him what he wanted to
[SPEAKER_00]: Evils were going to help come up with some scripture from the Bible to try to disprove some of the things that Jarvis would just vape but lazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: For someone that's never picked up the Bible before, that was a pretty daunting and had no idea where to start.
[SPEAKER_00]: That night was the first time I picked up the Bible and I thought I was a cowl.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I want to do is just randomly flick open the Bible, start reading and hope for the best, and it really sort of, I suppose, got what we're thinking about, some of the stuff that is else reading, and that process opened up the doors for me to start asking more questions and having discussions with people in particular about what all this is about, and then the more
[SPEAKER_00]: the truth and proof that it actually didn't happen, but it was just under my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a country in the Bible which talks about scales and neurons.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm knowingly that was me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just wasn't whatever it is, it's great to hear the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully, God showed me grace and took those scales off it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for someone that was quite scared to call it star,
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe how true we know how real this story is made for Jesus, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: How cool is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Love hearing that story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love hearing stories of people coming to fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: People meeting Jesus for the first time.
[SPEAKER_01]: No two stories are the same, and we could go around this morning and hear the many different stories of people meeting Jesus, and we need to tell those stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to encourage you after the service today to ask someone, how did you meet Jesus?
[SPEAKER_01]: And hear that story, because those stories are so encouraging for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this morning, we're going to continue into the book of Acts.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Acts, we actually find a number of conversion stories in Acts 8, 9, and 10.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see three in a row.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're all very different from one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we're going to look at Acts chapter 9 if you've got your Bibles.
[SPEAKER_01]: The most famous conversion story of them all.
[SPEAKER_01]: The story of Saul, who just a few chapters later becomes the Apostle Paul.
[SPEAKER_01]: Darren told us in his story that he went searching.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had questions he wanted to find the answers for, and he found Jesus as a result of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Saul was very different to Darren.
[SPEAKER_01]: The story of Saul is about a man who was not searching.
[SPEAKER_01]: He felt very certain of the answers that he already had.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't open to the person of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he was sprinting the exact opposite way.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was wanting to murder and persecute the followers of Jesus and Jesus ran him down anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: Darren's and Saul's story start in very different places but they actually both end up in exactly the same place with scales falling from their eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these stories both teach us about grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every time I read Soul Story, Grace just pops off the page at me, and I want to speak this morning about grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Four things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Firstly, Grace sees you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace finds you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace sends you and it transforms you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's just recap where we've been and where we met Saul already in this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: We first met him in chapter seven.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in chapter seven in verse 57, we find that great wave of persecution is beginning to break out against the church in Jerusalem with the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the end of that account, we see Saul introduced for the first time.
[SPEAKER_01]: As they, they, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council covered their ears and yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed him, Stephen, and they dragged him out of the city and they began to stone him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul, and then chapped to aid, and Saul approved of their killing him.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the next day, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
[SPEAKER_01]: Godly men buried Stephen and mourned for him deeply, but Saul began to destroy the church, going from house to house.
[SPEAKER_01]: He dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is all we know about Saul to this point in Acts.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is young.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is at the stoning of Stephen.
[SPEAKER_01]: He approves of that killing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he is on our mission to destroy the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: We pick up the story in chapter nine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, Stort-Soul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples.
[SPEAKER_01]: He went to the high priest and asked 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.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why Damascus?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Saul actually had wiped out most of the church in Jerusalem, and he wanted to continue that work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Damascus was a place that had a sizable Jewish population.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had numerous synagogues there, and it seems that a number of the Christians, followers of the way as they called himself, had fled to Damascus.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was also a major hub of trade.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if this movement of Christians took hold there, it would spread throughout the rest of the region and beyond.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a strategic place for Saul to go and to continue his work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is Saul at this point?
[SPEAKER_01]: Acts doesn't tell us a lot about Saul.
[SPEAKER_01]: All we see here is that he seems to be a fog.
[SPEAKER_01]: A violent monster, the kind of person who needs to be knocked flat on his back and turned around.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is who we would expect to have some lightning bolt take him out from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or we really see him in these verses that he's breathing out murderous threats.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Greek, that means he's inhaling murderous threats.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's taking it in.
[SPEAKER_01]: and that the imagery is really striking of him dragging people from their homes.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there are actually layers to solve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Layers that we don't see in the Acts account, just like there are layers to you and me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see, Saul is actually someone who has seen as the best of the best to his contemporaries.
[SPEAKER_01]: We actually see him describe himself in Philippians.
[SPEAKER_01]: in this way he calls himself a Hebrew of all of Hebrews.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is the best of the best of his kind.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was trained under one of the most respected teachers of his time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has a great lineage.
[SPEAKER_01]: He describes himself in Philippians 3-6 in this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says,
[SPEAKER_01]: Saul has a great lineage.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's kept all the rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: Better than you and I could.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a model student.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's intelligent.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's devout.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's willing to put what he believes into practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the kind of guy that parents would point to and say, why can't you be more like him?
[SPEAKER_01]: everything he did he did with zeal and out of a genuine devotion to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He thought he was serving God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was so sure that he was right.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was willing to give his life to it and destroy others in the process.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was sincere.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was devout and he was catastrophically wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's worth sitting with for a moment because our society tells us that if you are sincere
[SPEAKER_01]: If you stay true to yourself, you're on the right path.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Saul shows us how untrue that is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It meant everything to him what he was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was true to himself, and he was walking in exactly the wrong direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's one layer of soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: To the people of Jerusalem, he was a righteous man, a defender of the faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: He believed that of himself and others did too.
[SPEAKER_01]: He looked in the mirror and he saw a man that was right with his view of who God was.
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course there was another group of people who would have scoffed at that view of soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was not a good man.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was not a righteous man.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was hunting them down.
[SPEAKER_01]: To the men and women that he was dragging out of homes, Saul wasn't a holy righteous man.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was their nightmare.
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing that they taught their children to fear and avoid, he was the enemy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was unredeemable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So which of these two views was Saul?
[SPEAKER_01]: The righteous man that his community admired or the terror, his victims dreaded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both of those are human views and they're partial.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a third way of seeing Saul, the way that God saw him.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see, God wasn't impressed by Saul's CV.
[SPEAKER_01]: All the credentials that had Jerusalem celebrating him up, celebrating him.
[SPEAKER_01]: God saw past those credentials.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't fooled by Saul's zeal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where everyone else sort of devout man, serving God.
[SPEAKER_01]: God saw a man who was so certain he was right that he'd gone completely blind to the truth standing in front of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God's view was more honest than He's admirers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't flatter Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's laid up whole with described Himself in a kind of startling way, not as the best of the best but as the worst of all sinners.
[SPEAKER_01]: because he'd finally come to see himself, the way God had seen him.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is actually how God saw him.
[SPEAKER_01]: All the goodness that he'd had in his life, all the rule following had kind of been a blind fold.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was as far from God as a person can get.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's the wonder of God's view.
[SPEAKER_01]: God didn't see him like his admirers, but he also didn't write him off like his victims.
[SPEAKER_01]: So his followers saw was beyond saving.
[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, who could belate blame them?
[SPEAKER_01]: But God looked at this man.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one breathing murderous thoughts and threats, the enemy, the worst of sinners.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he did not see someone who had gone too far.
[SPEAKER_01]: God refuses to view Saul and he refuses to see us.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way our admirers do, he doesn't flatter us, but he also doesn't ride us off the way our critics do.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way sometimes our inner voice does.
[SPEAKER_01]: God sees the worst about us.
[SPEAKER_01]: More clearly than anyone else in the room, but he still leans in with grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: God sees you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Saul, breathing murderous threats is on his way to Damascus.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's certain he's on a mission from God, which leaves us with a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you reach a man like this?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you reach a man like Saul?
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't argue him down.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's certain he's right, and he's smarter than you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't shame him because he's followed all the rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got nothing to be ashamed of.
[SPEAKER_01]: A man like this has no door you can knock on and gently open.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God doesn't knock.
[SPEAKER_01]: God ambushes him.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no other way to describe it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We pick up the story in Acts 9 verse 3.
[SPEAKER_01]: As he needs Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He fell to the ground and he heard a voice say to him,
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot we can pull out of these three verses, but two things stand out to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Firstly, Paul hears the voice of the resurrected Jesus, who speaks to him in a very personal way.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says to Saul, not why do you persecute my followers?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not why do you persecute my church?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you persecute me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Saul thought he'd been rounding up members of a troublesome sect who's found it was dead, but Jesus reveals to him that he is very much alive and he tells him every believer you've dragged from their home, every man and woman you've terrified, you were doing those things to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt all of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those people you wrote off as enemies, they are so joined to me that to touch them is to touch me.
[SPEAKER_01]: What a beautiful thing that Jesus says.
[SPEAKER_01]: It means that if you belong to Jesus, you are more joined to Him, more closely joined to Him than you can know.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are not a distant follower of a distant God, but you are so bound to Him, that when you are persecuted, that when you are suffered, when you suffer, he suffers with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's something so beautiful about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder whether this moment might be the very moment that an idea that Paul will later teach is born.
[SPEAKER_01]: Years later, he will describe the church, not as a club or an organization or an entity, but as a living and breathing body of Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he teaches the Corinthians that when one part of that body suffers, the whole body, the body of Christ suffers with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: His whole theology of what it means to be a follower of Jesus is so bound up with Jesus himself that you cannot touch one without touching the other.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder whether that idea was born right here as his face was down in the dust.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as Jesus said to him, why do you persecute me?
[SPEAKER_01]: The second thing that I've been pondering this week is about when this encounter happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Saul doesn't meet Jesus while Saul is on a search for Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't happen after a crisis of conscience or a sleepless night of doubt or after someone explains the gospel to him in a logical way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It happens mid-murderous mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: The letter is still in his bag on his way to torment Christians.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's hunting Jesus people.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the scandal of grace in this story, right there in the timing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Saul was found by Jesus before he went looking.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was pursued by Jesus when he was not worthy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was met by Jesus when he was still the enemy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fleming Rutledge puts it this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: She says, God's grace precedes our consciousness of sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: It reached soul before he even knew he needed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Needed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace finds you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is not how religion works.
[SPEAKER_01]: Certainly not souls religion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Religion says, clean yourself up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Follow the rules, get your life in order.
[SPEAKER_01]: Prove you are serious and then God will meet you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We carry that instinct deep within us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even those of us who've known the grace of Jesus for years, we fall back to this position.
[SPEAKER_01]: We feel like we need to get our lives in order before God will reach out to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul spends the rest of his life writing against that instinct, because of what happened here on that road.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder whether this is what he's thinking about when he writes in Romans 5, God demonstrates his own love for us in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in verse 10, for if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life, while we were God's enemies, while we were God's enemies, Paul knew exactly what that meant.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd literally been his enemy on the road to Damascus when God ambushed him.
[SPEAKER_01]: We continue in the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus continues to speak to Saul.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he says to Saul, now get up and go into the city.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you will be told what you must do.
[SPEAKER_01]: The men traveling with Saul stood their speechless.
[SPEAKER_01]: They heard the sound, but didn't see anyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he could see nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they led him by the hand into Damascus.
[SPEAKER_01]: For three days he was blind and did not eat or drink anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: New picture it, this great reversal that is happening before our eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So leaves Jerusalem, a man with all the answers, so certain that he's seen clearly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So sure of what he believes, and now he's in the dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: He can't see his belief and certainty are smashed.
[SPEAKER_01]: someone has to take this powerful man by the hand like a child and lead him into the city.
[SPEAKER_01]: A city that he must have imagined that he would ride into like a conqueror.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for three days, he's blind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three days, no food, no sight, no control.
[SPEAKER_01]: His world has been turned upside down.
[SPEAKER_01]: He must have wondered if this blindness was a punishment from the one that he just met on the road.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think it's a punishment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's actually mercy.
[SPEAKER_01]: because the blindness is a picture of something going on, much deeper in soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see, soul had been blind for years, without even knowing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like Darren described this morning, he didn't even know that the scales were there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So sure he saw everything that there was no room left for Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was never a soul's eyesight that was actually the problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was his confidence that he could see and operate just fine on his own.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now for three days, it's all stripped away.
[SPEAKER_01]: His sight, his confidence, his independence, his ability to fix things.
[SPEAKER_01]: The man who had all the answers is led by the hand into the dark with nothing to do, but to sit with the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: that he'd met on the road.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the lights began to go on in his spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three days in the dark, it's not hard to hear the echo of another three days in the dark, is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Three days that Jesus was in the dark, as he lay in the tomb, and the same shape is going on here in this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And three days later, he comes out, a life resurrected.
[SPEAKER_01]: The old soul doesn't get patched up and improved.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's buried.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul would spend the rest of his life saying that this is exactly what it means to meet Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: We die with him and we rise with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul knew this from the inside out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the story now shifts gears a little.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we go into Damascus and we meet another person, anonious, a disciple of Jesus, the Lord calls to him in the vision, anonious, yes, Lord he answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord told him, go to the house of Judas on the straight street, and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul for his praying.
[SPEAKER_01]: In a vision, he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get a little picture here of what is happening in these three days for Saul.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is he doing in these three days?
[SPEAKER_01]: He is praying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what happens in this state when he's praying?
[SPEAKER_01]: He has a vision.
[SPEAKER_01]: The blind man has a vision, not of punishment, but of restoration and healing and grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now watch how God brings grace to soul, not with another bolt of light, but with a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: an ordinary, frightened person named Anonis.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anonis has a vision and is told to go to Seoul Anonis does something really deeply human.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something we see time and time again when God calls people to do courageous things.
[SPEAKER_01]: He argues with God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord and Anaya said, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem and he has come here with your authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, do you know who this is?
[SPEAKER_01]: You can almost hear the terror in the Aronine Ice's voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's no wonder, he's been told to walk across town and lay his hands on a man who has come to that city to lay his hands on him and drag him away in chains.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he goes, what a courageous thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the line I can't get past.
[SPEAKER_01]: He walks into the man, and into the room, and this man who has every reason to be terrified, places he's hands on soul, and the first words that come out of his mouth are, brother, soul, brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: before Saul has proven anything, before there's even a shred of evidence that this is not a trap.
[SPEAKER_01]: The would-be victim looks at the persecutor and calls him family.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the gospel, in two words, grace with skin on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where I think it needs to land for most of us, because most of us in this room are not gonna be what Saul goes on to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry to break that too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of us won't write half the new testament.
[SPEAKER_01]: None of us will.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of us aren't going to plant churches across an empire.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not most of our callings.
[SPEAKER_01]: But every one of us can be an anise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every one of us knows someone that we have quietly written off.
[SPEAKER_01]: The relative who mocks our faith at every family dinner, or the colleague at work who makes our, whose politics makes our skin crawl, or the person who has abused you and hurt you, or hurt someone you love, the person you've stopped praying for, because honestly, what would be the point?
[SPEAKER_01]: So the question this story puts to us, is simple and uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is the person God might be sending you towards?
[SPEAKER_01]: The one you would rather avoid.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who might God have a radically grace-laden story for that He might be calling you to be a part of?
[SPEAKER_01]: We embark clay calls at an ice, one of the forgotten heroes of the Christian church.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine if He'd not gone to saw that day?
[SPEAKER_01]: The world would be a very different place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace sends you, because look at the Grace Layton story and an ice gets to be a part of.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look what each touch does.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've lost my place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then Adam and I went to the house and he entered it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Placing his hands on Saul, he said, Brother Saul, Jesus who appeared to you on the road, as you were coming here, has sent me 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.
[SPEAKER_01]: He got up and was baptized.
[SPEAKER_01]: And after taking some food, he reigned his strength.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something like scales fell from his eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: The same phrase Darren reached for the story in his story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Scales, he didn't even know we're there until they fell away and he could finally see.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the perfect picture.
[SPEAKER_01]: for Saul, something physical happens, but something spiritual as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: These scales that have been there for years, he just didn't know they were there, and now he could see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if the story stopped here, it would be remarkable.
[SPEAKER_01]: The enemy is welcomed.
[SPEAKER_01]: The persecutor is forgiven, but Grace doesn't just forgive a man like Saul, or you, or me, it remakes him.
[SPEAKER_01]: When God sent an anise, he said, this about Saul, in verse 15, this man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings to the people of Israel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace doesn't just wipe the slate clean for Saul.
[SPEAKER_01]: It hands him a purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: The very thing that Saul had been using to destroy the church, his fire, his drive, his relentless zeal.
[SPEAKER_01]: God doesn't take those things away, he redirects them and puts them to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the pattern of grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't erase who you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: It actually redeems it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we see in the next few verses that Saul still has the same zeal that he once had.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now just has a new master.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it happens really quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at what comes next.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 19, Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus, and it once he begins to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't rush past the order that's presented to us here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before Paul goes on to preach anything, he spends time with the disciples.
[SPEAKER_01]: The very people he comes to Damascus to arrest.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's now sitting among.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's eating with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's learning from them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The hunter moves in with the hunted.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace didn't just save Saul and then fire his straight back out on his own as a lone ranger.
[SPEAKER_01]: He plants him among God's people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, at once, he preachers and boy does he preach.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see some of it later on in Acts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Days after setting out to raid
[SPEAKER_01]: in synagogues, telling everyone that Jesus is the son of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much delicious irony in this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just amazes my love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This man who breathed out murderous threats, who was on a mission to imprison, spent the rest of his life writing letters soaked in love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them from prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: This man who desires to destroy the church goes on to travel the known world, starting churches.
[SPEAKER_01]: This man who stood up proving while Stephen was stoned for proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah was himself stoned and beaten and shipwrecks and finally executed
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd set out to wipe out the name of Jesus from the face of the earth, and he became the person who carried that name further than anyone in history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace didn't just tame a predator.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd made him the shepherd of the flock he'd been hunting.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we know is that soul soon to be Paul was radically remade by the grace of God, and that changing him marked every person he met.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace transforms you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's toward the end of his life, Paul writes something about this to a young master named Timothy.
[SPEAKER_01]: In first Timothy, chapter 1, he wrote this, he says, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for that very reason I was shown mercy, so that in me the worst of sinners Christ Jesus might display His immense patience as an example for those who would believe in Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's that phrase again the worst of sinners.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, this is the man who once looked in the mirror and saw someone who was right with God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't say he's the worst of sinners because he became worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says that because he could finally see and he what else is going on in these verses in Timothy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's saying, God didn't just forgive me, God made me an exhibit.
[SPEAKER_01]: God may be the proof, so that anyone looking at the violent, certain self-righteous enemy of God who has transformed could say, if Grace reached him, there's hope for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what has stood out to you in this story today, but these four things have struck me, firstly, Grace sees you, God sees you as you really are.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says you even more than you know yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Saul's deepest problem wasn't a sin that had been hiding.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a blindness that he didn't even know he had.
[SPEAKER_01]: And God sees not only the sin in our lives, but he actually sees our blind spots as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the relief in how he sees us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't look away.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows the real you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tim Keller once put the whole gospel into a single sentence.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've shared this numerous times in the past.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an amazing construction of a sentence.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yet at the same time, we are more loved and accepted in Jesus than we ever dared hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is exactly what Saul discovers on that road.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's what God offers us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace sees you, grace finds you.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one is beyond its reach.
[SPEAKER_01]: God looked at Saul, the worst of sinners, the enemy, and did not see someone who had gone too far.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this morning, if you sit here and you feel you've gone too far, that you've done things you can't undo, hear this, you are not beyond God's reach.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is pursuing you.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, grace transforms you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace doesn't just forgive who you are and leave you as you were.
[SPEAKER_01]: The same grace that stopped soul turned the persecutor into a shepherd.
[SPEAKER_01]: And whatever grace lays holds of, it begins to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it isn't finished with any of us yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And lastly, grace sends you,
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace is never meant to stop with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: It moves.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always on the move.
[SPEAKER_01]: From Jesus to Ananias, to Saul, and they're out into the world, and it's still moving.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still looking for the next person to receive it, and carry it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one is beyond it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not you, not the person you've written off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace sees you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace finds you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace transforms you and it sends you.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what happened to this man on the road to Damascus, and that's what God is doing in this room this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why in a moment we're going to come to the table, the Lord's table.
[SPEAKER_01]: A table that's not a reward for people who have earned it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a meal for people who have been seen, found, transformed, and sent by grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's pray together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Father, thank you for this beautiful story of grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: The same grace that saw found transformed and sent soul on that road two thousand years ago is still weaving its way through the world and into our stories today.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this morning we come to your table, the table of grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now to remember Jesus,
[SPEAKER_01]: who gave his life to open the door of grace for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know nothing we have done has earned us a place at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can only come up to it by your mercy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we come, we want to prepare our hearts by confessing who we are to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Almighty God, we have sinned against you.
[SPEAKER_01]: against our neighbor, in thoughts, word and deed.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have not loved you with our whole heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have not loved our neighbors as ourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are sorry and we repent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Through the grace of your Son, Jesus Christ who died for us forgive us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by your Holy Spirit,
[SPEAKER_01]: Restore us in your love.
[SPEAKER_01]: We thank you for the promise from your word that if we confess our sins, you are faithful and just you forgive us and wipe the slate completely clean.
[SPEAKER_01]: We thank you for pulling us out of the dark and bringing us home into the kingdom of your son, where we are forgiven and free.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen."
[SPEAKER_01]: On the night that Jesus was betrayed, He took bread and after giving thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples saying, take and eat.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is my body which is given for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do this in remembrance of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the same way after supper, he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink this, all of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: For as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Father, we thank you, that through these gifts we are made partakers of the precious blood, body and blood of your son, that he may live in us and we in him now and forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: The table is open to everyone who follows Jesus, come with nothing to prove, take the bread in the cup.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you wouldn't yet call yourself a follower, but something inside you this morning wants to be, don't just stay in your seat, come forward, and ask one of our prayer teams who will be standing in front of the crosses to pray for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So come, Grace sees you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace has found you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grace is transforming you, and when you rise from here, grace will send you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our attendance will now direct you to come forward and take communion.