Clough Acts Lesson 23

Holy Spirit Guiding the Church – Acts 9:10-30

I’ll answer some questions on the feedback cards. One question is, please comment on Paul’s strange question in Acts 9:5, obviously it’s not a question of identity. Now obviously it is a question of identity; the question involves when Paul, Saul looked up and he saw Jesus Christ in his vision on the Damascus Road, he said Kurios, who are you? And the word Kurios in that kind of a context just is the word for “Sir.” “Sir, who are you?” He recognized He’s a divine personage but because apparently Saul never saw Jesus while Jesus was in His mortal body, even though Jesus Christ is very clear to Saul in the vision, he just doesn’t know who He is by way of actual identity.

Talking to another believer the other day about Matthew 24 a question was raised about the rapture that I’d never thought of. What about children below the age of responsibility, especially those of Christian parents? Will they remain or be raptured along with Christians and the rest of the believers? This is a question that would pertain to whatever view of the rapture you hold, pre, a or post tribulation, it doesn’t make any difference, you still have to answer the question, and Scriptures really don’t tell us a direct answer. There is one passage in 1 Corinthians 7 that talks about children being sanctified by their parents and it would seem to suggest in that case that children below the age of resurrected just like anyone above the age of responsibility who has trusted in Christ.

The third question is what is the Biblical view concerning mercenary, especially in the light of the recent executions in Angola. The application here is simply the doctrine of just war as it was developed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, carried on in the days of the Reformation by Luther and Calvin. And that is that if it’s a just war it’s legitimate to go out and kill. You hire yourself out to a government that’s fighting a just war, that’s legitimate. There are Biblical mercenaries, the Hittite body guard of King David was obviously mercenary and men have been, Jewish people hired out as mercenaries over the centuries; Christians in the first two or three centuries of the Church, in fact, had one great legion all by themselves, it’s the thunder legion of the Roman army, and these men fought in the [can’t understand word] campaign and had quite an outstanding record of themselves. There’s no traditional opposition that I know of in Scripture against mercenaries.

In Acts 9 we have the conversion of Saul and of course this was one of the greatest conversions, or the greatest conversion in church history; there have been others down through time such as Augustine, but probably the most famous of all is Saul, the reason being because Saul later became the theoretician, the leading theoretician of the Christian church. And this conversion demonstrates the principle that we have seen operate so often in the book of Acts, that before the Holy Spirit works in sense of an action or campaign He always has a doctrine man, that is some man who has sought out what the Christian position is in that situation. He did this with Stephen; in the first seven chapters of Acts the Church was centered at Jerusalem. God said that the Church would be witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the world. And so the book of Acts can be regarded in the three parts of Acts 1:8. And in Acts 8-9 you have the Church breaking out and beginning to carry the gospel of resurrection into Judea and Samaria. But before the Church could do that God had to prepare a man to make the break, and that man’s name was Stephen, a deacon in Acts 6, a man who studied the Word very carefully, who was a Hellenistic Jew by background and therefore knew how to apply the Word of God to the Levant or the eastern Mediterranean.

And the third stage of the Church was to the entire world and before God could make this break He had to have a man, equal or greater than Stephen who would link all the doctrine together and give the Church its basic missionary document. And the basic missionary doctrine is collectively the New Testament epistles. Paul was that man; Paul was selected to do that job and the reason that God always operates first with doctrine, then with action, is because all Christian action has to be done by faith and I cannot operate by faith if I have no assurance that I am really not doing God’s will. And I can’t tell whether I’m doing God’s will if I don’t know something. And this, therefore, forces us back to the content of Scripture, and therefore Saul’s work is the requirement, the prerequisite, for everything else that’s going to follow in the Church Age. If Saul had died, if he was killed, if he was martyred, from the human point of view the Christian would just never have existed. It was Saul who launched Christianity out into the world.

Now for this reason this entire particular chapter of the Bible has come under vicious attack by critics who have felt intellectually hostile to the Christian faith that they have got to explain this whole conversion thing away. And therefore like we said when we studied the first nine verses last week, the prevailing explanation is that poor old Saul, as he hobbled along the Damascus Road had a nervous breakdown and a sunstroke at the same time and out of this came worldwide Christianity. Now we reject that concept because we reject this anti-supernaturalist faith of these critics who always insist upon trying to explain human history inside a little box and we don’t allow any divine influences from outside the box to come in and affect history. And this is there is their faith; they can’t prove this, they have to start off believing this. This is their presupposition. We don’t start with that, we start with a presupposition of the inerrant Word of God and we build intellectually from that point.

Everyone starts with a presupposition; those of you who are Christians and who have studied the Scriptures carefully, don’t be embarrassed about admitting your presuppositions. Often times you’ll be in conversation discussion with someone, and they’ll just clamp right down on you, you’re a religious person, you have faith but I have reason. Now there is no such thing as a person who is without faith. The Bible insists that man in his heart is either going in submission to God’s revelation or in rejection against God’s revelation. Either way he has faith; one man has faith that God’s Word is what it says and the other man has faith that God can’t possibly exist at all and His authoritative word obviously is not authoritative. Both positions are by faith positions, so every man starts with faith. The question is not faith and reason; the question is the direction of the faith.

At this point we want to remember some of the ways in which the Holy Spirit has worked in Acts, for Acts can tell us a lot of things that we need to be reminded of, particularly in our own fundamental circles. When someone becomes a Christian, at some point in time, whether it’s as a child or whether it’s as an adult there’s always the matter of what is called follow up. Who does the follow up? How long does this follow up occur? How long does it take a person to get grounded in the faith? Always a matter of follow up, and there’s some very, very weird ideas about follow up Very often even fundamental organizations think that because someone becomes a Christian yesterday, therefore in the next 72 hours they’re supposed to somehow rise from the dead and engage in a fulltime ministry. The Bible warns time and time again against this kind of thing, novices are not to be put in positions of responsibility. Your responsibility if you have recently become a Christian is to do nothing; don’t worry about giving money, joining a church, going through all sorts of religious activities. Your one thing, it’s like a newborn infant, who “desires the sincere milk of the Word,” according to Peter, is to simply get fed. That’s your one job, nothing else. Now you don’t find a newborn baby trying to help his mother do the dishes. The baby can do only one thing; he is there to grow. And all that mother does for the first year of that baby’s life is feed, feed, feed and feed, and then change diapers of course. Then out of that comes a life that’s really productive. But that baby doesn’t start its life by doing something, by involving itself in some big organized labor, and yet how strange when someone is born spiritually we suddenly drop everything we’ve learned in the physical world and immediately begin to put him into action and give their glowing testimony in this Christian group and that Christian group and we wonder why, after all this process goes on, why we don’t have at the end of the line people who are mature, who can handle themselves spiritually. It’s obvious, would your children be mature, handling themselves as adults, if you didn’t take care of them and just simply fed them for the first three years of their life. Why do we do things physically, but then when it comes to the spiritual things we drop every bit of common sense we have.

Now the one lesson that is going to be more prominent than any other in Acts 9 is going to be how the Holy Spirit follows up Saul. Saul, who later becomes Paul, is a model of a problem convert. He is a model because, for one thing he is a genius, and geniuses are always problems because geniuses can think so much faster than the normal person; they think everyone else can think as fast as they can. Or oftentimes after they discover that everyone cannot think as fast as they can, they become fatheaded and frequently geniuses become very proud and very obnoxious individuals and so thus Saul has a tendency in his soul from the natural point of view of being an obnoxious genius. He thinks that he is qualified to do the work of the ministry when he is not qualified to do the work of the ministry and so in this chapter you will see the Holy Spirit slaps Paul’s wrist several times and will go seemingly around robbing his barn to get Saul integrated and plugged into the Church program correctly, such that the end result is that this genius is going to be a grace oriented believer, he’s going to be a relaxed believer, he is going to understand his dependency on other people who are not as smart as he is. And this is the kind of doctrine that Paul learned early in his Christian life; he learned it the hard way. He is a great man of great academic training but when it came to learning doctrine it appears he suddenly [can’t understand word] and from this passage that Saul, or Paul the apostle had to learn most of his doctrine in the college of hard knocks, brilliant man, though he was, because his soul was so inclined to be obnoxious and fatheaded that the only way he could function is this hard way.

So today we’re going to study the follow up program of the Holy Spirit beginning in Acts 9:10. Remember that Saul has been on an absolute fast for three days and three nights. Absolute fasting means he had no water and since the Bible, at least three times in the text indicates that a human being can survive without water for 72 hours, it suggests that you can, at least function this long in life without water. Now you can function without food, contrary to what most people think, you can function without food for weeks. People who have been downed in aircraft accidents in the arctic, for example have lived off the snow and have done a pretty good job of it for 2, 3, 4 weeks at a time. So you can survive if you can get drinkable water. That’s the elementary point of survival, water. Now Saul has reached his 72 hour limit and now the Lord is going to do something else in another place.

Acts 9:10, “And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord. [11] And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prays, [12] And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.” So the Lord, seemingly does a very inefficient thing. The object is to take the community of Damascus, which is one of the oldest cities in the ancient world. Here’s the Damascus Road and by tradition Saul was converted at the second mile post outside the southwest gate of the city of Damascus, and Damascus has an unusual feature. Most ancient cities, if you go to them their roads are designed like cow paths, and you can go up the street and get lost because the street changes its name as you go up the street, no 16^th street, 17^th street, 18^th street, nothing that simple; it’s not a grid work. So just because you live in Texas where the cities are laid out by sections, don’t think that the ancient cities were laid out this way because they weren’t; they were laid out just the way the people went down to the pool to get the water and these paths became larger and larger and they became streets.

One of the most unusual features about the Damascus which is still there is this street called Straight Street. Today you can take a tour of Straight Street and the guide will take you by a little house over here called the house of Judas; of course he doesn’t tell you but that particular house is on top of 30 feet of debris over the first century rubble, but nevertheless for tourism and for the buck it makes a good story that that’s Judas’ house. But somewhere underneath the rubble of the current Straight Street in the city of Damascus generally lies this Straight Street of the book of Acts. And the point is that we have Saul isolated in the non-Christian Hebrew community. That is, the Jewish synagogue in this area, and the problem is that somewhere lurking in this city, we don’t know where, is the Christian Hebrew group.

Now the problem is, how do we plug Saul, who is a persecutor, from this group over here who are the Christian Jews who fear him, you’ve got to plug the two together. And God is doing this by working with Ananias. God is picking out Ananias for many, many different reasons. One of the reasons is that Ananias, according to Acts 22:12, you’ll see that Ananias had a unique qualification and this explains why, maybe there were 150 different Christians in the city of Damascus that afternoon but only Ananias is picked and the reason that only Ananias is picked, among other is this one. “And Ananias, a devout man according to the Law, having a good report of all the Jews that dwelt there,” ah, who do you need for a contact man? You need somebody that’s going to be a believer who has trusted that Jesus is the Messiah and yet someone who is respected by the non-Christian Hebrew community; you’ve got to get a bridge man, a contact man; Ananias is the contact man. God has sovereignly chosen Ananias as the link up between Saul who is at Judas’ house where there all non-Christians and the believing Church.

He goes to this house and he’s given a certain thing. Ananias is told by the Lord Jesus Christ that certain things have happened in Saul’s life. He’s doing this, by the way, because this is one of the testimonies to Saul that this whole thing isn’t a dream, that it in fact isn’t sunstroke or a nervous breakdown but actually a supernatural verbal revelation of God.

And so the Lord told him, in verse 12, that he’s already seen you in a vision, and he’s seen you putting your hand on his head, “that he may receive his sight.” Up to this verse everything is going smoothly. Now we begin a series of lessons, lessons that men have to learn the hard way.

And Ananias in Acts 9:13 does what we so often all do in our piety, and that is we deeply rebel against God and malign His character. Notice what Ananias says, “Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: [14] And here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on Thy name.” You don’t catch it the way it’s translated in the King James; this is a little sarcastic jab, always done, by the way in very religious language so it sounds so saintly, when in fact he just told the Lord, Lord, do You really know what you’re talking about. Now I’ve got some hot tip Lord that this guy is a traitor, do You understand that, he’s a traitor. Now this is what he’s doing in fact.

Now let’s go back to God’s character for a moment. God is sovereign, God is righteousness, God is loving, God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, immutable, eternal and one of the clear attributes is that He is omniscient and all knowing for all eternity, He knew every fact and every interpretation of every fact. God knew millions and millions of years before this what exactly Saul’s character was. He didn’t have to be told by Ananias some hot new G-2 stuff that just came up on Saul. But this, in effect is what Ananias does. Imagine this, because any time we react in unbelief against the Lord we’re basically maligning His character. We won’t admit that, of course, we’re too nice to admit that but in effect that’s what we’ve done. At this point Ananias has denied God, that God is omniscient, that God needs his great reservoir of knowledge and needs to be counseled by Ananias. God and Ananias will now rule the universe, not God alone.

And then he has another little innuendo here in the text; he says at the end of verse 13, “I have heard by many how much evil he has done to thy saints,” [14] “And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all that call upon thy name.” In other words, Lord, do you really love the Christian community here in Damascus, because if you do, you’re not being too wise letting this persecutor come into our midst and get all the scope on who’s a member, where they live, how much money they’ve got and all of that private knowledge, and go back to Jerusalem and report this to the authorities. Now Lord, we love You, but do You love us. That’s the insinuation, and so here he’s denying another attribute of God. This is a direct maligning criticism of unbelief on God’s character. And I want you to notice how a man who two minutes before this point was in conversation, supernaturally with God, and how in 60 seconds or 120 seconds before he turns around and engages in this blasphemy.

And there’s another Scripture analogy to this principle. Turn to that famous passage in Matthew 16, the passage that today Romanists use to ground the Church on. It was this text that was debated so often in the great days of the Protestant Reformation, but we’re looking at it not from the standpoint of the Protestant Reformation, we’re looking at it from just the simpler standpoint of a little principle. Matthew 16:16, this is that passage where Jesus had been asking the disciples who He was. “And Simon Peter answered and said,” well, as far as I’m concerned, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” a tremendously clear cut testimony. And to show you that this is a genuine thing and that God is really turned on by Peter, notice in verse 17 what Jesus said. “And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto you, but My Father, who is in heaven.” So there’s the setting, Peter sits there, everybody else gives a fouled up answer except Peter and Peter says I don’t care what they say, as far as what I say, I say you are the Christ. This means that Peter has been taught by God, he at that point is in fellowship with God, and cruising. Fine, but before two seconds have elapsed, drop down to verse 22, the same conversation, the same setting, the same parties to the conversation, Jesus and the Apostle Peter, and Jesus has begun to elaborate on His being the Christ and that the Christ must suffer. And in verse 22, Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee.” In other words, he is trying to counsel God on a better way of running history. [23] So “Jesus turned and said unto Peter,” now look at the seriousness of this, here Jesus turns to an apostle who has just been given a precious bit of revelation, who obviously is learning, who is obviously submissive to God in his conscious mind, he just gets through confessing that Jesus is the Christ and then he plops out with this and so what Jesus do, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” And do you notice who he’s talking to? He’s not talking to Satan as though Satan is out in the clouds somewhere, He’s looking Peter straight in the eye, and there’s only one theological deduction that you can come to from this passage, and that is that at this point Satan is using Peter’s brain and his mouth to communicate back to Jesus Christ.

How can this be, a man who two minutes before just was perfectly in fellowship with the Lord, got all this revelation, and then boom he comes out with a satanic line. How can this be? Doctrine of the depraved sin nature, that’s how it can be. A believer who is regenerated, who was taught by the Holy Spirit, can come out with the most satanic verbalizations and actions that you can imagine. And can do so, all of us, can do so within seconds of one and the other. You see how dangerous the human nature is, and if you grasp this threat that you have, all of us have, the depraved sin nature, why it must be that God does not rely upon our counsel to run history. We are too unreliable, we cannot be depended upon and therefore it is He who must be depended upon.

Back to Acts 9 and see Ananias, who like Peter, has just received a precious piece of revelation, who is obviously in fellowship, and just as soon as it clicks he comes out with a bunch of crud. Verses 13-14, Ananias’ attempt at advising God. Now don’t looked shocked, some people go oh, gee, you know this guy, is he a believer? Sure he is. Who are you kidding, doesn’t this strike a familiar note in yourself. Either you’re naïve or you are excellent poker players.

Acts 9:15, the Lord’s answer, [“But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way:”] and in the Greek it’s really astounding because it’s not “Go thy way,” “Get going,” that’s what it is. This is one of those places where if you read the original language, the original languages have a lot more power to them. What the Lord says is will you shut up and get going. Now I told you to go over on the Straight Street to a house of Judas so just go there and don’t try to tell Me how to run the universe; that’s the spirit in which the Lord speaks to Ananias. And you’ll see that Ananias is very teachable, and he learned, but he had to learn the hard way. A lot of people are going to learn the hard way before we’re through this particular passage, but just be encouraged that if you have had problems learning things the hard way, through suffering and through adversity, just join the club, you’re not the lone ranger. This is the usual way we all learn God’s truths. We have to have our heads bounced off the wall a couple of times because this is basically the way we are. We’re just depraved creatures who reject the truth and we have to have it pounded in, and so the Lord does this: “Just get going.” And He gives an answer, sometimes the Lord will give an answer, sometimes He won’t, here He does.

“You get going, for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel:” Now God is giving a lot of reasons in this short verse to why Saul is His man. First of all, notice he says “Gentiles” first; that should catch your eye because up to now no Gentiles had been witnessed to. “Gentiles, kings, and the sons of Israel.” Notice the order. All right, this verse will be to Saul or Paul’s career what Acts 1:8 is to the whole book of Acts. This is a divine outline of the man’s life and Saul will begin to witness to Gentiles first; this is God’s calling.

Now watch this order because it’s going to get fouled up at the end; in a few verses you’re going to see Saul is trying to screw up the order here and you’re going to find God comes down, slaps his wrist, just like He did Ananias. God’s order for Saul’s life is to witness to Gentiles first, then as a result of the witnessing to Gentiles he is going to reach the leaders and the political establishment of his time. Paul is going to witness to King Agrippa, he is going to witness to some of the high Roman officials and apparently [can’t understand word] got the way to Rome before he was killed. And as a result of this he is later on… later on going to witness to the sons of Israel, and he does, in the last part of the book of Acts Saul comes back and where is he? In the temple of Jerusalem. So this is God’s intended outline of Saul’s calling, and God’s answer to Ananias, his attempted giving advice, is that Ananias, I am the One who has given Saul his calling. I have chosen history to run this way and your job is to follow instructions, not give me lip on how to do it.

All right, once this happens… by the way, he also says “he is chosen to bear My name,” this is a reference to the witnessing, “bearing My name” means to explain My character, and Saul will certainly explain the character. And by the way, Saul has a background, a tremendous background qualifies him to go to the Gentiles. Let’s look a little bit at Saul’s background and remember that though Saul became a Christian at probably age 21 or above, this is kind of guess work, I just throw that our for a figure, all these 21 years until he became a Christian he was developing natural abilities from his home, from his parents, from his schooling. All these natural abilities now are not going to be thrown away when he becomes a Christian, they’re going to be used in a different way, perhaps, but they’re not going to be discarded. Let’s look at some of those natural abilities.

First of all, he was born geographically at Tarsus. Where was Tarsus? Tarsus was at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. There were three university centers in the ancient world; one was at Athens, one was at Alexandria that had the largest library in the ancient world, and one was at Tarsus. So it’s significant that Paul was born and lived the first years of his life in one of the three top major university centers of the world. That tells you something, that Saul’s family was probably well-educated and well off. These were natural abilities; now every once in a while, particular in fundamental circles you tend to get this attitude that nobody can be a great Christians unless they crawl out of the gutter some place, unless they grew up in some gross environment across the railroad tracks. Now there have been great Christians that have come out of the gutter; there’s nothing wrong with that but I want you to notice that the greatest man in the history of the Christian church is not a gutter man; he was a man who for the first 20 years of his life had the best that society could offer. Tarsus gave him education. Now the presuppositions of the education were all wrong, and it’s going to take him many years to straighten out the pieces, but he got, basically, the best the ancient world had by living in Tarsus.

He was a Roman citizen which was quite an accomplishment, particularly for a Jew at that time in history. This meant that he was under the protection of Caesar’s laws wherever he went and if any mob tried to kill him he could immediately appeal to the Roman police. This gave him an entrée, this gave him a legal security in the ancient world as he became the missionary to country after country within the Roman system. It also indicates something else; as a Roman citizen, since Roman citizenship was granted to a family, it shows that he came from a wealthy family. Roman citizenship would be granted to wealthy people who had done something great financially for the Roman Empire, given money to the army, done some public service project or it would be given to a family whose men had excelled in the military. And in this case we infer from some of the remarks that Saul makes later on in his epistles that he came, probably, from a very wealthy family. We’ll see the tragedy of how this later on, the role was played in his life as a Christian.

But Tarsus education, Roman citizenship gave him his legal protection, gave him an understanding of the system, gave him familiarity with the high officials. The wealth of the family gave him the scholarship he needed to go and get rabbinic training. Paul had the best in rabbinic training and that is something you want to understand because when he became a Christian it wasn’t just some man on the street that became a Christian. This man had the equivalent of a doctorate of theology before… before he became a Christian. He was trained as a Pharisee. The modern day descendants of the Pharisees today in the world are called the Hassidim, they largely live in Miami Beach, Brooklyn and Jerusalem. Now the great center of learning in the Mea Shearim district of Jerusalem and if you go into this area, the cream of the crop, they are expected by the time they are 13, the boys that is, are expected to memorize, without mistake, the entire first five books of the Bible in Hebrew. You’ll see them, plodding along, memorizing, memorizing, memorizing, and memorizing. Now if you think you have a memory problem, that might be a good exercise, you don’t have to do it in Hebrew but try it in English, in fact, try to remember the first chapter of the first book for a good mental [can't understand word]. And these boys by the time they’re 13 have to know the entire Pentateuch. Fantastic training.

Now the training is given with the wrong presupposition, and Saul is going to have to undo this and draw different conclusions but you see what all that training did? It gave him acquaintance with data. He knew all about Isaiah 53, Deuteronomy 18, the passages on the Ten Commandments, he knew that stuff cold because of his rabbinic training. Now all of that builds up basically the natural abilities of Saul. Now Paul had certain spiritual abilities but these spiritual abilities were given to him not at the time of his physical birth but at the time of his spiritual birth on the Damascus Road and this would be the gift of apostleship, the gift of healing, the gift of tongues and many other great gifts. So that’s the background for why in verse 15 the Lord is so sharp with Ananias, I’ve been thinking about this for some time. In fact, if you’d like to see how long the Lord’s been working with Saul prior to the Damascus road turn to Galatians 1; we’ll go back to it several times this morning.

In Galatians 1:15 Paul, reflecting upon his conversion said that (quote), “It pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb,” there’s only one conclusion you can come to, doesn’t that show you that God the Holy Spirit, was somehow active in history so that all these natural abilities for his first 21 years of life would be used. Paul didn’t know this, he was just being led kind of unconsciously and blindly but God worked it out so he got the right education, he was born in the right family, he had the right economic background, all these factors were going to be used. Saul didn’t know it, his mother and his father didn’t know it. But under God all these factors would work together. God knew what He was doing and this is one of the great verses that show God was active before he became a Christian. Now on the Damascus Road he becomes a Christian.

Back to Acts 9:16, he says to Ananias, “For I will show him how great things he must suffer for My name’s sake.” That is a reference to what we said before, that Saul was this kind of individual who was basically a tough learner, he never could learn anything easily. Some people are like that. It’s interesting, as a pastor you can teach a particular truth and here are three Christians on the pew and this person will take the truth and run with it, grasp it and just roll. And then there’s somebody else sitting right next to them, same IQ, IQ isn’t the problem, and they’ll sit around and it just bounces around somehow, and you figure to yourself well, I guess maybe on the 118^th time it’ll penetrate. And then there’ll be somebody over here who has some sort of a thing in their soul that deflects the truth, it comes in and just bounces off, and they never get it, and they can learn other truths fine but they just have kind of a blind spot in their soul to this one particular area of truth. Every time you hit it you can just see it in their face, they just tune out; all of a sudden the fluorescent lights take on a great new aurora, they’re so fantastically beautiful, the architecture of this building is so attractive. It’s just this way and different people respond differently and what God is talking to Ananias is that Saul is going to have his problems learning.

So Ananias goes in, verse 17, “And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou came, hath sent me, that thou might receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Now this is one of the very few places where a Christian is referred to as a brother. In our fundamentalist circles it’s brother this and sister that and all the rest of the garbage. When you’re at home and you have real brothers, you don’t go up and say Brother John would you set the table; nobody talks that way to their brother unless they’re being sarcastic or something. So I don’t know why this comes over in Christian circles. It’s true, Christians are known as brothers and sisters in the New Testament collectively, because it refers collectively to our position in Christ in the family of God. But you don’t find Saul turning and saying Brother Peter, glad to meet you Brother Peter. None of that stuff; that’s just stuff that comes up in the Bible belt culture or something; it comes up in other kinds of cultures, in fact it comes up in a lot of clubs, brother this and brother that and it has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, it just has to do with this heathen brotherhood or something. So the word really means nothing and if you happen to be afflicted with this, my apologies but it’s not Scriptural.

In this one passage, in this verse there’s a reason why the Holy Spirit does this and it’s to show that Ananias has learned his lesson. Remember, Ananias has been cut off and God said go ahead. All right, what’s happened in the meantime. Ananias has suddenly realized that if this is the body of Christ Ananias may be over here and Saul may be over here but they’re both in the battle. And this is his official recognition, adelphos is the Greek word, Adelphos Saoul, that is “Brother Saul,” and then he refers to Christ and he says there are two things that Christ wants me to do for you. He wants me to lay my hands on you, and by the way, Ananias is not an apostle, this is not the laying on of hands of an apostle; this is simply another believer going up, laying his hands on someone as a form of identification. And when he does this two things are supposed to happen. Now in verse 17 the two things are described one way, and in verse 18 they’re described another way and any time you see this description you ought to say hold it, what is God trying to do by arranging verses this way, and sure enough, it’ll pay off a little dividend here.

In verse 17 we have the two things described as the gaining of sight, and the second item is baptism, or filling, the words are used interchangeably in this sense, of the Holy Spirit, like in the Acts 2:4 situation at Pentecost. Those are the two things supposedly that will happen the Ananias lays his hands on Saul. But then in verse 18 it says, “And immediately,” because verse 18 describes the action, “there fell from his eyes as it had been scales,” that means physically, there’s some thing that fell off the edge of his eyes, “there fell off his eyes as it had been scales, and he received sight immediately, and arose, and was baptized.” So when the action is described we have item one there, acquisition of sight, but item two is described differently, this time it’s described as water baptism. Now this seems to suggest that… [tape turns]

Every once in a while you’ll run across somebody that comes up to you and says aha, therefore, Acts 22:16 [“And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.”] proves that water baptism is necessary for salvation and they use these passages to describe it. Now we have said and we have cautioned you time and time and time again not to do this with the book of Acts. Acts is a historical book, it’s a book of transition, it’s describing various incidents that happened, some of which are good, some of which aren’t good, but none of which can be used as models and to show you why here’s a beautiful illustration. These three chapters make water baptism identical with the baptism of the Holy Spirit, simultaneous and identical. And so if you were to just major on those three passages, sure you would have this doctrine, water baptism is necessary for salvation, water baptism is the means of conveyance of this saving grace.

Ah, but just a minute there are some other passages in Acts. What about Acts 2 and Acts 8 because in those two chapters you’ve got water baptism first, then baptism of the Holy Spirit second, in one case separated by years, because the disciples were water baptized years before they received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and in Samaria they were at least baptized a couple of days before the apostles Peter and John could up from Jerusalem to Samaria to lay their hands on to receive the Holy Spirit. So you’ve got a time lag, now what are you going to do; are you going to really buy it that water baptism is what grants the Holy Spirit, that water baptism is what saves? If you do, on the basis of Acts 9 I’m going to come up and I’m going to challenge you, what do you do with Acts 2 and 8. And then if that wasn’t problem enough, in Acts 10 we’ve got the baptism of the Holy Spirit first, on Cornelius and his household, and then you’ve got water baptism; you’ve got exactly the reverse situation, now what are you going to do. Take your pick; Acts 8, Acts 9 or Acts 10.

Do you see why it’s so silly to elevate one chapter out of context in the book of Acts and make that the norm and the standard and say this is the doctrine, Holy Spirit always comes at water baptism. What right do you have to say that? What are you going to do with these other passages. And obviously if you look at this, logically speaking, if I have two events there’s only three ways they can work together: simultaneously, A before B or B before A. I’m not aware there are any other logical conclusions and all the logical options are here in Acts. So you see, Acts cannot be used as a model. In this case, yes, the Holy Spirit did come upon Saul at water baptism. But you cannot generalize; it’s wrong to the text.

Now let’s look at a time line in Saul’s life. He became a believer on the road to Damascus; 72 hours plus he received the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands of Ananias. At this point he realized that Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be; that is, He claimed to be the One who would die on the cross. This is a part of the Christian religion that I don’t think we really appreciate because none of us have had to live through what those first century Christians had to live through, and that was that as Jews they saw animal sacrifices, actually slaughtered in front of their eyes, the blood and the gore and everything else all over the place. We have a very sterile clean view of the cross. We have our little cross, it’s clean, you know, you wear it around your neck to keep it polished, but the cross in the ancient world was a horrible scene, it was dirty, it was an awful place. It was this kind of thing, when Saul was on the Damascus Road he knew what the cross was, he’d seen people slaughtered on crosses time and time again; it was a source of execution, it was like the electric chair in our society. And he said a Messiah on the electric chair, it’s ridiculous, that’s the symbol of a criminal element. But the cross suddenly became for Paul what it has come for all of us who have accepted Christ. It is the place where our sins were dealt with once and for all, that I can, in spite of what I have done, I can still appear before God face to face, not because of my merit but because of Christ’s finished work for me on His cross.

Now that was the realization that Saul had that day on the Damascus Road; there’s where he became a believer. But he became a believer in the Old Testament saint status. Over here, 72 hours later, when he received the Holy Spirit he was transferred into a New Testament said status. It didn’t change his salvation, it simply changed from the fact that before he was a believer under an Old Testament system of operation, now he’s a believer under the New Testament system of operation, involving the Church, involving spiritual gifts, etc. etc. etc. There’s a shift.

So here in verse 18 he receives this baptism of the Holy Spirit, integrated into the Church. Verse 19, “And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus.” Now we’re about to undergo another lesson that Saul had to learn by suffering. I said that the theme of this whole thing is how the Holy Spirit follows a genius up. Now watch what happens. Acts 9:20, “And immediately he began preaching Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. [21] But all that heard him were amazed, and said; Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests? [22]But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.”

S all during this time what does he do? Remember, this is only a few days now, verses 21-23, what is he doing? What do you say a genius always does? Tries to get out there and hustle, so that’s what he’s doing, he’s going from synagogue to synagogue to synagogue starting arguments. Now Paul is going to be used, but remember that divine outline; Gentiles first Saul, that’s My calling; I didn’t tell you to go to the Jews. And so he’s going to get his wrist slapped. He has no business doing this kind of thing, he’s just launching out a hustle program, from the time that he became a Christian, he’s getting with the program. In the average fundamental church he’d get 15 brownie points for all the door to door witnessing he’s done. Ridiculous, God didn’t want him to do that. God wanted him to sit down and learn, but no, he has to do this. Now there’s one good thing he does, in verse 22 where it says that he “confounded the Jews” and he “proved that Jesus is the Christ,” it shows that from the very early days in Saul’s preaching career he did not dwell on personal experience as the proof of Christian. Oh, I had this great religious experience, and now Christ in my heart gives me all this…. Well, Christ in your heart can give you a lot, but like one apologist said, that without Scripture how do you tell the difference between Christ in your heart and heartburn? It’s not facetious, it’s the whole problem of what is truth, and if you say that I had this religious experience and therefore my faith is valid and you talk to your Zen Buddhist friend and he just had a satori experience, and he can give you all this feeling thing too, and you go down the street and somebody else just took some acid last night and they had a real experience, now whose experience is going to be the true one? Don’t you need some measurement outside of the immediate experience? Of course you do and that’s why the early Christians were very sensitive and they knew the ancient world had all sorts of experiences.

I do not preach the gospel by giving my personal experience. I preach the gospel by going to historic objective proofs. And this is what Saul did. He said now look you Jews, here’s the Old Testament, here’s the data on Messiah, line after line, line after line, proposition after proposition, and I challenge you to consider the person of Jesus and whether Jesus fit this criteria, this criteria, this criteria, this criteria, and so on down the line. Is He the Messiah or is He not, by the [can't understand word] of objective historic criterion. That’s your choice. And Saul could add, you know I had a lot of experiences with Christ on the Damascus Road but I refuse to use my personal experience as a truth test. I use historically objective criteria for truth testing, not my personal experience. This is not to minimize personal experience but don’t parade your personal experience as proof of the Christian faith. The apostles didn’t do it and we shouldn’t do it. It takes a little more effort to do it this way and that’s why, in fact, so few do it; people are generally lazy and this is hard work.

Now at the end of verse 22 we don’t know what happened but there’s a gap in time between verse 22 and 23. I said we’d turn back to Galatians and we go back to this parallel passage once again and you’ll see in Galatians what happened during that time gap. The details are not given in Acts 9 but we know some of the details from Galatians 1:17. Saul says that after I became a Christian, “I did not go up to those who were at Jerusalem who were apostles, but I went into Arabia,” number one, “and returned to Damascus,” number two, [18] Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem,” number three.” Now Acts 9:22 is the equivalent to the first part of verse 17 here. And Acts 9:23 would be the equivalent of the end of verse 18, so the last part of verse 17 here, about him going into Arabia, returning to Damascus, for three years, indicates a three year gap between Acts 9:22 and 9:23. This three year gap was a time when God said Saul, would you just calm down and stop hustling and you get out with me alone in Arabia, you know all the fine scenery Arabia, one dune after another, one oasis after another oasis; that’s all Arabia is. It’s like the slides I showed you of Sinai, wouldn’t you love to spend a vacation out there counting the grains of sand between the oases, that’s all you can do. But it’s an excellent place to think. There’s no telephone for one thing, and you can get away from people and just be alone to get your stuff together and that’s a great thing. It’s an experience you should all have at least once in your life.

And when Saul did this for three years he finally began, and remember, he’s already a PhD under Gamaliel’s ministry and so this we are talking about in equivalency to a post doctoral three year research program that he’s going on. I want you to see the preparation and the time it took to follow this man up, three years post gospel studies out in the sand dunes. That’s where he learned his basic theology of the Christian religion. All right, it says he came back to Damascus.

The same thing happened the next time he came back so let’s turn to Acts 9:23. We said, Saul is going to be a hard, hard learner; he’s going to have to learn things by banging his head against the wall and sure enough, verse 23, he comes back to Damascus. He spent three years, and he must say to himself, though it’s not recorded, using our somewhat sanctified imagination we can recreate Saul’s thoughts and say well now Lord, you know, I know you slapped my wrist once there in Damascus and got me out of town; I wasn’t supposed to be hustling, I was supposed to be studying instead. And so I’ve just completed my three year post doctoral study program and now God open the way because here comes Paul the great. Now watch what happens.

Acts 9:23 And after that many days were fulfilled,” that would be a thousand days, about three years, “the Jews took counsel to kill him. [24] But their laying await was known of Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to kill him. [25] Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.” “Let down over the wall in a basket,” Paul the great; he comes roaring into the city gates and he goes out in a basket… a basket case. Now isn’t that a great, great encouragement for his ministry. And you know, this smarted… this smarted Saul and his pride because he mentions this later on in his epistles; he mentions it in 2 Corinthians 11. He never got over this getting down in a basket business. That left a very lasting impression on him, because again he was not where God wanted him. God said you are going to be an apostle to the Gentiles. He didn’t say anything about witnessing to the Jewish people. So again he comes to Jerusalem and now he’s going to learn another lesson.

Acts 9:26, “And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed” is the word in the King James but it means he desired strongly, “to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. [27] But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. [28] And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.” What happened at Jerusalem? Same great auspicious thing that happened to him in Damascus. The first time he tries to have fellowship with believers everybody thinks he has spiritual BO. Why? Because of his reputation, and here’s this great genius who’s got all these natural assets, and he’s dependent, forcibly he’s dependent on another ordinary believer for fellowship. See how God kept clipping him off, and clipping, and clipping him off, and clipping him off, and clipping him off, because God knew that Saul had a natural tendency to get a fathead. And He had to take him through one experience after another to deflate him enough, to deflate that fat ego of his enough to the point where He could really use his genius for us and for the thousands and millions of Christians who have worshiped Christ down through the years that have been benefited by Saul.

And as he began in this situation, Barnabas was the man who came out; just like Ananias before, Barnabas is the guy that said okay, I recognize him, we’ll be gracious to him, and incorporate him into the Church. In verse 28 he’s having fellowship with the Church, and in verse 29 he goes at it again, the third time. “And he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him.” Now who are the Grecians? Where did we say that Stephen witnessed? What did we say Stephen was back in Acts 6? He was a Grecian but it doesn’t mean a Greek, it means a Hellenistic Jew. The word “Grecian” is Hellenistic Jew and what this means is that the first place Saul hit when he hits town is the synagogue where Stephen got killed, a real great thing to do. Go right back to the same place where it all started. And what happened, the same agenda; they got rid of Stephen, get rid of Saul too. So he meets the same inauspicious opposition. So now he’s frustrated and we haven’t got time this morning but if you compare Acts 22 and 26 you’ll see that somewhere between verses 29 and 30 the Lord Jesus Christ got hold of him again and said Saul, you are not to be here, now get out of town and go where you’ll be safe to witness to Gentiles; that is your calling, not here. So Christ interceded in his life again and verse 30, “Which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus.”

Here’s what happened; here’s the Levant again, the eastern end of the Mediterranean; here’s Caesarea, they take him down to the sea coast, put him on a ship, buy him a one-way ticket to Tarsus, and get him out of town. And he stays in Tarsus, and his stay in Tarsus is one of the most intriguing New Testament studies because nowhere in the Scripture does it really say what happened in Tarsus, but we can gather what happened by some of the remarks in his epistles and this should make those of you who read the epistles, you should read the epistles with much more of a feeling for what Paul went through. He went back to Tarsus and remember we said he had a wealthy family, wealthy Jewish family, their son they spent all their money on for a good fine scholarship to the best Jewish training and he comes back as a Christian. Great! And so what happens? You can get disinherited, because the next time we see him in the New Testament he’s having to earn the lowest wage rate just to get food on his table, by making tents. That’s what economically happened to him. He was expelled from his family.

And apparently he had a collision with his father and this is just an inference from Scripture but every time he mentions the role of a Christian father when he discusses the Christian home in the epistles, he says, fathers, he wants them to discipline their children but he says don’t provoke your children to wrath by over disciplining them. Now Paul is not a [can't understand word], the permissive raising of children, but what he’s getting at, apparently, was that his father was very, very harsh with him and probably expelled his son from the home and Saul never forgot that, and all the rest of his life as he would go in church after church after church he always had that one theme to the Christian fathers, everywhere to the Christian fathers, discipline your children but never provoke them to wrath. And this is why scholars have believed that Saul himself had to live in that kind of a home life for ten years. That’s how long this trip in Tarsus took; one-way ticket, ten years; add in three years, and another one, that’s fourteen years of follow up before he could begin his ministry. If he were 21 years old when he became a Christian that man did not even begin his ministry until he was age 35. I suspect he was even older when he was on that Damascus road. And if he was it means that he never even entered into the productive phase of his life until he was 40. Life begins at forty, it got started with Paul.

So let that be an encouragement for some of you who think that you’ve been a Christian for two weeks and nothing exciting has happened, you haven’t got into a hustle program, and nothing basically going on. Just understand that God the Holy Spirit is leading you, just be patient, let Him lead you. And don’t give him the feedback that we usually give Him, the Ananias and Peter, but, but, but, but God. A friend of mine in the ministry has an expression for that he calls it motor boat Christians, but, but, but, but, but, but, but kind of thing. And every time God says something but God, have you heard this latest, just like Ananias. To bring this together with a hymn….