When Saul Met Jesus
Acts 9:1-20

Perhaps the best known-testimony in the history of Christianity is that of Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road. It’s kind of interesting that, as far as the basics are concerned, his story is much like ours:

1. Before (9:1-2)
2. How (9:3-6)
3. After (9:7-20)

Before we actually start on Galatians, I’m concerned that we establish the setting for it. Where did this letter come from and why and who is it who wrote the letter? Of course, we’re talking about Paul, originally Saul. The story in Acts chapter 9 of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus is absolutely thrilling if we stop to think about it.

I was not raised in a Christian home. I came to know the Lord just prior to when I turned 20. Because of that, my testimony of coming to faith is clearly marked out in my own mind and I remember life before I was a Christian. I distinctly remember trusting Christ and being converted and then beyond that, it’s been one of those long, slow, gradual growth things and God has been faithful.

I’ve talked to a lot of folks over the years who were born and raised in a Christian home. Sometimes I have heard expressions of, “I don’t know what to do when it comes to a testimony. I wish I could talk about how God pulled me out of a gutter someplace and just completely changed me around. “

I think what a blessing not to have that sort of baggage. In the Navigators 2.7 groups we’re at the point where we’re talking about testimony. What I’ve done this morning as far as the conversion of Saul is to basically lift the three points out of the Navigators 2.7 material and transferred them to the text. Saul – before being a Christian, how he got to be one, and then what happened afterwards.

In an attempt to illustrate that to help us, I’m going to read a testimony from a friend of mine who was born and raised in a Christian home. Listen to how he describes what God has done in his life:

“As far back as I can remember, I have believed that there was God. In my limited understanding of how the universe was put together, I believed that God had turned a giant blue bowl upside down over us, a giant terrarium, if you will, and we were watched by God.

“Fortunately my understanding has been expanded since then, yet never without God as a part of it for it was my parents who instilled in me an understanding that God was our creator and all things were held by Him.

“In looking back, I can remember struggling with the imperfections that were a part of our world under the big blue bowl. A world held by God, and who according to my parents and Sunday School teacher, had such power as to be unlimited. If that was true, why did I fight with my brother so much? Shouldn’t we have been made perfect if He had all things in His power? Why were there weeds and sickness and death? Why did I lie and do things I felt bad about and what about that place called hell?

“Being around 7 or 8 years old, I didn’t dwell on these things, mainly because they were irresolvable for me, yet the imperfections were there to make me wonder. At certain times, usually at my brother’s insistence, Dad would lie down with us for a while before bed. It was one of those times with my brother on one side of Dad and I on the other that God, through my Dad, showed me how I could escape my worst fear.

“At that age it wasn’t so much the fear of death, but a fear of separation from my parents. I was pretty sure that my parents would go to heaven if they died, but I had no confidence that I would. In fact, I understood that because of the imperfections in my life, I would go to hell because God cannot have imperfection in heaven.

“Dad explained to us that Jesus came to earth to cover our imperfections by being put to death on the cross. In this way, I would not have to pay for my own shortcomings but Jesus paid for them for me. All I had to do was tell God that I accepted and believed that He had sent His Son, Jesus, for the very reason of keeping me from going to hell.

“Later, in my own bed, I asked Jesus to do what He had been sent to earth for – to save me and give me everlasting life. Many years have passed since then and the imperfections of our world are still as real as ever to me, but now I have a better understanding of why they are there. God didn’t make us robots to do His bidding, but He gave us a will. He knew the way of perfection. He wanted us to choose it.

“When we decide to try things another way and in so doing choose imperfection and death, God didn’t leave us with the consequences. He provided an escape through His Son. I think about this often, especially when life brings pain. I watched my parents deal with the loss of a son and worked through it myself, and in the process got a glimpse of what it was for God to send His Son to die in my place so that some day I could be with him in heaven.

“So all is not well under the big blue bowl, but God is still here in an imperfect world and in His Son is the way of escape.”

Did you catch the “before,” and “how” and “after?” As I read that and as I look at the Bible in Acts 9, I think – Christians, we can celebrate what God has done in Saul, in one another, in ourselves, as we reflect on this whole notion of conversion.

Saul’s conversion was quite different. The same three parts, but what a turnaround! Sometimes we’ve heard conversion to faith in Christ described as an about face. I can remember marching in close-order drill and I say it’s not an about-face. An about-face is when everybody is standing at attention facing the same way and they turn around on command.

There’s another command in close order drill called “to the rear march.” That’s what happened to Saul. He was moving and suddenly was spun about and turned 180 degrees, a whole new direction, a completely new life, and a new commanding officer.

Let’s look at these three segments of his testimony.

Before (9:1-2)

¹ Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest,
2 and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

The apostle Paul, before he was an apostle, before he was a Christian, was a man with a fervent religious mandate. There had been a great deal going on in the religious world around Jerusalem in recent years. This one Jesus of Nazareth had died on a cross and then had been seen alive again by many hundreds of people and a whole new religious movement had begun as a sect of the Jews.

It concerned this one Jesus who had risen from the dead and Saul of Tarsus was totally aware of all that was going on. We don’t know exactly how close physically he may have been to the points at which Jesus preached, to the crucifixion, to the eyewitnesses of the resurrection, but we can well assume they were a big part of his life. He was not in the dark.

Saul was a Pharisee. He was a student of the Old Testament Law and he was convinced as a person could be in his own mind, that this Jesus everybody was talking about and that so many were following was not the Messiah, could not have been the anointed deliverer of Israel because he had died on a cross. He knew from the book of Deuteronomy that the Bible clearly says, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”

Saul considered the Christians not only to be wrong but also to be blasphemers and that’s why he pursued them with such vigor. He was so loyal to the law as he saw it. Within the first few years of the movement thousands were converted to faith. In the sixth chapter of the book of Acts, the first couple of verses talk about even many of the priests changing and following this risen Jesus.

Saul saw it as his own calling to do everything he could to quell this blasphemous sect and that’s why he went. He crossed party lines in a sense; from Pharisees to the high priest who was a Sadducee, a political, aristocratic ruler, not necessarily a religious one. He had the religious power through his office and was able to give permission to this young Pharisee to go in pursuit of any he could find who were loyal to Jesus of Nazareth, men or women -- he didn’t care -- and to bring them bound to Jerusalem.

From Jerusalem he heads off to find Christians in the synagogues of Damascus. It was a long journey and he had a lot of gendarmes, officers of the court, to help him, to do the actual literal capturing and binding and leading back. They’re on their way north northeast from Jerusalem seeking to collect Christians.

Let’s pause for a second and think about where Saul is. Humanly speaking, and by his own admission in Philippians 3, he was a Jew’s Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee, zealous for the Law. Further in Galatians, he will explain that he was surpassing all his colleagues in the progress he was making in his training, he was the cream of the crop.

From the standpoint of the world, Saul was competent to say the least. Saul was sincere. He had no doubt in his own mind about where he was going and what he was doing. He was not a hypocrite. He was an enthusiastic type A, perhaps triple A, driven individual, energetic and not only that, he was legal. He had the papers to prove it. There was no way that anybody, humanly speaking, could look at this adventure, this trip to Damascus and say there was something wrong with that. There wasn’t. There was everything right with it from the standpoint of the world.

Not only was Saul competent and sincere and enthusiastic and energetic and legal, he was also patently wrong. Isn’t that interesting? He could be everything in the eyes of the world, tracking correctly, but in the eyes of God he was way off.

To our world, sincerity, enthusiasm, and so forth, even in religion, is virtuous. In the minds of many, even virtuous enough perhaps to get a person into heaven. But God would say no. All that good human stuff, but wrong.

Then Jesus interrupted his trip. We’ve said before that the common definition of grace is God’s unmerited or undeserved favor. Since then we’ve drawn a distinction between what is undeserved, not deserved, and what is ill deserved. In other words, he not only doesnot deserve grace, he does deserve judgment. He ill deserves grace. He deserves quite the opposite.

AW Toser said everything is wrong until God sets it right. The Bible says everyone is wrong until God sets us right.

In the book of Romans, Paul, after he has known God and walked with Him, makes an interesting statement as he is writing to the Romans. In the 3^rd chapter of Romans the apostle Paul says, “Let God be found true, though everyone is a liar.”

God is not concerned about public opinion. God is not concerned about the will of the majority. God is concerned about what is true and what is right and He determines what that is. “Let God be found true though every man be found a liar,” Paul said, and he could reflect back on his own pre-Christian days, seeing himself as all of the above: sincere, competent, energetic, enthusiastic, legal, and wrong.

Before we can be a Christian we have to know we’re wrong. Becoming a Christian isn’t just like adding a religious dimension to an already existing life. It isn’t just getting that corner of the room squared away.

Becoming a Christian, like Saul’s experience, like the experience of anyone who has gone that route, is getting to a point of seeing, “I have been wrong.” Until that point is reached, there can be no repentance; there can be no unraveling of the old. There’s no room for new life because one who maintains that he or she has not been wrong or not that wrong is still run by pride. James says, “God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.”

What Saul needed, he didn’t know it at the time. I quote his own words from II Corinthians 4 as he’s going his merry way to Damascus, pursuing this project, full of zeal, what he needed was II Corinthians 4:6.

II Corinthians  4:6

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

What did Saul need? He needed somebody to turn the light on, somebody to bring into existence that which wasn’t there before. That’s why he uses an analogy drawn from the very first verses of the Bible when God said, “Let there be light,” He created order and attractiveness out of chaos and nothingness. He didn’t fix what was already there; He made it new. And that’s what He is going to do with Saul, as we jump from “Before” to “How.”

How (9:3-6)

These verses are so loaded. He was approaching Damascus; he was going on his merry way, not in pursuit of God, not in pursuit of the things of God, not searching for God, not looking for anything other than the people of God. He’s on his way to Damascus on his own agenda.

Acts 9

³ As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him,
⁴  and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”

The light is pretty bright. He’s hearing, but he’s not seeing. It’s interesting that as soon as he is on the ground, as soon as the light comes on, literally, in his experience, suddenly he understood – if a voice comes to me from heaven and created these circumstances, that must be the Lord. We’re dealing now with someone not among us.

⁵ And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting,
6 but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.”

Who is in charge now? On his way, a light from heaven. Please note, this is God’s doing. This is God’s idea. This God’s initiative and God will explain later to Ananias what He has in mind, what He’s up to. But this isn’t your typical evangelistic crusade. God has stepped in and He has made some changes and these verses identify for us several key issues. I will share those I have noted.

First, what strikes me is this is personal. He calls him by name and repeats it. If you are a Christian, put your name in here if you will. He knows your name; He knows my name and as He has called us to Himself, He has done it personally. I love that! Later in Galatians 2:20 this same man will discuss how Jesus, with whom he’s talking here, “loved me,” he said, “and gave himself for me.”

This is personal. This isn’t a mass of nameless, faceless folks type stuff.  It’s personal. That’s the good part. God knows His own, knows our names. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, knows His sheep (John 10) and calls them all by name.

The bad part is it is personal. You have been wrong. You have been following the wrong track, Saul. I’m going to deal with you.  And we have a relationship that’s struck. We now have a two-way relationship between Jesus who is exalted into heaven and this one, Saul, who had been bent on persecuting Him. It’s personal; you’ve been wrong.

My second observation: you’ve offended Jesus. “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. I have a personal issue here. You’ve come after Me and I take note of that and I take offense at it.”

“Saul, you’ve been wrong and you’ve been wrong toward Me.” It’s interesting how a thousand years before this, David would pray to the Lord in Psalm 51, “Lord against You and You only have I sinned.” He knew who the offended party was.

Paul’s testimony is given three times in the book of Acts. It’s given here in Acts chapter 9 and it’s told by Luke who wrote the book of Acts. In chapter 22 and chapter 26 of Acts, Paul himself tells the story. In Acts 22 when Paul tells the story, he adds the descriptive words, “I am Jesus the Nazarene.”

That pretty much narrows it down. “I am Jesus, the lowly carpenter of Nazareth. I am Jesus who was crucified on the cross about 3 years ago. I am Jesus who was raised from the tomb and appeared to hundreds. I am Jesus who has been exalted into heaven, and I  am Jesus who is coming back. I am the Messiah.” Making it so very clear to Saul, who understandably could have been present to hear Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost, to hear the application of all those Old Testament texts brought home pointedly focused upon this one Jesus of Nazareth who was approved of God among men, this one whom you took and by the hands of wicked men crucified, nailing Him to the cross. This One who was raised again from the dead. Saul could well have been party to that discussion.

 He could well have been party to the sermon of Stephen in Acts chapter 7, where Stephen traced throughout the entire Old Testament scriptures the truth that brought them to the person of the Messiah. Saul had been wrong. Messiah could die on a tree. He’s beginning to see that not only could He, but He had. He’s rethinking his position. He’s becoming quite convinced that he had been wrong all that time.

There’s a further clue here about why this quick, brief conversation between the risen Jesus and Saul hit him so hard. There’s an expression that Jesus himself used that got him into a lot of trouble with the Pharisees. It’s recorded in the 8^th chapter of John where it   relates for us a very intense, heated discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees.

John 8
⁵³ Surely You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; whom do You make Yourself out to be?
⁵⁴ Jesus answered, “If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’;
⁵⁵ and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word.

The electricity in the air at that moment had to have been supercharged.

⁵⁶ Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.
⁵⁷ So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?”
⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.”
⁵⁹ Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him.

They picked up stones to throw at Him. That’s how offensive that was. He is claiming identity with Yahweh of the Old Testament. He’s drawing words from Exodus 3 and 6 where Yahweh identified Himself to the children of Israel as “I am.” “That’s My name. That’s My character. That’s who I am.” There’s a distinct expressive way of saying it in the New Testament. Jesus used it in John 8 and as soon as He had said the words, they picked up rocks to throw at Him. He uses the identical expression in Acts 9: “Who are You?” “I Am.” And He said those words identically to the way he said them in John 8.

I would imagine that for the Pharisees who were present with Jesus during that heated discussion, the word was out. He said the words. “I Am.” He identified Himself as “I Am,” which means the eternally existing and ever-present One.

Saul was a Pharisee. He was privy to the rumor mill. There’s a distant possibility he was even there. But even if he hadn’t been there in John chapter 8, the Pharisees were and the word was out. As he’s lying there with his eyes blinded on the road to Damascus, hearing a voice and understanding and saying, “Who are You?” and he hears back “I Am.” He suddenly realizes -- we’re not in Kansas any more. This is different. This is something totally unprecedented, totally unexpected and he has just been leveled by the great I Am.

God’s church is precious to Him. “Who are You, Lord?” He didn’t say why are you persecuting the people? Why are you persecuting my sheep? He said, “Why are you persecuting Me?” That is quite a statement. It tells us on the one hand, probably on the surface, that if we are Christians, our risen Lord holds us as precious in His sight. After all, He paid for our salvation with His own blood on a cross. We are precious to Him.

It also tells us that the other Christians are too. So be very slow to put one another down. Be very, very cautious about backbiting and backstabbing in the family of faith. The believers around are precious to Him and He takes it personally and seriously. It’s something for us to think about.

Beyond that, at perhaps a level running just a little bit beneath the surface, it is in all likelihood here, that the apostle Paul begins to think in terms of what it is to be a Christian and to be in Christ. What it means to be crucified with Christ, raised together with Him – language he uses in Romans and Galatians. It means that there is a spiritual unity, a spiritual intimacy between Jesus Christ, our risen Lord, and His people that is incomprehensible.

He says the church is the body of Christ, the representative body of Christ. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? “Who are You, Lord?” “I am Jesus. You’ve gone after My body.” If you hit my body, you’ve gone after me. There’s a closeness there that words can only get us so far toward understanding. His relationship with His people is extremely tight and spiritually entwined. Saul is just beginning to put that together. It happened with a heavenly two by four. God just let him have it.

In the testimony I read earlier, the Lord showed up in a more subtle fashion and I would imagine in most of our lives, that’s how it works. For a lot of people who are Christians, many can’t remember this part.

After (9:7-20)

Here we have Saul, in a matter of minutes, unbelievably changed.

⁷ The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.
⁸ Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing, and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus.

Saul of Tarsus, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, from the tribe of Benjamin, blinded and led by the hand, down the road to Damascus, to await further orders.

Who is in charge now? It isn’t Saul. He has changed considerably. The next verse probably gives us more than we know. Think of it -- he has been on the road for many days on his way to Damascus. He has been blinded, dealt with spiritually and personally and radically.

⁹ And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Here is where his new way of thinking began to crystallize. In verse 11 Jesus is talking to Ananias, telling him there’s a man named Saul in a certain place in Damascus. He’s praying. Saul was fasting and praying in solitude before God for three days.

This is how it was, this is what happened. I cannot deny it and if I try to deny it all I have to do is open my eyes and remember I’m blind. He did not know if he would be blind for the rest of his life. He’s caught, he’s stuck, he’s reviewing, he’s thinking, he’s praying, he’s repenting, he’s realizing and recounting his wrong. He’s seeing that the risen Savior is right. Three critical days.

There’s a time for that – for solitude, prayer, fasting, as God begins to prepare him for a work he never, ever would have expected.

¹⁰ Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.”
¹¹ And the Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying,
12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.

I’m told  the street called Straight is still identifiable in Damascus. Damascus is an old, old city. It goes back at least to the time of Abraham, 2000 B.C. It was owned by various empires and still exists today. Much of the original stuff is there.

¹³ But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to Your saints at Jerusalem,
¹⁴ and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.”
¹⁵ But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel;

“I’ve got a wonderful plan for his life. I’ve got adventures heretofore unimagined!” The Hebrew of the Hebrews? The Pharisee of the Pharisees going with God’s name to the Gentiles? Seriously?” Seriously.

Through Saul as His chief instrument, God by the Holy Spirit took His eternal gospel of grace from exclusively Jewish surroundings in Jerusalem in an Oriental, Asian culture and moved it as far west across Europe to Spain and possibly the British Isles, through Paul in one generation. That’s what happens when God gets hold of someone and He got hold of Saul.

¹⁶ For I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.

Have the tables turned? Saul was the inflictor of suffering and now it’s his turn. He will count it all joy but he will pay his dues. Through much tribulation, he will later say, we must enter the kingdom of God and he did not shrink back from it.

¹⁷ So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
¹⁸ Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized,
¹⁹ and he took food and was strengthened. Now for several days he was with the disciples who were at Damascus,

This was unquestionably the point of no return for Saul. In that culture baptism meant a whole new life. The Jews understood baptism. They had much to do with the notion in its origination. To become a Jew, if you were not born one, you went into the tank. You went in on the right side, went under the water, and came up the left side as a new person. That’s how they understood the symbolism. It was a slam dunk for the Christian community to adopt that symbolism because it meant, “I’m declaring a new life.” For a Pharisee from a strict Jewish life in Tarsus, a Hebrew-speaking home in a Greek culture, sent to Jerusalem to be educated at the feet of the most renowned rabbi of the day, this was a tremendous statement.

He knew what he was doing. He knew the statement he was making. He went in the water, came out, and never looked back.

Life after? It’s a whole new world and away he goes. He began bearing fruit immediately. I love what these verses do for us. He took some food. He was strengthened, hung out with the disciples in Damascus for a little while, then immediately heads to the synagogue.

²⁰ and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.”

Proclaiming about Jesus of Nazareth! “This is the Son of God.” This is language lifted right out of the Psalms:

          Psalm 110
            ¹ The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand
         Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”

Psalm 2
⁷ I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, “You are My son, Today I have begotten You.”

The Son of God is a huge messianic expression. He is the Son of God. Paul is off and running. He will go from here into obscurity after a bit, spend some time in Jerusalem, travel home to Tarsus, be gone for a number of years, have ministry in the church at Antioch further north from Damascus and west, and then God will send him out to the Gentiles.

He’ll go to four cities in, what is today, southern Turkey. Following that, he’ll write a letter to them, and that’s the letter to the Galatians.

Regarding this whole business of conversion -- nothing has changed. We won’t get our names in the Bible, we may not see the blinding light, but there’s a time in the lives of God’s people where He gets our attention, He takes the initiative, He turns on the light, and He brings us to Himself, and then He changes our lives.

Saul wasted no time in being baptized, publicly identifying himself as a Christian, and then heading out on the ministry to which God has called him. That hasn’t changed for us either. The most important litmus test of these three steps is the third one, who are we trusting? Who is in charge? And what is He doing through his servant?