I'm one of two. I spent a little
time this morning looking at the events that happened in Acts
chapter 9 and then looking at the religion of Saul, but I just
highly commend to you this article. If you want to have an understanding,
one of the clearest articles I've ever read on the difference
between the religion of man and the religion of God is in this
article in your Focus magazine. I brought them back in again
so you can take some home and give them away. There is all
the difference between heaven and hell, of course. Man is compulsively
religious, and it's only a sovereign hand of a resurrected Redeemer
that can rescue people out of the traps, the traps and the
failings of religion. It is a remarkable thing to think
that the Lord Jesus spoke that parable which Lord willing I'll
get to speak on it at some stage about the man whose house is
swept clean and the demon leaves and he comes back and he finds
it garnished and he brings seven demons back with him, which is
similar to what the Lord Jesus said of the activities of the
Pharisees. They travel over land and sea
to make one proselyte And when they have won him to themselves,
he's twice the child of hell that he was before. So religion
without the gospel and religion without Christ is damning and
dangerous and extraordinarily entrapping and it takes the sovereign
hand, as I said, of a resurrected Christ to bring people out of
that. and it's the sovereign hand of
a resurrected Christ that causes the Gospel to be proclaimed,
and it's only through the Gospel that the Word of God is proclaimed.
And so Paul is laid out before us in Scripture in so many ways
as an example and a testimony both to the power and the grace
of God that we might have hope that the Lord, the most unlikely
person in all of Israel at that time to be saved, was this man
Saul. And so if God can save the most
unlikely man in all of Israel, he might happen to save the most
unlikely person in your thoughts. So there's always, while there's
life, there's always reason for us to have hope. So let's begin
at chapter 9, verse 1. I'd just like to read the first
little bit quickly, and then we'll spend most of our time
down in that second bit. But I need to set the context,
set the scene, as it were. And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings
and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high
priest, and he desired of him letters to Damascus, to the synagogues,
that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or
women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed,
he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shined round about him
a light from heaven. And he fell to the earth, and
heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord?
And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. It is
hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he, trembling
and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And
the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it
shall be told you what thou must do. And the men which journeyed
with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth,
and when his eyes were opened he saw no man, but they led him
by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days
without sight, neither did he eat nor drink. 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. 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 prayeth. and has seen in a vision a man
named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him that he might
receive his sight. Then Ananias answered, Lord,
I have heard by many of this man how much evil he has done
to thy saints at Jerusalem. And here he hath authority from
the chief priest to bind all that call on thy name. But the
Lord said unto him, Go thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto
me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children
of Israel. For I will show him how great
things he must suffer for my name's sake. 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 camest, has sent me, that thou
mightest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
And immediately there fell from his eyes, as it had been scales,
and he received sight forthwith and arose and was baptized. And
when he had received meat, he was strengthened, Then was Saul
certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus, and straightway
he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. 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 priest? But Saul increased
more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus,
proving that this is the very Christ. What a remarkable meeting it
must have been for Ananias to have been called to that house.
What a remarkable first meeting of Saul, the first sight that
his eyes were opened to was the sight of a man who came to him.
And what remarkable words to this man who's a persecutor,
the first words of Ananias to him in verse 17, a brother Saul. When God makes converts, when
God makes converts, they are immediately of the family of
God and immediately brothers one with another. Brother Saul. Brother Saul. Saul, as we saw
last week, is a picture of the long-suffering of the Lord. Our
Lord Jesus Christ is patient. He's patient with his people.
He's promised His Father to glorify Him, and He shall, and He does. And He laid down His life, and
He poured out His precious blood, and He bought and He redeemed
us from under the dominion of Satan and sin and this world's
entanglements. Paul is a pattern of the Lord's
long-suffering, but also he's a pattern in these three days
of darkness and in the many trials that go on in the rest of his
life. He's a pattern of the fact that the Lord's people, often
in this life, will go through periods of great darkness and
periods of emptiness. It has always been the story
of the saints. They'll wet their pillows with
tears. They will cry out and it will
seem as if the heavens are as brass to them and prayer is not
answered and there is no response from God. And again and again
the trials these trials that we go through, this hiding of
His countenance, this emptying. These times when our love is
cold, when the Scriptures are a chore, and fellowship is a
duty and not a delight, and all of these things the Lord uses
in the lives of His people to bring us down. But He only ever
brings His people down that He might lift them up again, that
we might yet again rejoice in the goodness and the faithfulness
and the promises of our God. And Saul also is an example of
the fact that God only uses broken-hearted sinners. He only uses broken-hearted
sinners. When you look through the The
testimonies of the saints of God in the scriptures, you see
men that have been cast down before they've been raised up
again and again. Joseph had to spend his time
in a dungeon. Joseph had to spend his time
as a servant. Joseph had to spend his time
in prison before he rose to those great heights. Moses had to spend
his 40 years in the backside of the wilderness, wondering
if he was ever going to be used of God until that time when the
Lord met him. David, as we know, was brought
down. He had that long 20-year wait
when he was God's anointed king of Israel, and he had to go through
the trial of ongoing persecution and all of those events that
we read of in the Scriptures. Daniel had to be brought down. All of God's servants are brought
to places where all of their natural abilities and all of
what they would cling to with their eyes, their carnal eyes
and their carnal wisdom, all of it needs to be stripped from
them. When people meet God, It is consistent
in the scriptures from beginning to end. As Peter said when he
met the Lord Jesus, Away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. When Isaiah met the Lord, he
says, Woe unto me. Again and again, even the remarkable
meeting of the Apostle John in the book of Revelation, there
he is, an old man who had walked with the Lord from probably his
teenage years, maybe 70 or 80 years, of consistent communion
with the Lord in one way or another. And yet he meets him in Revelation
and he falls down as a dead man. But in every one of these situations,
when God puts someone down, he does. He does as he did to John.
He reached out a hand and he lifted him up. Just like the
lepers and the beggars and all of the stories of salvation in
the miracle stories of the Lord Jesus Christ are people brought
to a place where there is no help. There's no help in themselves. The leper has no hope of curing
himself. The woman bleeding has no hope
of curing herself. Jairus's daughter is dead. And
yet, in those circumstances, when people are brought to the
end of all of the world's abilities and their own personal abilities,
then they are brought to a place where the Lord reveals himself. Reveals himself in glory and
reveals himself in grace. And I don't know about your particular
journey at the moment, but I often think as I look out over the
people that sit before me, there are things going on in your lives
so often which are so deeply painful and so deeply wounding
that there are things that are just best left discussed between
you and the Lord. And no wonder the instruction
of God is that you comfort my people. You comfort my people. Comfort them with the gospel.
Tell them that their warfare is over. Tell them that they
receive double from the Lord's hands. Saul went through this,
didn't he? Saul, as we saw last week, went
from this position of power and authority and all of the esteem
of the religious world backing him and he was brought low. And I love the Lord's description
of him. If you look down there in verse
11, the Lord said to Ananias, you go, you arise and go into
the street and you inquire in the house of Judas for one called
Saul of Tarsus, for behold, he prayeth. Saul has been brought
to a place of prayer. The Pharisees, the Pharisees
followed David's instructions of praying morning, noon, and
night, but to make sure that they got themselves right for
praying, a lot of the Pharisees would have a silent, quiet time
for an hour, and then they'd have an hour's prayer, and then
to make sure that they weren't going to defile themselves so
immediately, they'd have another hour afterwards. They prayed
nine hours a day. And they prayed on street corners,
and they prayed in the temple. They prayed in all of those things.
And yet the Lord here says that for the first time in Saul's
life, behold, he prayeth. He prayeth. He saw by faith. He saw the Lord Jesus Christ. He was humbled. He was blinded. He was put in a place where he
was completely and utterly dependent on those around him. And yet,
behold, he prayeth." It is one of the things that We want to
be kept being reminded of, don't we, that real spiritual activities,
all real spiritual activities, are generated by God and generated
by the presence of the Lord and are drawn out of God's people. I don't speak much about prayer
because the longer I go on, the more I've come to realise how
often I say prayers and how often I'll practice saying prayers,
and how seldom I really pray. It's a mysterious thing, isn't
it? The spiritual life of the child of God is not something
that's seen. Obviously, we want to encourage
people to pray and to repent and to believe and to worship
and to serve and to give, But all of those spiritual activities
are never seen with any clarity with natural eyes. Such is the
nature of man's religion, such is the nature of us in this Adam
flesh. It is. Ultimately spiritual activity
is drawn out of God's people by the very presence and the
very company and the very drawing of God. And often it comes in
circumstances which we are not expecting at all. The question
that lays before us is that if something can be done and seen
with the physical eyes, it can be done by the hypocrite as well
as the child of God. Our true, true spiritual life
is a spiritual life that is generated by beholding the Lord Jesus Christ. and not looking at the things
of our flesh. Having no confidence in the things
of our flesh, we worship God in spirit and we rejoice in Christ
Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. If your fleshly
religious activities cause you to have confidence, then throw
them away as quickly as you possibly can or trust and pray that the
Lord will take them from you. So Saul had a religious devotion,
didn't he? Let's go back and have a look
at the natural religion of Saul. It's the natural religion of
this world. It is the religion that surrounds us all the time. This natural religion, in verse
1 it says, we get Saul breathing out threatenings. Natural religion
is threatening people all the time, isn't it? It operates on
the basis of threatenings. Most people are held captive
in religion, aren't they, by fear. They fear if they don't
turn up. They fear if they don't do these
things, then they're going to be cast away. They live on two
extraordinary, caught in the horns of an extraordinary dilemma,
they live on the basis of fear and they live on the basis of
pride. They are proud about what they do, and they are fearful
of not doing it. And they're caught all the time,
aren't they? What a terrible entrapment. That was the nature
of it. That's the nature of these threatenings,
isn't it? So much of religion is about
threatening. As I listen to a thing, there's a compass program that
gives an overview of Billy Graham's crusades in Australia, and especially
the 1959 one. And that's the essence of it,
isn't it? You create an emotional emotional height, heightened
emotions with all of these songs and all of this, and then you're
threatening people. He's telling them this is your
only chance. If you don't come forward now,
if you don't come forward and do something, then this is your
last chance. You can determine your destiny
now by something that you do right now, and if you don't do
it, then you'll be lost. It'll be entirely your fault.
It is a shocking, shocking threatening to people, isn't it? They threaten people. They hold
people by threats of all sorts of things. And then they are,
the other thing that natural religion does, it's breeze out
slaughter against the disciples of the Lord. The one thing that
they want silenced, the one thing that natural religion of man
always wants silenced is the very voice of God. The very voice
of God that they claim to know and they came to believe and
they came to recite all the time. But naturally, man clings to
the false. We cling to false ways and we
are made frightened not to cling to them and to do as they require. At the end of the day, the natural
man hates the disciples of the Lord as they did him himself. The next thing we read of Saul
and his natural religion, he went unto the high priest. It's
all about worshipping, isn't it? Natural religion is always
worshipping someone who's high. There's always this ladder to
climb, there's always someone up there to be esteemed and to
be bowed to and to be run after. It's all about worshipping. our
high priest, and maybe that high priest is the high priest of
wisdom and self, and we reason from ourselves out rather than
hearing from God directly. The other thing that marked Saul's
religion and marks the religion of the day, he desired letters,
a legal letter that gives us authority to do what we're doing.
You take that legal letter and you bind them. It's about binding
people, isn't it? You read it there, to take this
letter that he might bring them bound. You bind them hand and
foot and you bring them to Jerusalem. You bring them to an earthly
centre of religion where men are worshipped and God is rejected. It is just a remarkable picture
of the religion of man. It's all about do's and don'ts. Natural religion bounds people
and it brings them to obedience under their rules, and it brings
them to their place of worship. The question for Paul, or the
question for all people in religion, is who brought you here? You
see, the activities of the Pharisee were activities to be seen of
men. Matthew 23, all their works,
23 verse 5, but all their works they do for to be seen of men. They make broad their phylacteries
and large the borders of their garments. See Saul in that religion
had power and he thought he had light. He thought he had the
light that enabled him to know good and evil, the light that
enabled him to stand in judgment of God and His Word and His people. The true child of God has one
request. It was on our other pulpit and
it's on this one as well, isn't it? It's John 12.21. Sir, we
wish to see Jesus. We wish to see Jesus. We want
to see Him. See, the true sons of God don't
come to be seen of men. They come to see the Lord. The one purpose of us gathering
in fellowship is that through the preaching of the Gospel and
by the raising up of the Lord Jesus Christ, you might We are
enabled of God to spiritually see Him. And if you see Him,
everything in this world and everything in your life is transformed
by His presence. Just as that light from heaven
eclipsed the light of the sun and eclipsed all that Saul thought
he had. I love how Paul describes it
later on in his life when he's writing to the Ephesians. He's
praying, he ceases not to give thanks and he makes mention of
Him in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, Ephesians
1, 17, the Father of glory may give unto you the spirit of wisdom
and revelation in the knowledge of Him. So you know Him outside
of His spiritual activity and His spiritual revealing of Himself.
And verse 18, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened,
being enlightened, a light shone on them. The eyes of your understanding,
the eyes that were unseeing for Saul in this world, that were
seeing with great clarity, the Lord Jesus Christ in ways that
he had never imagined him to be. The eyes of your understanding
be enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling
and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. Just listen to that again. The
hope of His calling and what the riches of the glory of His
inheritance in the saints. It's remarkable, isn't it? His
inheritance is in the saints. We are His inheritance. We are
His blood-bought children, brothers and sisters in Christ. And what
is, verse 19, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power
to us would who believe? The exceeding greatness of His
power is nothing less than the resurrection power of God is
required to raise a dead sinner to life. It requires more than
the wit and the wisdom of man, what is the exceeding greatness
of his power to us-ward. This power of the Lord Jesus
Christ, this power of the risen Lord, is directed to a particular
group of people, the us-ward, who believe. That's the work,
isn't it? That enlightening work and that
powerful work, who believe. And how do we believe? Just listen
to it, read it with me in verse 19. According to the working
of His mighty power. When someone truly believes,
it's an enlightening work. The eyes, your understanding
of being enlightened, it's a powerful work. It's a work that brings
hope. It's His mighty power. And He
likens it to resurrection power, verse 20, which He wrought in
Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own
right hand in heavenly places. far above all principality and
power and might and dominion and every name that is named,
far above all the things. That's the sun that eclipsed
the sun that Paul, that Saul saw on the Damascus road. And
every name that is named, not only in this world, but also
in that which is to come. And he has put all things under
his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church,
which is his body. the fullness of him that filleth
all in all. Such was the Lord Jesus that
met Saul on that Damascus road. So true prayer, the true prayer
when the Lord says to Ananias, behold he prayeth, for the first
time in Saul's life, he'd really prayed. He'd said thousands of
prayers, spent hours and hours in prayer, but now he's praying. And that true prayer, like all
true worship, is drawn out, isn't it? It's drawn out by a work
that's wrought in people by God the Holy Spirit. And it is the
result of a broken heart, that wounded heart, that circumcised
heart, is brought to behold Him, the Lord Jesus, resurrected and
having completed His work. praying for us in heaven's glory,
making us accepted in the beloved, cleansing us completely from
all of our sin, especially that religious sin which breeds self-righteousness. Cleansing us from all sin. bearing
in his own body the infinite fiery wrath of God's holy law. We've come to another place,
haven't we? Paul was binding these people
and taking them back to Sinai, just like thousands of religious
people are today. taking them back to that fiery
mountain. But for God's children, the fire of that mountain fell
on the Lord Jesus Christ and was consumed. The sacrifice consumed
that fire. We've come We are come, by His
grace, Hebrews 12.22, we are come unto Mount Zion, unto the
City of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable
company of angels, to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn,
which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all and
the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator
of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh
better things than the blood of Abel. We haven't come to that
mountain, we haven't come to Mount Mount Sinai, we haven't
come to that mountain in Jerusalem. We've come with all of its religious
finery. We've come to Him. We've come
personally to Him. And when we come to Him, we find
that all the props of our religion are stripped away from us. And
we do, as Saul said, when that light from heaven comes, and
self-delusion and self-deception is seen, exposed in a heartbeat. We cry with Paul, don't we, with
Saul. Who art thou, Lord? It's his first words to the Lord
Jesus, aren't they? Who art thou, Lord? He was engulfed in life, and
he fell to the earth, and he was trembling and astonished.
Who art thou, and what wilt thou have me to do? All of this man-made
religion was cast in the dust with Saul. All of the props of
his man-made religion were brought to the dust. They were seen to
be what they really are, aren't they? And as the Lord Jesus did
on every trip to Jerusalem, he just claimed authority. He claimed
authority over that city and over that temple. He claimed
authority over all flesh. And they kept saying to him,
don't they, by what authority do you do these things? Saul's
no longer asking by what authority. The authority is in the very
presence and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. What will
you have me to do? Saul doesn't ask those questions.
Natural man, that's why all of these struggles and struggles
that continue in the battle of our flesh against the spirit,
we have to have that old man brought down. We have to have,
by the grace of God, that old man to be brought into the dust
again and again. Satan's words to us course through
our veins and through our thoughts all the time. You will be like
God. You will be like God and the
problem for humanity is that you cannot be like God and me
be like God and us both get on together. You will be like God. And in
religion, it expresses itself, isn't it? You can achieve this
by your efforts. You can save yourself, you can
determine your destiny right now by the decision that you
make. You are still on the throne in
modern day Arminian free will works religion. You are still
on the throne and you haven't been dethroned. you'll still
look to these fleshly activities. You see Saul there on the Damascus
Road and there in that room in Damascus. What do we find him
doing? He was three days He was three
days, verse 9, without sight, neither did he eat nor drink. So the works of his religion
were the threatenings and the slaughter and the letters and
the binding of people. That was the works of their religion.
But the very means by which he was carried out and the very
activities of their righteousness were all about What they knew,
what they thought they could see, what they thought the scriptures,
they could see in the scriptures. They thought it was a rule book
for Christian living and they thought their religion was so
much about what we see, what we eat and what we drink. You
might remember the story in Matthew, Mark, chapter 9, where the Lord
Jesus, his disciples are questioned, aren't they? And what do these
Pharisees like Saul, in verse 2, when they saw, they saw some
of his disciples eat bread with defile, that is to say, unwashed
hands, what do they do? Religious people do it all the
time. They find fault. What we put into our mouths and
what we refrain from putting into our mouths and what we know
and what we eat, what we do, these things are the righteousness
of people. They were the righteousness of
the Pharisees that separated them from others. Saul was brought
to the dust. His religion was brought to the
dust, and the activities of their righteousness were brought to
the dust. Saul for three days didn't eat, and he didn't drink,
and he didn't see. that God had done a work in his
life, hadn't he? What was he doing? Behold. Behold he prayeth. Behold means to gaze upon it.
Don't treat this as lightly. Think upon this. Behold he prayeth. Now he's praying. Now he's repenting. Now he's believing. He has an object, an object for
faith, which is remarkably different from all of the object of his
faith before. The object of his faith before,
he would have called it God, and he would have called and
named the character of God and known them chapter and verse.
But his real faith is in what he did. And until the Lord takes
away all of the things that you do and all of the righteousness
of your doing and leaves you just at the feet and in the hands
as a beggar. I love that story of the Syrophoenician
woman. She was driven by the darkness
of the despair of having a daughter possessed. She was driven by
that into the very presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then
he says to her, I didn't come. I only came for the lost sheep
of Israel. He ignores her. She sits there
and he said, and then she said, takes the place of a dog, doesn't
she? What was she waiting? She was
doing. She was waiting. She was waiting on Him to be
gracious to her. And she took the place of a dog. She said even the dogs receive
the crumbs that fall from the master's table. She was there
in a place where she was expecting just a crumb because she had
nowhere else to go. Nowhere else, no one on all of
planet earth could do anything to help her but Him. You see, true repenting and true
believing is not entirely passive, is it? It generates an activity
in people. They are aware They are aware
of their helplessness and their hopelessness. They are aware
of the fact that their lives are now in His hands. What will
you have me to do? I am no longer ruler of my own
life. You are sovereign, a sovereign
ruler, and I am in your hands, and you can do with me as you
see fit. And it draws out, this draws
out from the awakened sinner pleadings and longing, not about
what we can do, but about what he can do. What he can do. He alone must act. I love the promise of Jeremiah
31.9 where he says, with weeping and supplications will I lead
them. They'll come to him pleading
for him to do something. They'll come to him broken, broken
hearted. They'll come to him, this new
creation comes to him, turning to him as he's revealed himself
to them. He comes to him with a new heart
and new ears. The Lord draws out of his people
worship and prayer and praise. He draws it out of his people,
not by human effort, but he draws it out of his people by his presence. I do love that prayer in Ephesians
chapter three, the second of Paul's prayer in Ephesians. He
says, for this cause, for this cause, verse 14, I bow my knees
under the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you,
according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with
might by his Spirit in the inner man. that Christ may dwell in
your hearts by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in
love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the
breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love
of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that you might be filled with
all the fullness of God. The Lord drew out prayer from
Saul and he never stopped praying. that you might know the love
of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that you might be filled with
all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able to
do exceedingly, exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that worketh in us. There is a power from
God to believe, to repent, to obey, to pray there is a power
from God unto him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ throughout
all ages world without end. See what he begins is what he
sustains in the lives of his people. He begins by long-suffering
patience, and then he works in the hearts of his people by enlightening
their eyes and revealing himself to them. And he's doing exactly
the same today, again and again and again throughout this world. The Lord adds daily to the church,
such as should be saved. He draws his people to himself. He draws them because He loves
them everlastingly. He has more at stake in our salvation
in a way than we do. His glory is at stake. His name
is at stake. He says His glory is great in
thy salvation. You'll call His name Jesus because
He will save His people from their sins. And He does it for
His holy name's sake. See we brought, God's people,
God's children are brought to a place like Saul where no earthly
high priest, no earthly devotion, no earthly righteousness will
provide any covering or protection or comfort or sustenance at all. He sustained his religious life
by all of his religious activities and now it's all stripped from
him. And now his spiritual life is going to be sustained. It
will be sustained from on high from heaven. That's, brothers
and sisters, one of the reasons the Lord takes us through these
trials. I don't know the trials that
you're going through, something of them at times. All I know
is that they're coming, and they come in our lives like waves.
But the end of these trials, the end of these trials always
for the child of God is that we see Him. We see Him again. We see Him as Abraham did, like
the lamb caught in the thicket. We see the Lord Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. And we know, yet again, that
He's lifted us up. His broken bones that we might
not cling to the things of this flesh and the world, and then
He heals them. And healed bones are stronger.
He reveals in the trials and He reveals in the darkness again
His faithfulness, that we might see Him as faithful yet again. And we just pray and we wait. We wait for the bread from heaven. Ananias came to him, sent by
God. Do you know what Ananias' name
means? It's lovely. Whom the Lord has graciously
given. That's the man who comes. And the first words of Ananias
to this new creation. is brother. Brother Saul. The Lord has sent me. The Lord
has sent me to you. You are now my brother. The Lord has sent me. The Lord, even Jesus, that appeared
to thee on the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest
receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately
there fell from his eyes, as it had been scales, and he received
sight forthwith. He saw the Lord Jesus through
the eyes of faith, and now he sees the brotherhood of believers
through his natural eyes. And he arose and was baptized. And he went on, he went on to
preach, down in verse 22, we'll look at it again. Proving, proving,
confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this
is very Christ. new creation, a new creation
brought out of trials, a new creation sustained by the power
of God. Such is the conversion of Saul,
and we'll look at it more, Lord willing, next week, but such
is the ongoing conversion of all of God's people. He is a
pattern, a delightful pattern, a pattern that's tough when we're
in that time of darkness. A pattern that's tough when we're
cast into the dust, but a pattern nonetheless, because all that
the Lord casts down, He lifts up in grace and mercy. Let's
pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do. Thank and praise you for your
work, your creative work in the lives of your people, that you
speak life into existence, you speak, as you spoke, light into
existence. And there is a new creation,
there is something in the lives of believers that didn't exist
there before. It is Christ in us, the hope
of glory. What a remarkable thing, Heavenly
Father, that we can contemplate through your word of promise
that the Lord Jesus Christ indwells the people of God, and with him
indwelling us, our present is secure, our future is full of
hope and glory and we can rest in the trials that come in this
time because they come from a hand of a sovereign God who shed his
life's blood and allowed that precious body to be broken. And
by His stripes we are healed. By His death we have passed through
death. By His life, His resurrected
life, we are raised again to newness of life. Heavenly Father,
we do thank you for your sovereign work amongst your people. And
we pray, Heavenly Father, that we, in our times when we must
walk and be shut up, as it were, in darkness, we would find that
you will enlighten our darkness. You will reveal yourself yet
again. And in the midst of that darkness
and contrasted with it, you will be seen to be even more glorious.
than we had imagined. We thank you Heavenly Father
for your faithfulness to your covenant and your promises. Thankful
to your faithfulness to your people. We do thank you, Father,
for the promises that are signed and sealed with the blood of
your dear precious Son. Make them real to us, Heavenly
Father, a real hymn afresh to us, that we might know Him, that
we might rest in Him, that we might find Him out all in all
in this world, and that we might find in His glory all the things
of this world put into a proper perspective, Heavenly Father.
They are all shakable, and they are all soon to be finished.
And we praise you for that, for the glory that will be revealed
in the children of God by your dear and precious Son. Amen.