We've been thinking about this
man Saul over the past few weeks, and we've been thinking about
the fact that he was a changed man. He was converted. He was converted by the Lord
Jesus Christ, who met him on the road, who met him as he was
heading into Damascus with the purpose of there imprisoning
and taking back any Christians that he found so that they could
be tried and put in prison in Jerusalem. And then we discovered
that when the Lord met Saul, he changed him and he sent Ananias
to speak to him and Saul was baptised. As soon as Saul was
baptised, he desired to join with the disciples in Damascus. And there we're told that he
went to the synagogue and he preached Christ. He preached
Christ in the synagogue, that he is the Son of God. That was the very message that
Saul had hated so much before. That was the message that he
detested and caused him so much anger in his own heart and caused
him to pursue the Christians all the way to these strange
cities, all the way to Damascus from Jerusalem. And now he was
preaching the exact same message that before he had hated so much. That's what we call a conversion. That's what we call a transformation. Now he preached that Christ was
the Messiah, the anointed one of God, the one that the Jews,
all the way from the time of Moses, had expected and anticipated
and looked for. He preached that this man, Jesus,
this Jesus of Nazareth, was the Messiah. And the Jews, of course,
had slain him. The Jews had killed him. And
this is what angered the Jewish religion so much. By that message,
Saul strengthened the disciples and confounded the Jews. But everyone was amazed. And it's easy to realize why. Here was the great opponent of
the gospel. He had switched sides. And instead
of being an opponent of the gospel, he had become a proponent of
the gospel. Instead of opposing it, he lifted
it up. Instead of trying to beat it
down, he honoured it by his preaching and his testimony and his witness. Such a change had happened in
this man's life that he went on to preach the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ and that Jesus was the Son of God, the promised
Messiah. And I just wanted to point something
out to you that we find not in this chapter in Acts 9, but in
Galatians 1, where the Apostle Paul is recounting to the churches
in Galatia, the churches in Turkey, that when he was saved, when
he was converted, the message that he had didn't come from
somebody else, not even Ananias. He didn't learn it in the synagogue.
He didn't learn it from the other Christians. He didn't even learn
it from Stephen. But he says in verse 11 of Galatians
1, I certify you, brethren, I'm telling you the truth, that the
gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of
man, neither was I taught it. but by the revelation of Jesus
Christ. What the Apostle is telling us
here in Galatians and he's telling the church at Galatia was that
the message which he preached in those early days in Damascus
came to him by the direct revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
was Christ who taught him who he was, taught him that he was
the Son of God, taught him that he was the Messiah. The divinity
of the Lord Jesus Christ was taught to Saul by Christ himself. It wasn't of human origin. Saul knew that the person that
he had met on the road to Damascus was Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. And when a sinner comes to Christ,
trusting Him, believing in Him for salvation, it doesn't come
to us that we need this salvation. because we've learned something
from men, because we've read a lot of books, because we've
listened to a lot of lectures, because we've got some special
knowledge about theology. It comes to us that we need to
be saved because Christ himself teaches us that. The Holy Spirit
reveals to our hearts that we have a need before God. The Holy Spirit speaks the truth
to our hearts, the truth of the Gospel, so that when we hear
the Gospel preached, we say, we believe that. We believe that
to be true. We believe that the message of
the Gospel is true. We believe that it's telling
us that we have a need, that we are sinners, that we are answerable
to a holy God. And we believe that in the person
of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the anointed Messiah, the way,
the truth, and the life, is the only way of escape for us, the
only way that we can have our sins cleansed and find peace
with God. We believe that the person who
died on the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ, is God, and it was the
God-man who died to save us from our sins. In verse 23, we read
there of many days, and we're told that these Jews that were
at Damascus, after many days, they tried to slay Paul, or Saul,
as he then was. He doesn't get called Paul for
a little while yet in the Acts, but he was a converted man. If
we think of the old man as Saul, then the new man was Paul. And
it speaks of many days. In fact, it may well have been
very many days. Because again in Galatians chapter
1, when Paul is talking about this time, he tells us about
something that isn't mentioned in the book of Acts at all. And
indeed, if it wasn't for him speaking to the Galatians, we
wouldn't know anything about this. But he tells us that there
was a time that he spent in Arabia. And it is possible that it was
during this time when he was in Damascus that he went to Arabia. We don't know what he did there.
We don't know whether he was being taught of the Lord Jesus
Christ, as he suggested, or whether he was ministering and preaching
the gospel to other communities and other towns and villages.
We don't know anything about it because the book of the Acts
is silent on it. But this is what Paul says in
Galatians. He says, I didn't go up to Jerusalem, neither went
I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me. But
I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus." So here's
a little insight that is just of interest to us, that Saul
indeed may well have been many days between these verses, and
it's just a little bit hard to be sure how long these periods
were. But what we do know is that when
Saul returned to Damascus, or was in Damascus, that the Jews
sought to kill him. The Jews seemed, as indeed Saul
himself had done, they seemed to think that murdering those
who disagreed with them was the right thing to do. Murder is wrong. And these Jews
were wrong for trying to kill Saul. But we're also told in
this passage that escaping murderers is an all right thing to do.
Some of the disciples, like Stephen, were martyred. They were slain. And Saul himself had been involved
in much of that. But here Saul is able to escape
these murderers. And while they watched the gates
of the city to catch him as he came in and out, he was let down
on the side of the city wall in a basket that was slung over
the wall and he was lowered down on ropes in a basket and he was
able to escape. Saul had much work yet to do
for the gospel and we must be grateful that the Lord Jesus
Christ preserved the apostle at this time in his life when
he was under attack and saved him that he might be sent to
work and to serve. Now it is in verse 26 that Saul
travels to Jerusalem and even after all this time we discover
that there is a suspicion about Saul and great fear that continues
in Jerusalem concerning him. And then we meet Barnabas. Barnabas spoke up for Saul and
that's a lovely quality that we discover in Barnabas. He was
always endeavouring to help and and to encourage and to reconcile
and to build up the church. And so he comes and he gives
his own personal recommendation for Saul. He speaks to the apostles
in Jerusalem and to the church in Jerusalem and he recommends
Saul to them. And again, in verse 29, we see
that Saul preaches Christ. Paul is preaching Christ. He is preaching amongst the Jews. He is preaching in the synagogue.
He is preaching amongst the believers, the Lord Jesus Christ. The things
that he had learned from Christ, he is passing on to others. And that, again, is a lovely
picture, showing that the Lord is the saviour of his people. Speaking of the things that he
had learned from Christ and passing those things on to others. That
was the beginning of his ministry that would last for the whole
of his life from a relatively young man to an old man. Saul,
Paul would preach the gospel of Christ and again the Jews
tried to kill him. It seems as if life as a preacher
could be very dangerous. And so Saul again is protected
by the believers in Jerusalem and the brethren hid him and
they found an opportunity for him to escape. using a route
through Caesarea, which was a port town, and from there he sailed
to Tarsus, which was his home city, on the assumption that
there he might be safer amongst perhaps family and old friends. And it was to Tarsus that Barnabas
would later go to find him. This is almost like a suspense
movie when we think about all the things that are happening
to Saul at this time in his life. It's a drama in his life, full
of threats and escapes, but it shows us just how dangerous it
was for believers and preachers to speak about and preach the
Lord Jesus Christ. It was costly then to trust in
Jesus. And sometimes when we become
complacent or when we become a little bit at ease with the
circumstances in our life, we don't think that it's important
too much to speak about Jesus. These people knew that their
life was at risk if they spoke about Jesus and they still spoke
of him. That shows us how important it
is to witness and to trust the Lord Jesus Christ Later, Paul
would tell us that he did suffer a lot. In 2 Corinthians 11, verse
24, he tells us that of the Jews five times, receive thy 40 stripes,
save one. My arithmetic is right. That
means that he was whipped with a rod, with a stick, or maybe
with a whip, 39 times on five different occasions. Thrice was
I beaten with rods. Once was I stoned. Thrice I suffered
shipwreck. and a night and a day I have
been in the deep. He was floating for a night and
a day on the sea and didn't know if he was going to be rescued.
In journeyings often in perils of waters, in perils of robbers,
in perils by mine own countrymen, the Jews, in perils by the heathen,
in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils
in the sea, in perils amongst false brethren. In weariness
and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst,
in fastings often, in cold and nakedness, beside those things
that are without that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all
the churches. But in all of these things that
Saul suffered for the sake of Christ and the gospel and preaching
the gospel, Paul was a chosen vessel, chosen of the Lord Jesus
Christ, equipped and preserved by God through it all. by the
Lord Jesus Christ to serve him and his church and his people. And we bless the Lord that he
gave the church brave men like Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle Paul. And when we read the writings
of Paul and when we listen to the words of Paul, let us realise
what it cost that man to go to the places that he went to preach,
to write the things that he wrote in our letters. And let us value
these scriptures, for here is a man who suffered much in order
to bring us this message of the gospel and of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.