Damascus Road Conversion

But Saul, still breathing threats and murders against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he would bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. The men who were travelling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus, and for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias.

The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias, and he said, Here I am, Lord. And the Lord said to him, Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying. 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. But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man. How much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.

But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. So Ananias departed and entered the house, and laying his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me, so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptised, and taking food was strengthened. It's my privilege and delight this morning to open God's word with you at Acts 9.

Last time I was here, which is a long time ago, we were in Acts 8. This morning we're looking at Acts 9. Now let me just pray as we come to the word. Dear Father, thank you for the privilege this morning of opening the scriptures and I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts may be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer.

Amen. Brothers and sisters in Christ, this story of Saul's conversion is another one of those Bible stories that is just so well known. And one feels rather inadequate preaching from this story precisely because it's so well known. I even struggled a bit with coming up with a sermon title for a text like that. I found that challenging.

I chose the title, as a sermon outline, I don't know whether they were handed out, would have noticed that Damascus Road conversion because this conversion story has come to be symbolic and representative for all dramatic conversions. And so someone is dramatically converted and we say he had a Damascus Road conversion. Later on, after deciding on that title, I searched the internet for some titles that other preachers had chosen when preaching on this text and I found that there were some very creative ones that certainly sum up very well some aspects of this story. And there's one, for example, with the title The Hunted, the Hunter Hunted. Very appropriate because Saul is on the hunt for Christians to persecute, but he in turn is hunted by Jesus.

Another title read The Conversion of a Terrorist. And let's face it, that's what Saul is. Look again at the opening words of the text. Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the disciples. Along the same line, there was another title that read A Religious Fanatic Meets Jesus, and it captures essentially what Saul was, a religious fanatic. Then there was also a title from someone who I think watched too much television.

It's entitled An Extreme Makeover, and along similar lines was the title When a Persecutor Becomes a Preacher, and so Saul the killer of Christians becomes Paul the missionary and church planter. All of those titles just highlight this morning that whatever way we look at it, this is a dramatic and radical conversion story. There are at least five stories about conversions in the book of Acts that are actually spelled out in some detail. And this one is the most detailed and the most dramatic of them all. In this conversion of Saul, we especially see that it is God who changes lives.

Conversion is the result of a sovereign act of God in the life of a man or a woman or a young person. We notice that especially here because this man Saul of Tarsus is not a fence sitter, congregation. He is a man who is hostile to Christ and to Christians. This man has just been to see the Jewish high priest in Jerusalem and he's got from him a permit, if you like, or a licence to visit the Jewish community in Damascus, a licence to drag back to prison in Jerusalem any Christians that he finds in that Jewish community. Now someone like that, friends, is a most unlikely convert to Christianity.

This man hates Christ and he hates Christians with a passion. It would have been a little bit like, you remember the leader who planned and plotted for the Twin Towers in New York to be run into by aeroplanes, Osama bin Laden. Can you imagine someone like Osama bin Laden suddenly getting converted? It's a little bit like that here. Saul is a terrorist, a religious fanatic who has it in for the followers of Jesus.

And if someone like that is going to be converted, it's got to be God's doing. It needs a miracle of God's sovereign grace, and that's precisely what happens in this story. That means, friends, that this story fills me with hope. It should fill you with hope. Wonderfully encouraging. Today in our western society, atheists are becoming increasingly aggressive and outspoken and all too often they have it in for Christians.

Some of you may recall there was an ABC Q and A debate some years back between Richard Dawkins, the atheist, and Cardinal Richard George Pell from the Roman Catholic Church. Well, people like Richard Dawkins say that there's no God. Yet the strange thing is that they hate that God with a passion. But if God can change a Saul into a Paul, He can turn an atheist into a believer. And the reality is that there have been some very unexpected converts.

And I could name many of them. One that always stands in my mind, and some of the older generation will remember, Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, and someone by the name of Chuck Colson who was imprisoned for his role as Richard Nixon's hatchet man. And in jail, he was led to the Lord, became a believer, and later on founded Prison Fellowship. Of course, congregation, Saul of Tarsus is not an atheist. He's someone who is scrupulously religious.

But you know, they're often the hardest people to convert because they think they're okay with God. They don't see their need for Jesus. And so here is a man that we're reading about this morning who is ever so religious, scrupulously so. He puts all of us here this morning to shame. If anyone ever deserved to get to heaven by his own efforts, it was surely Saul of Tarsus.

But you see, he doesn't know Jesus as his saviour and Lord, and that means that despite all his religiousness, he is doomed to an eternity in hell. And the sad thing is that that is exactly what has happened throughout history. Let me give you two classic examples. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was a Church of England preacher but he was not a Christian. And for those of you who have my heritage from the land of tulips and dikes, remember someone by the name of Abraham Kuyper, a reformed church minister in The Netherlands, but not a Christian.

That's scary stuff, congregation. It makes us ask ourselves the question, Where does that leave me? Okay, this morning, you know you're religious. Hey, you're in church this morning, aren't you?

You were brought up in a Christian home. You grew up in a Christian community. But I want to say to you, friends, that that is no guarantee that you will be saved and you'll go to heaven. In fact, I want to say you are doomed unless God in His grace leads you to Jesus. If you've got a problem with that, then please, when you get home, and this is your homework for today, read Philippians 3.

In Philippians 3, Paul lists all the things that he had going for him. They were the things in which he trusted before his conversion here on the Damascus Road. And it's a long list he gives us there. He was born a Hebrew, he says, of the people of God. He even knew his lineage of the tribe of Benjamin.

He says he was circumcised on the eighth day as prescribed in the law of Moses. He'd been schooled in the best theological college of the Pharisees. He says, I kept the law of Moses, the Torah, down to the minutest detail. Paul lists all of those things as though they were his credit cards to get him into heaven. That was the old Saul before his conversion.

But then God reveals Jesus to him. And Paul says, I count all that other stuff as dung. Your NIV Bible is very polite and says counted as rubbish. Words much stronger than that. Paul would have said today, in today's society, I consider it a heap of crap.

I'm tempted to use another word, but then I wouldn't get invited back again, would I? So why does he say that? Because here on the Damascus Road, God deals with Saul in grace, dramatically changes him. How? By revealing Jesus to him.

Jesus makes Himself known to Saul of Tarsus. There's this explosion of blinding light that hurls Saul to the ground. And Paul talks about it later on in later chapters of Acts. He says it was brighter than the noonday sun. It might help us to understand something of what it was like if you could imagine what happened in Nagasaki.

At the end of World War Two, the allies dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki. Some of the people who were there who witnessed it said that the blinding light enabled them to see with their eyes shut. Everything was outlined to their vision even though their eyes were closed. Can you understand why Saul got up from the Damascus Road blind? It's out of that blinding light that Jesus speaks to him.

And when we put together Acts 9 and two later occasions when Paul tells the story of his conversion, then we know that Jesus said three things to Paul. First, Jesus called him by name. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? You see, Jesus is the good shepherd, isn't he, friends? He knows His sheep by name, and He calls Saul here by name.

Saul, Saul, what are you doing? Secondly, Jesus responds to Saul's question, Who are you, Lord? And Jesus identifies Himself with His people and says, I'm Jesus whom you are persecuting. The Lord is identifying Himself with us Christians. And then thirdly, Jesus tells Saul to go into the city and await further instructions.

I can imagine some of you saying this morning, Well, you know, if that happened to me, that would make it so much easier to be a Christian. If only I could see Jesus. If only I could hear His voice. Well, I want to say to you, you can. You can see Him in the word, and you can hear His call in this message this morning and Sunday by Sunday in the preaching of the word.

The reality is, of course, congregation, that God deals with each of us differently. But you know, there's always some similarities, especially in the way in which conversion works in the lives of people. I want to highlight for you three ways in which we see that Saul's conversion is genuine. The features that should be there in the lives of everyone, all of us this morning, who have been truly converted to Jesus Christ. We see it, first of all, in that Saul calls Jesus Lord.

Now I have to be honest this morning and admit that that has been debated by commentators because some will point out the title Lord can also be a polite form of address. A little bit like the other day when I went into a shop and the shop assistant said, Can I help you, sir? He was not suggesting for a moment that I had been anointed by the king. He was just being polite, and I guess most men find it kind of nice to be called sir. But I'm not convinced that Saul was just being polite when he said, Lord, to experience what Saul has just experienced, you'd have to realise you've just seen God.

And when we put the three accounts together, then we realise that this is more than just Paul being polite. So why does Saul then need to ask who are you? I believe it's simply that Paul wanted to confirm what he was already well aware of deep down. You see, there are some things about Saul of Tarsus that we need to remember. Saul was not ignorant of Jesus Christ or His claims that were made by Him and about Him.

Saul had studied under the chief rabbi Gamaliel, and Gamaliel had already had to deal with Peter and John. Furthermore, Saul had heard Stephen's penetrating sermon to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council. In fact, at the end of chapter 7 of Acts, Saul plays a leading role in the death of Stephen by stoning. It says the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of Saul of Tarsus as they stoned Stephen. I can imagine, friends, and this is Westendorp doing his imagining bit, but I can imagine that Stephen's sermon rang in Saul's ears for a very long time afterwards.

He would also have been haunted by the way Stephen died, claiming to see Jesus and hearing Stephen pray for forgiveness for those who took his life. What a witness. Maybe that's why Saul drove himself so hard, persecuting Christians to escape this Christ. But now he's forced to acknowledge this Jesus as Lord. And every truly converted believer needs to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord.

The second evidence of a converted life is a surrendered will. And Saul tells this story of his conversion. If you want to look it up at home later on, Acts 22 and Acts 26. Well, in Acts 22 verse 10, Paul reports that his next question to the Lord is on the Damascus Road, What shall I do, Lord? It's as if he's saying, Okay, Jesus, You're Lord, but where do I go from here?

I think we can interpret that two different ways this morning. First of all, Saul obviously recognises that he cannot continue in his present way under these circumstances. I mean, for him to continue to Damascus and catch Christians and put them in jails is totally absurd now. To start as he's lying there flat on the ground in the dust, blind, he's not going anywhere right now, and he understands that, and so he asks, What now, Lord?

What do I do? We call that repentance. Part and parcel of conversion. That moment in life where we suddenly realise the futility of our own agendas. We turn our back on that and we ask God what He wants from us and how He wants us to live.

It's a crucial part. The second part of this attitude comes out in Saul's question and is basically redirecting his life to God's ways. In other words, if you're truly converted, your life will be marked by obedience. Obedience to the Lord Jesus and to God, the Father in heaven. You will want to do His will. In the third place, true conversion leads to prayer.

And if your life is prayerless, then you need to ask yourself this morning whether you're truly converted. Now please, congregation, don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't struggle with prayer. We all do. And I'm not for a moment implying that the devil doesn't try and stop us from praying.

He will find many ways to distract us from our prayers. I find it sad when people who claim to be Christians are strangers to prayer, and I've met them. A prayerless Christian is a contradiction in terms. Here in our text this morning, we read that Saul lives for three days with total blindness. The men with Saul who heard a voice but saw no one had to lead him into the city, and then we read that for three days he didn't eat and he didn't drink.

Why not? He was fasting so that he could devote himself to prayer, and we see that in the Lord's words to Ananias. The Lord's call to Ananias is to say to him, Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street. Ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. Okay.

The Lord is not telling us, to remind us that prayer is a true sign of true repentance. Now God is simply saying this, so that Ananias, to show Ananias the genuineness of Saul's conversion, but Jesus paints a picture of a praying Saul to encourage Ananias to go to him and help, and it highlights for us that prayer is a true sign of conversion. The Heidelberg Catechism reminds us that prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness that God requires of us. And so I want to say it again, congregation, we need to examine our lives. And if our life is prayerless, then you need to question your conversion.

I want to spend just a moment this morning on this person Ananias also. We saw it earlier that salvation is totally God's doing. It's only God who can change people, and we see that dramatically here in Acts chapter 9. Only He can change hard hearts, but He uses people as His instruments. And what's interesting here is that God uses someone about whom we know very, very little.

We've just got a one-line description. When Paul later tells the story, he describes Ananias this way. He says, A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. Full stop.

And that is all we know about Ananias. The point is he wasn't a significant person. He wasn't an apostle. He wasn't, as far as we know, an ordained leader in the church, a deacon or an elder. In fact, apart from this story, we never hear of him again in the New Testament.

And friends, that has happened so often in history. I mentioned a little while ago Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch preacher, later on a writer, a statesman, founder of a Christian university, became prime minister of The Netherlands, but he wasn't a Christian when he was a preacher. So who led him to the Saviour? You know who it was? A humble servant girl who came to clean the house for him.

A domestic maid who worked in the manse of his first congregation. She shared the gospel with him and told him he needed a personal relationship with Jesus. Here is a man named Ananias. No doubt more fully, and undoubtedly explains to Saul more fully what had happened to him. We need to keep in mind this morning, friends, that salvation is a process and Ananias helps in that process.

You know, the Bible talks about conversion as a new birth. John chapter 3 to Nicodemus. Well, I don't need to tell those of you who are mothers that a birth doesn't happen in an instant. Birth is a process, and so is the new birth. We could say this morning that Ananias is the midwife who helps in the rebirth of Saul of Tarsus.

Now surely that's encouraging, to think of that role of Ananias, that God uses to bring Saul to faith. I sometimes hear Christians say, What can I possibly do for the Lord? I'm just an ordinary person. Well, there are many ordinary mothers who have raised godly children who became missionaries and church planters. There are many a very ordinary workman who has planted the seed of faith by saying something about the Lord Jesus Christ or about God's word, and someone who went on to do great things for God.

You just need to make sure that you are ready, willing and available. And of course, that's the problem, isn't it? Because Ananias at first was not so ready and not so willing and not so available. And so he protests and argues with God. Doesn't the Lord know that Saul has come here with a licence to imprison Christians?

Isn't God aware of the harm that this man has done to the saints in Jerusalem? Now before you hold that against Ananias, please remember you are benefiting from the big picture. You've read the New Testament and you've seen how Saul of Tarsus, as Paul the apostle, left his stamp on it. I mean, 13 of the New Testament books are from Paul. He's probably, arguably, the greatest Christian missionary who ever lived.

One of its greatest minds, an amazing theologian, a profound writer. Just read the book of Romans. Why shouldn't he be welcomed into the church? And yet, friends, if we'd been there, I would have wondered. Think of the context.

Here is a man who most likely supervised the death of Stephen. Here is someone who's responsible for rounding up Christians in Jerusalem, putting them in jail, and maybe some of them had been executed. And now he's come to do the same thing in Damascus, and now you want me to go and help him? Really? Ananias, friends, wasn't the only one who was sceptical. Others in Jerusalem later on, when Saul tried to join them, were also sceptical.

And let's face it, sometimes being sceptical about a conversion is a good thing. Sometimes we need to be sceptical. I can remember back in 1977, I'm giving away something of my age, in 1977 the pornographic publisher Larry Flynt became a Christian. That dramatic conversion made headlines around the world. Most newspapers carried the story.

It was on television. I remember seeing it. But those who were sceptical were right, because a little later Larry Flynt was saying that he was still going to publish porn but now he was going to do it for God. Sadly, his Christianity was fake. But our scepticism can also cause problems for a genuine convert, and friends, I've seen that happen at times in a church where someone was so disappointed that Christians did not accept them as being genuine Christians.

Of course, the Lord insists that Ananias goes, and Ananias ultimately obeys, and he's wonderfully used by God. To start, that visit by Ananias brings healing to Saul from his blindness. Our text says that something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. More importantly, he baptises Saul, and please don't think that that was a light thing, because baptism always marks for Christians that decisive step of belonging to Jesus, taking that public stand, being marked as a follower of Jesus Christ. And so in undergoing baptism, Saul is saying, I am throwing in my lot with this persecuted group. Saul now identifies with those whom he once dragged off to jail.

And that's a glorious illustration of the power of God and of the wonder of His grace. The persecutor becomes a gospel preacher, the terrorist a church planter. But Ananias does one other thing, congregation. He commissions Saul. You see, when you put the three stories of Saul's conversion, this one here in Acts 9 and the other two where Paul later shares them, together, then we see that more clearly, that it's Ananias who actually commissioned Saul to be the chosen instrument to carry Jesus' name to the Gentiles.

Ananias instructs Saul in the great task that God has for him, so that Saul of Tarsus becomes Paul the apostle. It's a wonderful picture, friends, we have in this text here this morning in Acts 9, the way in which God works in this world. This religious fanatic met Jesus and he ended up taking the gospel of Jesus all the way to Rome, the centre of the world of that day. God can do that miracle of grace in your life if you're not a believer this morning. I want to say He can do that miracle of His grace in the life of your relatives who are not walking with God.

He can do it in the life of your neighbours and your workmates. He can even do it in the life of the most aggressive atheist. We just need to pray that He'll do it. I mean, let me lead you in prayer. Our Father and our God, we thank You for the power that is so evident in this chapter to change lives.

What a dramatic conversion, and how wonderfully it was blessed by You for the well-being of Your church of all ages. So every time we open our Bibles, we can read the writings of Paul. We want to thank You for the way in which You've used that not only to build up Christians but also to lead unbelievers to faith. And we pray, Lord, that You will continue, by Your grace, to do that work also in our day and age. And we pray that in Jesus' name, as we say together, Amen.