Acts - Week 8 (9:1-22)

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

Last week, to give you a brief recap, Pastor Matt was up here

and he ate chicken Nuggets. That was that was fun.

By the way, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I would

encourage you go back and either watch that on Facebook or listen

to it because there was a greater, really well done

illustrated point of Pastor Matt just standing up here eating

some chicken Nuggets. By the way, I do have to ask

squirrel moment. Like, you got those like the day

before, right? Yeah.

Did you like, heat them up first room temp, day old Chicken

Mcnugget? I love that.

OK, you know what that is? The pastor who sacrificed this

for his people. Well beyond, beyond the chicken

Nuggets, man. A couple of things that Pastor

Matt talked about was he talked about the power and the instant

availability of God's grace through baptism.

And there's an invitation there for that grace to be poured on

you, for your sins to be removed and forgiven.

And by the way, just because I don't have water in front of me

right now, that is always an invitation for you.

Always. And so beyond that, though, he

talked about two very different conversion stories.

And, and so I, I won't get into all of that again, but I say

that to bring us up to the fact that today we have one more

conversion story that the the Bible gives us that Luke talks

about during this time frame. And it's a pretty remarkable

conversion because it is the conversion of the very person

who in the church's infancy tried his very best to destroy

it. This is the conversion of Saul

of Tarsus, who would go on to be Paul and write almost a majority

of the New Testament. And so here's the thing, if

you're familiar with the story that we're about to hear of

Saul's conversion, we can, we can think about that.

We can go, man, that's rather kind of like fantastic in

nature. And it's it's impressive and

it's unusual. And sometimes when we do that

and we don't even have to think about Saul, we could think about

other people. I have friends in my life who

God changed their life in a moment.

I mean complete 180 in a moment. And I hear those stories and

sometimes if my head is not in the right space, I can almost

feel less than I can feel like, oh man, God didn't do that super

really cool thing with me. That's that's a bummer.

However, however, friends, I will tell you if you have any

sense of that as either now because you know the story, or

as we're reading the story, if you have any sense of that, what

I would tell you is that you don't understand the depth of

original sin. What I mean is the fact that

humanity from its very early stages was completely broken and

flawed by sin. And so I can tell you very

personally, and my family will tell you the same, that I am a

deeply flawed and sometimes painfully selfish person.

And so if I can recognize that, and if I can see that for what

it is, well, then all of a sudden every conversion story,

no matter how seemingly mundane it is, is a miracle.

It is a miracle if you are sitting here and you believe in

Jesus Christ today. It is a miracle if you can come

before the cross and see a man beaten and broken and bloodied

and dead and then ascended. It is a miracle if you can

repent and God has moved in your heart that way.

So I hope that no matter what your conversion story is or or

if you were raised in the church and you've never not known Jesus

as your Lord, no matter what, I hope you feel the fact that God

has done a great miracle in your life because it's nothing less

than that. Now, what I'll say too is that

on conversion stories, we can end up spending, we can end up

spending a lot of time talking about the individual and their

reaction. I mean, after all, reaction

videos are all the rage. So like, you know, we could do

that. However, today I'd more so like

to focus on the character of God inside conversion and who he is.

Because The thing is, I, I am quite aware that often times we

have the opportunity and we take the opportunity to make it all

about us. Now, Jesus Christ, he made it

about us when he died on the cross for us.

But ultimately we need to keep our eyes on God.

We need to see that he's doing all the important verbs and we

need to know him as he actually is instead of maybe a made-up

version of him that we've created for ourselves.

So with that in mind, let me show you where we're going

today, please. There we go.

We're going to, we're going to see who this authentic God is,

and we're going to see the God who disagrees with us.

We're going to see the God who dwells with us.

We're going to see the God who gives us radical forgiveness,

and we are going to meet the God who chooses and uses us.

Are you ready? Yes.

It doesn't matter. I'm going to go anyway.

It doesn't matter. All right, so we're going to

read Acts Chapter 9 verses one through 20.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

So sit back, enjoy the story. It's really, it's really

interesting reading in Jesus name.

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder 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 might 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 are traveling with

him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.

Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were open, 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 looked for a man of Tarsus named Saul.

For behold, he is praying, and he is seen in a vision.

A man named Ananias. Come 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 the authority from the chief priest 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 baptized

and taking food. He was strengthened, and for

some days he was with the disciples at Damascus.

And immediately he proclaimed the name of Jesus in the

synagogue, saying he is the Son of God here in the reading of

God's Word. Friends, I'm not necessarily a

big stat nerd, but I want to share something with you that I

found incredibly interesting this week.

In 2022, there were approximately 210 million

Americans who self identified as Christian.

Now the more interesting part comes here.

Of 210 million Americans, approximately only 20% of those

believe that the Bible itself is God's literal inspired word to

absolutely be taken at face value.

Now again, I've done the math for you.

That means that there are approximately 168,000,000

identifying Christians who look at God's word and say maybe not,

maybe not. It's strange, isn't it?

Now, if you, if you spend some time thinking about this, and

I've probably spent too much time thinking about it there, if

we have any cause or any sense of like we've ever asked why,

why is Christianity in America, for example?

So why, why is it so different among like people groups in the

same country? Why, why is behavior so

different? Why, why is theology so

different? I'll tell you why.

It's because 80% of self identifying Christians don't

look at the Bible as absolute truth.

That's scary to me. I think if we have any questions

about inconsistency inside Christianity, we've just found

our answer. Four out of five of us, four out

of five of us say, yeah, I the Bible maybe.

That's insane to me. That is insane to me if I'm

going to call myself a Christian, that I, I can't fully

express how hard that hit me that this week when I when I

realized that. So here's the question though,

that we should probably ask ourselves to move along.

Why would 168,000,000 professing Christians do this?

Why would 168 million people say, yeah, I call myself a

Christian, but I don't know about the Bible.

I don't, I don't necessarily believe what it says about the

character of God. I'll tell you why if you haven't

figured it out yet. Because when we have a God who's

allowed to disagree with us, it makes us very, very

uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.

Because here's the thing, if I'm, if I'm willing to go so far

as to say, OK, I believe that there's a higher power.

I believe that there's a God who created me and who has is

responsible and created everything around me.

Man, if I take Him at His Word, as He gives it to us in His

Word, all of a sudden there are some responsibilities and there

are some things that I have in my life that if I take a good

glance at God probably disagrees with it.

That makes me very uncomfortable.

So therefore, I'll just make a God of my own creation.

I'll make a God of my own choosing who always agrees with

me. Friends, we'll get back to that

in a second. But here's the thing, we, we are

not in a unique age. This has been happening since

almost the dawn of time. We're, we're not unique in

creating our own God. Take Saul for example, in this

story. Now, it's not overtly said in

the text, but I can promise you that God, that Saul was serving

a God of his own creation. And here's how here's how I know

that. First and foremost, Saul didn't

believe in a God that could become a man.

Saul also didn't believe in a God who could and would die.

Who? Who believes in a God that can

die? That seems pointless, right?

So he's created a God that can't, and then he didn't

believe in a God who is loving and searching for all people,

not just some people. No, he didn't believe in a God

who's searching for all people. And he certainly didn't believe

in a God that provides forgiveness through self

fulfillment of the law. In other words, Saul essentially

believed and created a God who is distant and kind of out

there. Saul, certainly, he had a God in

mind who kills but could never be killed.

Saul certainly believed in a God who who justifies but but only

justifies through making sure that I do all the right things.

I try really hard and I get it right all of the time.

That's a God of his creation. That is most certainly not the

God that the Bible describes through and through.

It's not who he's revealed himself to be.

And so here's the thing, as Saul is serving his own God of his

own creation, he's running around the countryside blowing

up people's lives, dragging them out of their homes, putting them

in prison, and some of them even having them killed.

This is what worshipping a God of our creation does.

It allows us to dehumanize other people while we become

self-righteous. That's what it means to create

your own God. That's always the end.

Self justification and anger at people who aren't like us.

And I'll tell you what, friends, it's just I'm going to bring it

forward because we need to do that.

We need to make this more applicable to us.

And so I'm just going to ask you the question, what are we

individually justifying in our own lives because we have a God

of our own or our own creation who agrees with us?

I don't have to think that hard. I know where I've falsely

justified myself and said, well, the God of the God who I imagine

he's, he's probably fine with that.

Lord help us, we, we need you to come down and disagree with us.

We need you to disagree with us because quite frankly, the God

of my creation, the God of my mind, the God that I, that I

choose who agrees with me, he can't save me and he can't save

you either. Therefore, I will tell you my

argument is that 80% of Christians have a God who can't

save them. And it's certainly a God who

doesn't challenge them. That's not helpful.

It's not helpful. So I'm going to leave you with

that. We need to kind of keep moving

forward, but I hope maybe over the next days or weeks or

months, whatever that looks like for you, I hope that question

lingers in your mind. I hope you think when you think

about God, is this, is this God of my creation or is that the

real authentic God of the Bible who says this is who I am?

Don't change me because I am unchangeable in all of the best

ways. Let you hold that in the back of

your head. As we move forward though, then

we want to. We want to understand.

Then who is this God? Because we can.

I can probably stand here and harp on this all day.

Give me a soapbox a little bit higher and I'll do it.

But I would. I don't want to stay there.

So I want us to actually meet through the text that we read,

the God who is of the Bible, the real God, What is he like?

Well, first and foremost, I'll tell you that this is the God

who dwells with us. It's the God who dwells with and

in us. How do I know that?

Well, we know that if we pay attention to verses.

Yeah, 10 or three through 5. And here's how we know this.

Saul asks a really important question because the light hits

him in the face and he's blinding his, you know, he's

probably making a weird ugly face.

And but as he does that, he asks the really important, he says,

who are you, Lord? So he recognizes right away

there is something powerful and otherworldly and divine

happening to him right now. And so who are you, Lord?

Well, Jesus gives a really straightforward answer.

The Lord is Jesus. I am the Lord.

I am the creator of all things. I am the sustainer of all

things. I am the I am, right?

If you don't know that reference in in world, we'll talk about

Moses this fall a lot. But if you don't know that

reference in the burning Bush that Moses comes upon, God says

through the Bush I am, which means I am existence itself.

Jesus says the same thing. He makes no delineation between

him and the Father in terms of their names and their titles and

who they are. He does the exact same thing and

almost gets him killed. That's a fun story for another

time. But yeah, the answer, the first

part of the answer is Jesus is Lord, period, full stop.

But then Jesus goes on to add to his answer and he says I am

Jesus whom you are persecuting. Now this is really strange, I

think, because in the Bible, in the record, there is no there's

no history of Saul and Jesus ever interacting before this

moment. So quite frankly, it begs the

question, how can Jesus say that?

You're persecuting me? Because I'm pretty sure Saul

didn't throw Jesus in jail. Saul isn't the one specifically

who put the nails in Jesus's hands and feet.

So how can he say that? Here's how First Corinthians

12/27 says now you are Christ's body and in individually parts

of it, and then Christ is the head of the church, his body,

and is himself its Savior. And then in Colossians 212 it

says having been buried with him in baptism, that's us in which

you were also raised with him through your faith in the

working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Friends, do you get what this means?

There is no separation between God and His people.

You can think about it this way. Well, I'm going to give you an

example. OK, I'm going to give you an

example. That's not good enough, but it's

the best I've got, so you'll just have to work with me a

little bit. Here's the example.

When someone I love deeply, who I care about more than I care

about myself, someone who I would actively and and quickly

die for, even without thinking about it, when that person is

hurt, I am hurt. I, I heard this, I heard this

thing once, and it kind of goes like this.

As a parent, if you deeply love your children this way, which I

suspect the vast majority of us do, the phrase goes, you're only

ever as happy as your most unhappy child.

You feel that when you love somebody to the degree that your

heart allows you to, to the to that extent man, you feel it,

You rejoice with them, you hurt with them.

How much more than does God do that?

How much more is is God in our hearts?

And when we are persecuted, he, he makes no delineation

whatsoever. When we are persecuted for the

gospel, so is he. That's how he can say that.

That's how he can answer that question that way.

And so because God is so squarely in our hearts and he

dwells within us in his Holy Spirit, because he and his

believers are one as him and the Father are one, that means that

he is willing to do what it takes to provide radical,

ridiculous forgiveness. Let me show you, Ananias

answered. Lord, I've heard from many

people about this man, how much evil he has done to the Saints.

Oh yeah, Oh yeah. Like, I'm sorry, man, you could

have the best PR person on the planet and you are not going to

be able to flip what Saul has done into something positive.

You can't. He is.

He is an evil person at this point, ripping people out of

their homes, separating families, having them thrown

into prison, killing some of them.

That is evil. And Ananias calls it out right.

But then again, not long later, Ananias comes to SAW and prays

over him and he says, brother, that is not a phrase that the

Bible uses lightly. That is not a a word that

anybody in Scripture uses without really meaning it.

How can he do that? How can he do that?

I'll tell you what, as an aside, the Christian community at this

point in history is actually relatively small.

We're probably dealing with around 5000 people, give or

take. And so I have little to no doubt

that Ananias, he knew people who had been persecuted or killed by

this guy. He knew him.

And quite frankly, as we talked about feeling what other people

feel, who we care about, quite frankly, somebody did that to

somebody who I care about, forgiveness might feel beyond

difficult. And, and we would look at a guy

who maybe did this to us or did something like this to somebody

we love. And we and God would say, well,

what do you want me to do with him?

Because the God of my creation is going to ask me for my

opinion. So what do you want me to do

with him? I would say lock him up and

throw away the key because that's what he did to other

people. Or better yet, just eliminate

him because that's what he did to other people.

But that's interesting. Again, that's not the God of the

Bible. That's not how he answers.

That's the God that I've created because I'm angry and I'm hurt.

That's not the God of the Bible, though, because what we find out

is that the God of the Bible, in his radical forgiveness, takes

this man, this murderer, this hateful person, and he uses him.

How can you do it? How can you do it?

This is how we can do it. With the Roman Flagram.

Jesus is whipped over and over again with thorns that are

pushed into his head. He bleeds down, probably

blurring his vision, and with 7 inch iron nails he is bound to a

wooden stake, feet flat against it and lift it up high.

That's how he can forgive. That's how he does it.

And and we look at these things and we say these are terrible

instruments of torture. Lord.

However, it is these evil instruments that exercises God's

grace that removes our sin from us because that's what it takes.

That's the level it takes to give forgiveness across the

board. And you might be thinking to

yourself, well, I'm not saw. I didn't murder anybody and

didn't do anything that bad. Well, you haven't read the

Sermon on the Mount because you have.

I'll leave that to your own devices, friends.

I, I look at so many faces in this church and so many people

who I know and I care about, and we're all guilty.

We are. We're all guilty of breaking

God's law. Yet God uses these instruments

of torture to do his best work. Isn't that amazing?

So it would seem to be then, that God has the power to use

the most vile, terrible things to give grace.

That's the truth. He can do that.

That's the kind of God who he is.

And again, man, it's good that I'm not God.

It's really good for so many reasons, not the least of which

is so many times I can't see the good through the evil.

I get so wrapped up in my own thoughts, my own circumstances,

that I can't see it. But God always sees it because

the God of the Bible is the God of grace and forgiveness beyond

anything we can imagine. And that's really good for us

because we need that. We need that level of grace and

forgiveness. And so let me kind of wrap up

with this idea is that the God who chooses us is the God who

uses us. Well, he chose Saul.

Now let me give you a couple fun facts about him choosing Saul

after Saul has chosen to be an, an instrument of his to spread

the gospel. Saul travelled.

We know this, Stanford has this study that they put out and you

can look it up or I can tell you about it.

But we know that Saul travelled over 10,000 miles during his

missionary journeys. Quite frankly, it is a

remarkable thing. It is the first evangelistic

movement in, in the history of the world that's like, it

travelled over 10,000 miles over multiple decades to meet people

who were just like him, people who had created their own God,

people who are evil. And the crazy thing is they were

people who just a short while before that he would have looked

at and said, these people are gross.

They're not like me. They don't have my same

religious background. They're gross.

I don't even want to be in their space.

But God sends them to those people with grace and mercy,

changes them in an instant. It's, it's, it's really

remarkable. And so let me let me say this

before we we kind of close and come to communion, there are

things that you and I have done in our lives that we would never

tell anybody. You just wouldn't.

Because The thing is these deep buried sins that we are so

ashamed of, We believe that if somebody knows about it, they're

never going to talk to me again. That is the devil speaking to

you, by the way. It's not the God of the Bible

because the God of the Bible takes these flawed instruments

and he uses them. So, friends, I don't know what

that thing is that you've been keeping locked up deep inside of

you, but you can let it go to God.

You can let it go because no matter what your past has looked

like, no matter who you've been, no matter what you've done,

God's forgiveness is greater and bigger than all of those things.

Amen. Amen.

They are we. We say things like this a lot.

And you want to know why we need to say them all the time?

Because over and over again, we keep on reverting back to shame.

We keep on reverting back to chains that bind us up and don't

give us freedom. God died for your freedom.

He died so that you might be free and live a life of meaning

and purpose. So quite frankly, it's not just

me. I don't care what you've done in

your past, God can and will use you as you have allowed Him to

do it. He'll do it because His grace is

far bigger than any of your sins.

Amen. As we think about that, we get

to come to the communion table today, which let me help make a

connection for you, if you haven't made it already.

Jesus Christ, who's given his body and his blood for your

sins, It's done. It's absolutely complete.

There is not more that you have to prove to him.

That's not something that you need to do.

You know, we, we, we get full of these to do's and checklists and

clearly Saul had his and then God wiped them all away.

He wiped them all away and he said I've given you everything

you need. Stop trying so hard to prove

yourself. I've already given you my body

and blood. And in communion, that is

exactly what God does through Jesus Christ.

He gives us his holy body and his blood.

And so here at May's Road Church, we practice what you

would call open communion, which means that if you look at the

cross of Jesus Christ and you say, Lord, I need that, that's

what I want. That's what I believe.

That is my salvation. I am not putting my hope in my

trust or anything else. I've put my hope in you.

And Lord, even though I've flown it over and over again, I know

you love me. If you believe in that God, if

you believe in the God of the Bible, the table is for you.

Come and eat and drink, because Jesus has given you his body and

blood freely, that you might be forgiven.

And walk out of here in joy, not in bondage.

Thanks for listening to ERC Sundays.

To support the work God is doing at Emmaus Rd.

Church, visit emmausrdonline.org/giving.