Bible Guys Classics: Acts 9 Part 1

Well, today's story in the Bible reminds me of that

seventies song blinded by the Light.

Okay, well, we're talking about Saul's conversion today. He's Chris,

I'm Jeff, and we're the Daily Bob guys. All right, Jeff, Well,

I just want to say it's probably a good thing

that you're a decent speaker. Yeah, whatever, singing.

Whatever, coming on. People loved it.

I'm sure they did.

They were like, sing Moore, they're going to email.

In please sing and that one of them has said,

have Chris singmore?

Hey?

Good one.

Well that's okay because I don't know the next line.

I always say it, I always say it wrong, and

I don't want to repeat that. Okay, So, uh so

listen today I have a little segment for you where

you have not read these but I have. They were

handed to me and I'm going to read them out.

And it's simply this.

What is the segment called?

Oh it's well, I was about to say that, Okay

a psalm? Is it a psalm? Or is it a

pop song?

Oh? Talking about singing?

Yes?

Wow? Yeah what a segue? Yes, totally missed.

Okay, you're ready.

Well, your instincts for this are great?

This this wow? Yeah, okay, here we goes ready, Yes,

their days are like a fleeting shadow.

What I'm trying to do is figure out are these

lyrics a psalm or a pop song?

Is that too much for you?

Well, I just want to make sure our listeners know

what I'm supposed to be doing.

Okay, yeah for the listener, Yes, for the listeners.

It's all about the listening.

Here's the phrase. Okay, their days are like a fleeting shadow?

Is this a song or a pop song? Correct? That's

a song?

Yeah, that was pretty easy. That's why. That's why I

first fleeting is the giveaway? And so what just take

a stab anywhere?

Thirty seven? That's what I thought.

What do I say? I haven't this one?

Okay?

Okay? Uh. And there's a hope that's waiting for you

in the dark.

I hope that's waiting for you.

Uh it is, yes, scars to You're Beautiful at least

it's Kara okay, yeah beautiful Yeah that song? Okay, Okay,

My sun Rise, My Sunrise on the Darkest Day.

So I'm terrible pop songs. I don't know. I'm gonna

say pop song.

It is oh you're three for three, three for three

and that song comes from Despasito by Justin bieber Well

and whoever that other guy is. Uh, then this one

is just know that you don't have to do this alone.

Just know that you don't have to do this alone.

Uh.

That's a pop song.

It is Okay, Treat You Better by Seawn Mendees.

Okay, look at this. I'm four for four baby.

Yep, okay, but it is you a man like myself,

a companion, a close friend.

Uh, I'm gonna say some.

It is a song, so you've got you've gotten all five?

Okay, five for five and some what take that was?

That was a scar some palm.

Fifty five?

Oh I almost was fifty five? Yeah, yeah, almost almost.

I think that's very I think they're very similar.

Yeah, okay, okay, so this last one.

Ready, last one? This is it. Yes, it's the marble.

It says let it go, let it go, don't hold

it back anymore. Just kidding. That's it. It's just five

of them.

Okay. Good. So we want to remind us I noticed

there were no tailor swift lyrics in there.

No, there were there were no Swifties.

Yeah.

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So that's great. Okay, So is that all we had

to talk about. That's it? Okay, Well, today we are

continuing in this kind of a chronological walk through the

Book of Acts, and this is the early Church. This

is when it was still pure and everything was you

know it wasn't perfect, but men were these exciting times

as a gospel spreading for the first time around the world,

and today's study is a pretty pivotal moment in world history,

certainly in Christian history.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite chapters in the Bible.

So favorite stories.

Oh good, good, Well that just elevates it to the

next level.

It does that.

It's one of your favorites. Yes, it's strongly endorsed by

Chris Sarabah. So Acts, chapter nine, verse one is Saul's conversion,

and here's what it says. Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats

with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord's followers,

so he went to the High Priest. He requested letters

addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for the cooperation

in the arrest of any followers of the Way he

found there. He wanted to bring them, both men and women,

back to Jerusalem and Chains. He was approaching Damascus on

this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him.

He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying

to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who

are you? Lord? Saul asked, and the voice replied, I

am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Now get up

and go into this city, and you'll be told what

you must do. The men with Saul stood speechless, for

they heard the sound of someone's voice but saw no one.

Saul picked himself up off the ground, but when he

opened his eyes he was blind. So his companions led

him by the hand to Damascus, and he remained there

blind for three days and did not eat or drink.

Now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias. The

Lord spoke to him in a vision, calling Anonius. Yes, Lord,

he the Lord said, go over to straight street, to

the house of Judas, and when you get there, ask

for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He's praying to

me right now. I've shown him a vision of a

man named Annonius coming in and laying hands on him

so he can see again. But Lord exclaimed Annonaius, I've

heard many people talk about the terrible things this man

is done to the believers in dru and he's authorized

by the leading priests to arrest everyone who calls upon

your name. But the Lord said, go for Saul is

my chosen instrument to take my message to the gentiles

and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel,

and I will show him how much he must suffer

from my namesake. So Anonius went and found Sault. He

laid his hands on him and said, brother, Saul, the

Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road has

sent me so that you might regain your site and

be filled with the Holy Spirit. Instantly, something like scales

fell from Saul's eyes, and he regained his sight, and

then he got up and was baptized, and afterwards he

ate some food and regained his strength.

So chronologically there's a lot, Yeah, for sure, there's a

lot to talk about. The first one is we find

Saal at the beginning of this chapter and he is

commissioned by the high priests to take his method of

persecution and many people believe execution that he was actually

committing against the Christians in Jerusalem, and he wants to

take it to other cities. So he goes to the

high priests and they sign the commission legally for him

to go take his mission to Damascus. So it says

it doesn't say that he killed people, but he said

he was eager to kill people, which is why most

people believe that Saul actually murdered Christians. He killed them,

We know that he persecuted them, but eager to kill.

So so he is on his way and then he

gets stopped by Jesus, and of course this is the

reason later on why Paul is able to say I'm

an apostle. And the requirement for an apostle is to

have seen the Lord Jesus. And so later on, when

his title apostleship was in question, Paul said, no, I've

seen Jesus, and they said, how have you seen Jesus.

He's left, He's already gone, He's ascended to Heaven. Paul's like, no, no,

he appeared to be on the road, which is pretty cool.

Right, right. So then Damascus is in Syria, So this

is hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem, and it's a

major hub for international trade, and so it's a very

strategic city. I think it's strategic from palse perspective. He's

a very very intelligent guy, and he's realizing that there

are a number of Christians in Damascus, and so with

all the traders coming in and out, and these Christians

won't shut off about this Jesus guy. There's potential that

this could wind up infecting much of the Roman Empire,

at least the northern portion of the Roman Empire. And

so he goes to Damascus heads there first, and he's

working only in the synagogues, which really kind of highlights

for us because those of us who aren't Jewish, and

we're two thousand years into Christianity now, so we don't

think of it the same, But at that time, most

of the people thought of Christianity as just like a

cult from within Judaism. And so that's why he's working

directly with the synagogues, is because there weren't very many

other Christians other than up to this point, other than

the Jewish people who said, we've found the Jewish Messiah,

who is Jesus right right.

And it's very interesting because here we're given a nod

to the fact that it wasn't called Christianity back then.

Yes, that's right, it.

Was called the Way, which is so cool.

Yes, they were people of the Way, that's what they

referred to themselves, That were people of the Way.

Yeah, and I'm sure there's a lot of listeners that

didn't know that. And you know, I'd like to think

that it came from John fourteen six, where Jesus said

I am the Way, and so they're thinking, yeah, this

is the Way. And if you think about it, it's

a pretty cool name.

It's a great name. Way better you think. I'm not

ashamed of being a Christian, certainly, but what a cool name.

The people of the Way. And so these people are

the followers of the Way. Yeah, so it's pretty neat,

you know it.

It's this interaction that Jesus has with Saul. And the

first question that Saul asks is he says, who are

you Lord? And then his answer is, well, I'm Jesus,

whom you are persecuting, right, and it's hard for you

to kick against the gods or the or the pricks,

the or the gnawing at your soul. And this is

what Jesus says to Saul. So imagine this. Imagine that

you are a young, successful man like Saul. You're a

Pharisee and you're a Jewish citizen. So you have the

best of both worlds. You have, you know, sort of

interned with the Pharisees. Many people believe that Saul was

probably a member of the Sanhedron maybe, and if not,

he was well on his way. And so you have

all this political prowess, and you have success and money

and fame and everything else and leverage, and you think

this is where I'm getting, this is what I'm going

going to. You think you're actually doing what's right. So

Saul probably thought that he was absolutely doing what is correct.

He is a Jewish person who serves the God of

the Old Testament. He's trying to snuff out this false doctrine,

this false Messiah. He completely thought he was serving God.

I believe that Saul's intentions were good, even though that

they were carried out in malicious intent. And then all

of a sudden you realize Jesus is standing in front

of you, which means everything about your life has been wrong.

Yeah, yeah, can you imagine that? Yeah? And then what

a supernatural way to get his attention right right now.

It doesn't happen always that it's a supernatural event that

is so miraculous like this, where there's a light from

heaven and a voice from heaven speaks, Jesus says something.

But it's always a supernatural event. When the Holy Spirit

begins to convict somebody begin to draw somebody to himself.

God is intervening. The Bible says that God's grace has

always extended through the work of the Holy Spirit drawing

people to Christ. So it's always supernatural, but it maybe

sometimes it's not as flashy as this event. Sure, And

the reason I really believe is most of our listeners

are listening in an environment where the Gospel has been

available for hundreds of years. Right, there's a church on

every corner, there's a Bible almost in every house. You

can get the Bible on your phone if you want one,

almost every but he lives in some proximity to some

Christian or somebody who claims to be a follower of Jesus.

So the primary mechanism that God uses to get the

Gospel out to people is other Christians using the words

of God. Right, But on occasion there are, like in

paulse circumstances, nobody was going to share the Gospel with Paul, right,

he's killing people, he's arresting people, whatever. So in this situation,

God goes, Okay, there needs to be some kind of

dramatic supernatural intervention, and he reaches out and gets the

attention of Paul in a way that is more dramatic

maybe than the way that he reached you hear me.

Do you know of people, Do you know any stories

of people who've had like a dramatic encounter that otherwise

would have never heard the gospel? Because if you don't,

I have a story.

But I don't think I can think of anything that

certainly compares to what we're reading here.

Yeah. I have a friend that was a general. I'm

not going to say his name or the country that

he was in, but he was one of the top

generals in the Middle East and was struggling in his

marriage and was kind of officially he would say he

was an atheist, and he was one of the four

top generals in his country, and so he was afraid

to tell other people that he was struggling through these difficulties.

So he began to just pray, which he didn't believe

in God, but he said, Hey, if you are the

God of Mohammed, let me know. If you're the God

of Jesus, I want to know. I'm just looking for

help and hope. So he kept praying along those lines

for a substantial amount of time, and then he began

to have dreams, regular dreams, to the point where he

began to be convinced that it was Jesus that he

was seeing. And finally Jesus shows up. He's got on

a robe, he's got on a blue accent to his

white robe, and he said, I'm going to send somebody

to you, and when they come to you with the message,

you can trust them. And it was a colonel in

his army who came to him and said, I know

I could be arrested for this, but I feel like

Jesus wants me to tell you. And he brought him

a Bible, a New Testament, and he said, I just

feel like I need to tell you about my Lord,

and he began to share the Gospel. And over the

next couple of days, my friend gave his life to Christ.

Radically transformed his life.

Wow.

And so it wasn't Christ that you know, Jesus didn't

lead him to himself. There, Jesus said, you can trust

the man I'm sending you. Very similar to this story.

Yeah, it sounds like right God.

Yeah, But he was in a Muslim majority country and

then if it had been found out that he was

exploring Christianity, he might have been arrested, put in prison

or whatever. At that time.

Sounds like the colonel took a big risk.

The colonel did yeah yeah, which is what Anonius did

right right. Can you imagine, So you're just sitting around

doing your thing. Hey, I heard that Saul guy's coming

into town. Isn't that scary? And then guy goes, so, Anon, I,

I want you to go and meet with the number

one hunter of Christians.

Right. And by the way, what's amazing is is that

when he meets Saul, he says, brother Saul.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So he greets her, He.

Greets him knowing that God has chosen him. That that

that that you know, God has done a great working

in because God promised he had a rebuttal he said no, no, no, no no,

And then God said no, I've chosen him, and and

and he is, you know, obviously now a believer. And

so he greets him with Brother Saul, and it's like wow,

you know what it is, it's a great example for

us to give people grace. So, you know, when people

have pasted atrocities and sins and you know, lifestyles that

are just bad or just in relationship, they're just mean.

You know, and they just have a bad attitude whatever else. Well,

when they come to know God, we have to be

able to give them a chance to change, you know,

we have to be able to you know, just accept

the fact that you know, it was they once were

lost and perhaps and now they're found. And so that's

why he says, brother Saul. And so it's just a

pretty incredible statement about whose Anoni's character is right. And

you know, it's here's here's another thing about this, and

I've all I've often thought about this. So it says that,

you know, Saul has this encounter with Jesus on the

road and then he goes into the city and he

waits three days for Ananias. But keep in mind he's blind.

So it says he neither ate nor drank. Right, so

he's having trouble sleeping because it says later on, you know,

he regained his strength and eat some food and everything else.

So he neither ate nor drink and he's laying there

blind after realizing that my whole life has been working

against the true God, and after realizing what he's been

a part of. So in next chapter seven, he's the

one standing by and consenting to the image that he

still has in his mind of Stephen being stone to death.

So later on in Paul's writings, he calls himself the

chief of Sinners. He talks about how wretched of a

man he was. And so here's what I believe. I

believe those three days were excruciating for Saul, who's now

it is Paul, Paul who just laid there and just

can you just imagine you can't see anything, So the

only thing in your mind is your memory. Yeah, and

so you are remembering every single persecution, every single you know,

woman or child that you've hunted down and locked up

and separated from their families or killed, and you know,

consenting to Stephen's death. And you're laying there for three days.

And I'm telling you he had to have had an

excruciating three days.

It hadn't been brutal, especially after having had this incredible encounter.

You can only imagine how you fork this will be.

At first it was shocking, but then how you fork

it would be to have an encounter with Jesus and

then to be blind after that that you ever hear

the phrase I saw the light. Sure, that's where it

comes from. This is where it comes from Hank Williams

wrote that song I saw the light, I saw the light.

You know, yeah, no more in darkness. So this this

moment was high and then incredibly low. And you're right,

he had this three days to kind of he probably

a little oh yeah. But then one of the things

I love, so it says, go over to Straight Street. Which,

by the way, this is a really cool fact because

for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years Damascus had

been you know, under soil and rocks and stuff, and

excavators archaeologists have discovered about one hundred and fifty years

ago discovered Damascus again. And the main street from one

end of the so it's a walled city right along

the river from one end all the way to the

other end. It's like a mile and a half long,

perfectly straight street right down the middle. And that is

Straight Street. And it was named Straight Street. There's little

signs that say straight Street. It's really really cool that

Luke was so precise that even in the hundreds of

years when nobody even knew for sure where this city was.

Once the archaeologists come back in later, not only is

there this extremely straight street through the city of Damascus.

It's called Straight Street right right, And so now there's

a big market there and all that stuff. You can go,

you can go visit. Well, I don't know that i'd

want to go to Syria right now and visit.

But again, yeah, I've always wanted to be on this road.

I wasn't on Straight Street, but I've always wanted to be.

Yeah, I'd love to be there too. But then, so

the Lord says, I want you to go to Straight Street,

and I want you to lay hands on Saul. And

and Anonius knows exactly who he is. As my fact,

Antonius feels comfortable. So here's God talking to Antonius. I

don't know how many times God's talked out loud to you,

and I talked a loud to me. But Antonius is

so afraid of Saul that he decides to argue with

the Lord a little bit. Yeah, he goes, but Lord,

have you ever found yourself arguing? I have I found

myself arguing, knowing what God wanted me to do, but

trying to talk myself out of it, and then find.

We're certainly finding reasons not to do it.

That's right, And you know, this just reminds me to

close wrap up with this. This reminds me. I think

most of us have somebody in our life that we

think they will never come to Jesus. And I think

Jesus delights in bringing those people to himself in a

way that just shocks us and a surprising and that's

exactly what he does. So don't give up. Don't give

up on the least likely person in your life that

you think is too far from God. Yeah, it's what's

leaning into.

I've got one more thought too. Okay, So I know

that the NLT this this version that we're reading, it

translates a little bit differently, but uh so Saul has

this interaction with Jesus, and in the KJAV when I

read this originally, it translates with Saul asking Jesus two questions.

The first question he asked Jesus was who are you Lord?

And then the second question he asked him was Lord,

what would you have me to do? And then Jesus says,

we'll get up, go into the city and it'll be

told you what to do. So I just I've always

thought of it this way. These are the same two

questions that you and I have to ask and answer

for you know, and let God answer. The first one

we answer for ourselves. The second one God answers for us.

So think about any person listening. You have to ask

yourself who is Jesus to you? Who are you Lord?

And then and then the next question is just simply, hey,

if Jesus is Lord, Lord, what would you have me

to do?

Wow?

And so this is these two questions here the story

are questions that can really guide us for every single

decision when we're wrestling with you know, whatever it is

that we're wrestling with it, we don't want to do

it God's way. We have to ask ourselves who is

Jesus to us? And Lord, what would you have me

to do? So these are two great questions. Well, I

think that that's a good place to wrap up, and

we will continue on our story with Saul next time

on the Daily Bible.

Guys.