Acts
22:6-22
Sermon preached on October 9, 2005 by Laurence W. Veinott.
© Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Other sermons can be
found at newlifeop.org
Do you know what goosing is? Are you familiar with that
expression? It refers to one of the bad habits that some
people in eastern Canada have. Goosing someone means that
you pinch or tickle their bottom, so that they get a fright
and you make them jump. I don't know if they still do it a
lot but it was quite common back when I was growing up.
I've been goosed more than once. Without a doubt the
funniest story I know about goosing happened to friends of
ours—a mother and her grown daughter went shopping
together at a department store. They were both big women
and they both have a good sense of humor and a bit of fun
in them. They picked out some clothes and went to the
dressing rooms to try them on. The dressing rooms were not
like we're used to- instead of having wooden sides they
just had cloth curtains separating one section from
another. The daughter thought she would have some fun and
she decided to goose her mother- so she peeked through the
curtain and saw that her mother had her back to her- so she
put her hand through—and goosed her mother. The only
problem was that it wasn't her mother—it was someone
else, a complete stranger. The stranger shouted and jumped
and then turned around—and horror of
horrors—the daughter saw that it wasn't her mother,
It was another lady. I don't know which one was more
shocked—but it was a terribly embarrassing scene. She
goosed a total stranger in a department store changing
room.
Now one thing that's clear from that story is that the
daughter needs to change. I mean, she can't go around doing
things like that. She's gotta stop. She has to do a 180
degree turn. If she doesn't change and stop—no one is
safe.
It's often not easy when you realize that you have to
change. It's even more difficult to see that something you
felt strongly about is all wrong. It usually takes a. In
Greek tragedy a peripateia was the moment when a person
realized that everything he knew was wrong—he had a
sudden reversal of circumstances shows everything in a
different light. That's what happened to Paul on the road
to Damascus. Paul uses that to try to convince the crowd to
follow Jesus. In the past couple of weeks we saw how Paul
addressed the Jewish crowd with respect and honor. We saw
how he took great pains to show them how he had been like
them, the many things he had in common with them.
But then he tells them something quite
different—that
they have to change.
Paul
tells them that they're not all right as they are.
He tells
them that as they are, they're lost, that they don't know
the Lord, the Righteous One, that they are still in their
sins.
Paul tells them that everything they know about
Christianity is wrong. Instead of being a new, erroneous
cult—it is the fulfillment of the Old Testament and
that Jesus is the Lord of Glory. Paul tells the Jews that
they have to change and instead of rejecting Jesus, they
need to embrace Him. Paul tells them this indirectly,
telling them about his conversion.
Let's consider the things that the story of his conversion
clearly implied.
First,
Paul shows them that they're not right with Jesus.
This is the crux of the matter. Paul was
a Jew. He was raised in Jerusalem. He was a Pharisee. He
was zealous for the law. He was trying to protect their
ancient religion. (Or so he thought).
But
he didn't know Jesus and because of that he was still in
his sins, he was lost. This
is clear from verses 8 and 16. In verse 8 Paul asked,
"Who are you, Lord?"
He didn't know the Lord. He didn't know Jesus of Nazareth.
He didn't know the One Ananias was later to call, (verse
14)
"the Righteous One".
And because of that he didn't have the forgiveness of his
sins. In
verse 16 Ananias
said to him,
"And now what are you waiting for?
Get up,
be baptized
and wash
your sins away,
calling
on his name."
Paul was showing them that salvation was through Jesus. He
was showing them that they were still in their sins because
they didn't know Him.
One of
the key ingredients in preaching and witnessing is
convicting people of sin—specifically their sin of
not believing in Jesus.
What is
the mission of the church—it's to go and preach the
good news of Jesus Christ. In
Matthew 28:18f Jesus
gave the church its Great Commission.
"All authority in heaven and on earth
has been
given to me.
Therefore
go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing
them in the name of the Father
and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and
teaching them to obey
everything
I have commanded you.
And
surely I am with you always,
to the
very end of the age."
We are to go and make disciples. We are to tell people that
they need to believe in Jesus—that without Him they
are going to be lost. As Jesus said in
John 14:6,
"I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one
comes to the Father
except
through me."
We need to teach them the commands of Jesus. We do that
with the authority and power of Jesus Christ.
Now this is increasingly unpopular in our society. It has
been so for quite some time.
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church was founded, in part,
because of this very issue. In the
earlier part of the last century people who were not
Christians had infiltrated the old Presbyterian Church.
Some of them became missionaries. Since they weren't
Christians, they didn't go forth with the gospel. What they
went forth with what was called 'the
social gospel'. Rather
than telling people that they need Jesus, it endeavored to
help them in other ways. You've all heard the saying,
"Give a
man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to
fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime"
J.
Gresham Machen and others were disturbed at this and set up
their own mission board to support only born again
missionaries. Because of that they were expelled from the
old church and so began the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
Today the situation is even worse. Our society views
missionaries as bad. It views the exclusivism of
Christianity as exceedingly narrow. To claim that Jesus is
the only way to be saved is frowned upon. Peter's claim in
Acts 4:12,
"Salvation is found in no one else,
for
there is no other name under heaven
given to
men by which we must be saved."
—is viewed with great disgust. Our society tells us
that there is value and good in all religions and that for
any religion to claim that their way of salvation is the
only way is immoral and wrong.
Rather than telling people that they need to turn from
their traditional religions and superstitions—society
tells us that we should value and respect such
institutions. They
tell us that it's wrong to try to win people to Christ.
Rather we should celebrate the religions of other people
and recognize that some of them may be of much greater
value than Christianity.
There's a TV show called, "Going
Tribal". Now
I've never seen it, so I may be wrong in my assessment. But
from the advertisements that I've seen of it—it looks
like it fits right in with this modern movement.
Now it's certainly true that we need to respect and honor
other people. We look at that two weeks ago. But that does
not mean that we honor their religions such that we do not
seek to win them from them.
Jesus is the only way.
Part of preaching the gospel and witnessing correctly
consists of pointing out people's sins to them, and part of
that has to do with their sinful reaction to
Jesus. Paul
wasn't unique in this.
When Peter preached to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost,
he confronted them with their sin against Jesus. He said,
(Acts 2:22f)
"Men of Israel, listen to this:
Jesus of
Nazareth was a man accredited by God
to you
by miracles, wonders and signs,
which
God did among you through him,
as you
yourselves know.
This man
was handed over to you
by God's
set purpose and foreknowledge;
and
you, with the help of wicked men,
put
him to death by nailing him to the cross."
Peter's preaching was the same in Acts 3:13f. He said to
the crowd about Jesus,
"You handed him over to be killed,
and you
disowned him before Pilate,
though
he had decided to let him go.
You
disowned the Holy and Righteous One
and
asked that a murderer be released to you.
You
killed the author of life,
but God
raised him from the dead."
Peter was the same way when he was before the Sanhedrin in
Acts 4:10. He said to them,
"Rulers and elders of the people!
If we
are being called to account today
for an
act of kindness shown to a cripple
and are
asked how he was healed,
then
know this,
you and
all the people of Israel:
It is by
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
whom
you crucified
but whom
God raised from the dead,
that
this man stands before you healed.
He is
'the stone you builders rejected,
which
has become the capstone.'"
We see this in Stephen's preaching as well in Acts 7:51f.
He said,
"You stiff-necked people,
with
uncircumcised hearts and ears!
You are
just like your fathers:
You
always resist the Holy Spirit!
Was
there ever a prophet
your
fathers did not persecute?
They
even killed those who predicted
the
coming of the Righteous One.
And now
you have betrayed and murdered
him—
you
who have received the law
that was
put into effect through angels
but have
not obeyed it."
Today many people are defiant when it comes to Jesus and
His claims of Lordship. They're like
Pharaoh, who
said to Moses, (Exodus 5:2)
"Who is the LORD,
that I
should obey him and let Israel go?
I do not
know the LORD
and I
will not let Israel go."
Others are
indifferent or
ignorant about
Jesus and His claims. They believe in evolution and buy in
to the theory that they are their own masters. They fail to
recognize that Jesus created them and that they owe Him
allegiance, honor and praise. As Paul tells us in
Colossians 1:15f,
"He is the image of the invisible God,
the
firstborn over all creation.
For by
him all things were created:
things
in heaven and on earth,
visible
and invisible,
whether
thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;
all
things were created by him and for him.
He is
before all things,
and in
him all things hold together."
Part of our preaching and witnessing is to confront people
with how they are treating Jesus. If they're not serving
Him they need to repent and turn to Him. As Paul said to
the Greeks in Athens, (Acts 17:30f)
"In the past God overlooked such ignorance,
but now
he commands all people everywhere to repent.
For he
has set a day when he will judge the world
with
justice by the man he has appointed.
He has
given proof of this to all men
by
raising him from the dead."
People need to embrace Jesus, the Righteous One, the Lord
of all. Our preaching and witnessing needs to testify to
this.
If you're not a Christian, you need to change your ways and
embrace Jesus. He made you. He made you for His glory. If
you're not living for Him, you're rejecting the great
purpose for which you are here. Your whole life is wasted,
totally. You're totally on the wrong track. You need to
take heed to Paul's warning in Acts 13:40,
"Take care that what the prophets have said
does not
happen to you:"
You need to go to Jesus and ask Him to save you. For the
second thing that Paul showed the people was that,
salvation
is by grace, not by works.
Most of
the Jews looked to the law for salvation. We know that
there were many variations among them. There were the
Pharisees and the Sadducees. Even among the Pharisees there
were different schools of thought. In Paul's times there
was the school of
Shammai and the
school of Hillel. The Shammaite school looked on the law as
a totality and viewed one breach of the law as a breach of
the law as such. The Hillelite view was that, (F. F. Bruce,
Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free, p. 49)
"divine
judgment had regard to the preponderance of good or bad in
a man's life viewed as a whole."
That's
one of the basic views that is popular today.
But the important thing to note was that most of the Jews
had great respect for the law. We see that in the incident
before us. One of the things that incensed the crowd was
the fact that they were told that Paul was against the law.
(Acts 21:28) Many of the Jews looked to the law, to their
works for salvation.
Remember how Luke introduced the story that Jesus told
about the Pharisee and the tax collector at the
temple? He
said, (Luke 18:9)
"To some who were confident
of their
own righteousness
and
looked down on everybody else,
Jesus
told this parable:"
That illustrates the point. Many Jews looked to the law as
a means of gaining life.
But what does Paul do? He tells them how he was saved, how
he came to know God. Paul's point was that
God took
the initiative in saving him.
Paul was
fighting against Jesus, the Righteous One when he saw the
bright light on the road to Damascus. In Acts 9:1 Luke
tells us that Paul was breathing out,
"murderous threats
against
the Lord's disciples."
It was then that God saved Paul in very dramatic fashion.
He was saved when he was in the midst of great sin—he
was persecuting Christians—he was on his way to
Damascus to arrest Christians and bring them to Jerusalem
as prisoners. It was then that the Lord appeared to him and
brought him to Himself.
How was Paul saved? It was through divine intervention.
Paul's actions did not contribute to his salvation. He was
saved by God in spite of them.
What this means for all of us is that
you have
to seek salvation in God, not in yourself.
There's
a very widespread belief that we have to earn our
salvation. We have to do something to set us in good stead
with God. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Paul
wrote in
Galatians 2:21,
"I do not set aside the grace of God,
for if
righteousness could be gained through the law,
Christ
died for nothing!"
One of the most famous sayings of the rabbi
Hillel was his
reply to a man who asked him to summarize the whole law is
as few words as possible. He said, (From Bruce, p. 49)
"What is
hateful to yourself, do not do to another; that is the
whole law, all the rest is commentary."
It's
interesting that that
leaves God out of the law. How
different was Jesus' summary of the law, (Matthew 22:37-40)
"'Love the Lord your God
with all
your heart and with all your soul
and with
all your mind.'
This is
the first and greatest commandment.
And the
second is like it:
'Love
your neighbor as yourself.'
All the
Law and the Prophets
hang on
these two commandments."
Perhaps Hillel's comment reveals that many of the Jews
looked to the law for salvation, rather than to God. But
that will never do. As Paul wrote in
Romans 3:20, (REB)
"For no human being can be justified
in the
sight of God by keeping the law:
law
brings only the consciousness of sin."
You'll remember Jesus' conversation with
Nicodemus in John
3. Jesus said, (verse 3)
"I tell you the truth,
no one
can see the kingdom of God
unless
he is born again."
Nicodemus replied,
"How can a man be born when he is old?
Surely
he cannot enter a second time
into his
mother's womb to be born!"
Jesus answered,
"I tell you the truth,
no one
can enter the kingdom of God
unless
he is born of water and the Spirit.
Flesh
gives birth to flesh,
but the
Spirit gives birth to spirit."
You need to seek salvation from God. You need to be born
'from above'. As Paul told us in Romans 9:15-16,
"For he says to Moses,
'I will
have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I
will have compassion on whom I have compassion.'
It does
not, therefore,
depend
on man's desire or effort,
but on
God's mercy."
Or as the apostle John told us in John 1:10-13,
"He was in the world,
and
though the world was made through him,
the
world did not recognize him.
He came
to that which was his own,
but his
own did not receive him.
Yet to
all who received him,
to those
who believed in his name,
he gave
the right to become children of
God—
children
born not of natural descent,
nor of
human decision or a husband's will,
but born
of God."
In John 6:44 Jesus said,
"No one can come to me
unless
the Father who sent me draws him,"
You have to ask God to save you. You can't do it yourself.
You have to be like the tax collector that
Jesus spoke about, the one in the temple. Jesus said, (Luke
18:13-14)
"But the tax collector stood at a distance.
He would
not even look up to heaven,
but beat
his breast and said,
'God,
have mercy on me,
a
sinner.'
I tell
you that this man,
rather
than the other,
went
home justified before God.
For
everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,
and he
who humbles himself will be exalted."
The third thing that Paul's sermon showed the Jews was that
God's
grace is very wide.
It's for
all peoples. It's for you. If you go to Jesus He will
accept you.
The ancient Jews were very nationalistic and in some sense,
prejudiced against the Gentiles. They thought that God's
grace was for them and not for the Gentiles. When Paul told
them that the Lord said to him, (Acts 22:21)
"Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles."
The crowd became incensed and said,
"Rid the earth of him!
He's not
fit to live!"
They made a fatal mistake. Besides looking to the law for
salvation, there was something else mingled with it- the
Jews placed hope in their
racial and national heritage. But
such cannot save them. We're all children of Adam and
because of that we're lost unless we're in Jesus.
The gospel does not cater to any sinful exclusivism or
prejudice. As John the Baptist said to the Jews, (Matthew
3:9f)
"And do not think you can say to yourselves,
'We have
Abraham as our father.'
I tell
you that out of these stones
God can
raise up children for Abraham.
The ax
is already at the root of the trees,
and
every tree that does not produce good fruit
will be
cut down and thrown into the fire."
And in John 8:44 Jesus said to the Jews,
"You belong to your father, the devil,"
Family connection will not get you into heaven. Racial
connection will not get you into heaven. You need Jesus.
But the
wonderful thing is that His grace reaches to you.
Don't
let anyone tell you that it doesn't. He loves sinners,
sinners everywhere. Some people seek to limit God's grace.
They think they have it and that it belongs to their little
exclusive club. They don't want to reach out and serve the
sinners around them. They think that God's grace is just
for them. Some rural churches can fall into that trap.
But the gospel is not limited like that. Jesus sent Paul to
the Gentiles. He sent him far from Jerusalem. So today He's
sent His message of salvation to you—embrace Him.
Turn from your sin and find life in Him.