Sermon Tone Analysis

*Taking Care of Business*

*August 13, 2000            Acts 9:1-31*

 

*Scripture: *1Tim.

1:12-17

 

*Introduction:*

 

          Difficult people – have you ever met any?

They are in all walks of life – every area of life.

We find them where we work, where we shop, where we drive, where we live, and even where we go to church and in our own families.

/I haven't always handled difficult people right in my own life.

It is hard when we get caught up in the tension of circumstances.

WalMart at Centerville./

Difficult people are difficult to deal with.

Something just doesn't connect.

We could chalk it up to misunderstanding or ignorance.

And there is enough of that going around.

But the really difficult cases are due to the outright sins of human pride, greed, stubbornness, and just plain vindictiveness.

Love, grace, forgiveness, and compassion have somehow eluded them.

These types of people are often unavoidable.

So how do you deal with them?

"They need the gospel, you say?"

That would be the answer, wouldn't it?

We even find people in churches many times who need the gospel.

/My perception about issue of concern by Cedarly hostess who seemed to be down./

/"Wounded people often wound others."/

The hardest cases are those who think they have it – but don't.

If they really had the gospel or understood it, they wouldn't be so difficult.

Stephen came up against one of these difficult people, remember?

Saul was there watching the clothes and giving his approval to those who stoned Stephen to death because he gave them the gospel and called them to account for the death of Jesus.

Saul came out of the Jewish church called a synagogue.

And he sure thought he was right.

But as we read this morning, he was a self-admitted blasphemer, persecutor, and a violent man – the worst of sinners, right there in God's assembly, the synagogue.

He was proud and arrogant.

Listen to the rest of his testimony:

 

/ If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless./

/ (Philippians 3:4-6 NIVUS)/

 

          It seems that Saul had everything going for him but the truth of the gospel, which of course left him with nothing since he didn't have it.

Saul was a difficult case, the kind of person that makes you cringe if you cross their self-righteous path.

Now, do you recall Stephen's response to the whole thing?

It would be the only response he would ever have a chance to make.

He made the right choice.

He was walking in the footsteps of Jesus, remember?

He said, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."

After that he died.

But this was a prayer that God would answer even in death.

Could we pray that kind of prayer for the difficult people in our lives, even if we wouldn't have any earthly life left after we prayed it?

How have you handled the difficult cases in your life?

Do we truly want God to hold nothing against them?

Can we have that love, grace, forgiveness, and compassion for them that we wish they had for us?

If we can take our cues from Stephen's footsteps in Jesus, we can also take our cues from how God answers this prayer that Stephen prayed.

Our passage this morning will show Saul the beneficiary of it.

And not only Saul himself, but how God would use this difficult man to carry out the most difficult task of taking the gospel to the Gentiles.

Remember our last message in Acts about the ministry of Philip?

We talked about several barriers to the gospel that God would uniquely overcome in the expansion of the church outside of Jerusalem.

Those barriers were spiritual (Simon the Magician), cultural (the hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans), and physical (the Ethiopian eunuch on the road to Gaza).

Well now, in today's passage in Acts 9:1-31, we see how God answers Stephen's prayer and overcomes a profound personal barrier in the life of Saul.

What would God do for Saul in order not to "hold this sin against him"?

*Big Question: *How is God able to deal with difficult people, if we ask him?

*I.

Cycle One – On the Damascus Road*

 

*          A.

Narrative (vv.

1-9)*

 

          While the church was expanding due to the persecution that broke out after Stephen's death, Saul was trying to shut it down.

He must have been doing an effective job since in v. 31, after God does business with Saul, the church enjoyed a time of peace.

Saul probably never skipped a beat in persecuting the church after the death of Stephen – he was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples.

He even went so far as to go to the Jewish high court to get letters (court orders, search warrants, arrest warrants) authorizing his own personal holocaust to cleanse the land of Christians, called "The Way".

In other words he went way out of his way – his goal was Way out.

On his latest road trip planned for Damascus, it didn't matter who he found in this subversive sect who might be in the synagogues.

Men or women, he would haul them to the prison camp in Jerusalem and see that they were condemned to death.

This was no "compassionately conservative" Republican here but one of the old "mean-spirited" variety.

The only good Christian is a dead Christian, he always said.

So as Saul goes with the vindication of the high priest, God comes with the vindication of heaven in answer to Stephen's prayer.

God is going to work it out so there is nothing to hold against Saul because Saul is going to repent and be forgiven.

God is going to shed some light on the subject for this arrogant Pharisee.

In fact, God is going to bring so much light that Saul is blinded for three days.

Now this is an appropriate situation that God puts Saul in.

More than once Jesus called the Pharisees "blind guides" who thought they could see.

Saul thinks himself quite the Hebrew of Hebrews until he meets the God of the Hebrews.

Like Job said, "I had heard of you, but now I have seen you."

This wouldn't be the first time that God gets somebody's attention like this with a measure of trouble.

So God arrests this man, who has an arrested sense of righteousness, in order to loosen him up a bit.

In fact, he shakes him up a bit.

After he puts him on the ground, God says, "What gives with all this persecution, Saul?

You don't know who you're messing with, boy."

Now Saul isn't as stupid as he might look.

He's a smart boy and he catches on quick.

He says, "Who are you, Lord?"

Now that's a quick save in my book.

When you know you're in over your head you need to start swimming.

Saul knows he has met his Maker.

He is ready to listen and obey.

So Jesus, who is the God who has appeared to him, gives him some instructions.

Jesus says, "From now on I'll call the shots.

You just to what you're told."

And so Saul agrees, but Jesus still has the executioner's shroud of blindness over his eyes.

Saul is on a short rope – all Jesus has to do is jerk.

It will take a little time for Saul to get used to his new Master.

Whether out of repentance or discipline, Saul eats or drinks nothing for the three days he is blind.

It kind of makes you think that Jesus just made a believer out of him.

This is time when Saul is well advised to learn how to be totally dependent upon the Lord.

There were other men traveling with Saul, but they didn't see anything, although they did hear something as Jesus appeared to him and spoke.

Essentially, this was just a little one-on-one talk between the Coach and his new player as he lays out the new game plan.