Sermon Tone Analysis

Paul and Ananias

Transformation: Acts 9:1-17

ILLUSTRATION: Olympics

I love the Olympics!

I’m bordering on depression with the realization of the Olympics coming to a close.

Although, I’m a little conflicted because I’m exhausted and don’t know how much longer and can go with so little sleep.

Have you been staying up past your bedtime?

Me too!

Just think NOW we can start getting a full nights sleep!

But, it was true, that all these athletes needed our support.

So it’s important for us to stay up into the weee hours of the morning to watch them compete on an at least 3 hour tape delay.

But seriously, I love the Olympics.

I love sports, I love competition, and I love the stories of the athletes and their disicipline and sacrifice to try to achieve that elusive gold medal.

As hard as it is for me to understand the unique achievements of people like Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt, the one that baffles me the most is Dara Torres.

8woman swimmer in the world.

Only one person faster, and she was only 1/100th of a second faster.

The coverage did a piece on the workouts that Dara subjects herself to and the great team around her to help her reshape, and mold her body and mind into a finely tuned machine.

Yet the fact that she is 41 years old and swimming faster than the best in the worlds 20 something is almost impossible to believe.

Can someone, that much past their physical prime really transform themselves into the fastest in the world without using performance enhancing drugs?

She voluntarily submits to blood testing on a regular basis in an attempt to squash such speculation but it still exists.

When it comes to radical change or transformation…it’s easy for us to be skeptical.

Take it outside of the physical realm and let’s talk character.

Can anyone really be transformed?

Not just on the external or physical, but what about internal transformation?

Can a bad, evil man be transformed into a good honest man of integrity?

Can you make a woman who for all appearance has no conscience into sweet and lovely person on the inside?

Can a shattered, broken relationship be put back together as good as new...or even better?

Some of you in this room have personally experienced a transformed life.

BUT you have lost some faith to believe that this transformation could happen in the life of someone you love.

Maybe you’ve even begun to doubt that you can be continued to be transformed.

TRANSITION:

What I want to do this morning is look at a man who was probably the most famous of the apostles.

He wrote a good part of the NT, the 14 Pauline epistles.

The man God used more than any other to establish and extend the early church throughout the Roman world, the Apostle Paul.

But that isn’t what I want us to focus on this morning.

I want to take you back to the beginning of his journey as a follower of Christ, when he was known as Saul of Tarsus.

Back to Acts 9 where we read about the story of his conversion.

Here’s why:

1 Timothy 1:15-16.

Paul says, 15Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.; (16) but I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience for an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

In other words God had you and I in view when he saved Paul.

That is an awesome thought.

God saved Paul for your sake.

So that you would take courage and hope that God does transform lives.

He can transform yours but also there is hope for those you love that you’ve doubted God can reach.

Public Reading of Scripture:

Pay attention to the story as we read together

Acts 9:1-5

Saul/Paul:

Background:

He was a native of Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, a Roman province in the southeast of Asia Minor.

Tarsus was also the seat of a famous university, higher in reputation even than the universities of Athens and Alexandria, the only others that then existed.

Here Saul was born, and here he spent his youth, doubtless enjoying the best education his native city could afford.

His father was devout Jew, a Pharisee, of the tribe of Benjamin, of pure and unmixed Jewish blood (Acts 23:6; Phil.

3:5).

Saul was sent, when about thirteen or fourteen years of age, to the great Jewish school of sacred learning at Jerusalem as a student of the law.

This was the normal age in which the best and brightest of Jewish boys would continue to study and apply oral and written law from the Talmud, the Mishna, and the Sages.

Each Rabbi would have their own interpretation of how to live out the Torah.

Saul became a pupil of the celebrated rabbi Gamaliel, the teacher of teachers or Rabbi of Rabbi’s.

Each Rabbi would align himself with interpretations of the law and traditions attached to the law.

The Rabbi’s would debate what it meant to actually obey the law.

Traditiions were born and established over years and years that eventually held equal weight to the original law itself.

You see, you have the law itself and then the Rabbi's interpretation of the rules required to obey the law.

The Rabbi's rules were called his yoke.

When you studied under a Rabbi, you took his yoke upon you.

Paul was Gamaliels star pupil so Saul would have taken on the yoke of Gamaliel.

Pharisee

Saul was so committed to making sure his external behavior was right that he eventually became a Pharisee.

This was a brotherhood of Jews committed to the meticulous keeping of the law.

They were dedicated to the most minute regulations.

Saul became a Pharisee and also most likely a member of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Supreme Court).

So Saul was obsessed with this code of conduct.

This way of living that was the only right way to live.

This is not all bad.

I mean after all, what’s wrong with encouraging good morals?

One Important Point: There is a benefit to making right choices no matter what you believe.

There is benefit to doing good no matter what you believe.

Don’t murder – avoid prison

Don’t cheat on spouse – avoid family hardship and build trust instead of destroy it

Love people – you’ll probably have many good friends who love you

Obey & honor your parents – God says you’ll have a better chance of living a longer life

There is benefit to doing the right thing no matter what your world view because obeying God generally brings health versus destruction.

And we are encouraged by God to grow in our distaste for evil actions that go against what is honoring to Him.

But one of the lessons I learn from Saul of Tarsus and his undying commitment to an external code of conduct are the …

The Limitations of External Transformation

Here’s the problem with focusing on external conformity.

Morality can damn you just like immorality.

Morality doesn’t earn you a right to a relationship with God.

But we have a tendency to think it does make us more loveable and acceptable to God.

And then we compare ourselves to how others are doing.

We are all prone to this trap.

I can so easily slip into this, I don’t have to even try…unfortunately it seems to come naturally.

No matter what our view of God, our ideology, our political affiliations, our moral standards, our nationality, we can easily slip into thinking my way is superior and thus I’m superior.

Maybe we don’t say it out loud, but on the inside it is easy to slip into a spirit of self-righteousness.

Here’s one of the problems with this if you’re a follower of Christ:

2 Corinthians 5:17-20

17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.

And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

The mandate for followers of Christ in the world: The ministry of reconciliation to God through Christ, which brings about real transformation.

Here’s the danger when we get caught up with placing our emphasis on the externals, those we are commanded to lovingly reach with the gospel we can mistakenly identify as our enemy.