The Miracle of a Conversion
THE MIRACLE OF A CONVERSION ACTS 9:1-19
Tonight, we come to a passage of Scripture that looks at one the most miraculous conversions of all time. Now, this does not mean that your conversion or mine conversion is not miraculous because it is. When God can take a person dead in their trespasses and sins, following the course of the world and following the prince of the power of the air, living for the passions of the flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind and were by nature children of wrath; and make them alive in Christ, then you have a miracle.
Yet, sometimes those miracles are emphasized when God takes a no good dirty rotten scoundrel and makes them an instrument to be used by his grace. Many of us have not had that type of conversion experience, but that does not mean that we were any lest a sinner. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But there are some who sowed some pretty wild oats before God called them into the Kingdom and into his service.
For example, at a young age, John Newton went to sea. Like most sailors of his day, he lived a life of rebellion and debauchery. For several years, he worked on slave ships, capturing slaves for sale to the plantations of the New World. So low did he sink that at one point he became a slave himself, captive of another slave trader. Eventually, he became the captain of his own slave ship. The combination of a frightening storm at sea, coupled with his reading of Thomas a Kempis’s classic Imitation of Christ, planted the seeds that resulted in his conversion. He went on to become a leader in the evangelical movement in the 18th century England, along with such men as John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and William Wilberforce. On his tombstone in inscribed the following epitaph, written by Newton himself: “John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and Libertine, a servant of slavers in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the Faith he had long labored to destroy.”
Mel Trotter was a barber by profession and a drunkard by perversion. So debauched had he become that when his young daughter died, he stole the shoes she was to be buried in and pawned them for money to buy more drinks. One night he staggered into the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago and was marvelously saved. Burdened for the men on skid row, he opened a rescue mission in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He went on to be the founder of sixty more missions and became supervisor of a chain of them stretching from Boston to San Francisco.
One day in August 386, a professor of rhetoric named Aurelius Augustine sat despondently in his garden. Although the son of a Christian mother, he had abandoned his mother’s faith in favor of a Persian religion known as Manichaeism. He also took a mistress, with whom he lived for thirteen years. Abandoning Manichaeism as unsatisfactory, he continued a futile search for truth. Through the preaching of the church Father Ambrose, he became intellectually convinced of the truth of Christianity. Yet, he held back, “prevented from accepting the faith by weakness in dealing with sexual temptation.”
Now in the midst of his turmoil, he heard a child’s voice singing in Latin tolle lege (take and read. In his Confessions he describes what happened next: I stemmed my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be a divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall . . . So I hurried back to the place where (his friend) Alypius was sitting, for when I stood up to move away I had put down the book containing Paul’s Epistles. I seized it and opened it, and in silence I read the first passage on which my eyes fell: Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites (Romans 13:3-4). I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled.
Delivered from a life of sin and confusion, Augustine went on to become the greatest theologian the church had known since the apostle Paul. History is replete with such accounts as these, but there is none more remarkable or more significant for the church than that of Apostle Paul.
So tonight, I want us to study this miraculous conversion of a man by the name of Saul. As I read the text, I am drawn to three thoughts about Saul’s conversion. These three thoughts are true of all conversions. They are the man of the conversion, the manner of the conversion, and the meaning of the conversion. First, let us look at the man of conversion.
THE MAN OF THE CONVERSION – 1-2
In the opening verses of this chapter we are introduced to the man who is to be converted. We have briefly met Saul before at the end of chapter seven and the beginning of chapter eight. He was briefly mentioned at the stoning of Stephen in whom the executioners of Stephen’s death laid their garments at Saul’s feet. In Acts 8:1, Luke said that Saul approved this execution. Later in verse 3, we read “Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”
Well, after a brief interlude on the life of Philip and his ministry, Luke says that Saul is back at it again, but at this time with greater force. Notice he says that he is still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He was intent on stomping out Christianity because it was a threat to his religious beliefs.
Now, let me give you a few tidbits into the life of Saul so that we can maybe understand where he was coming from. Saul was born in Tarsus, an important city in the Roman province of Cilicia. It was a very distinguished city and many people gathered there. It was a university city like Athens and Alexandria of that time. You could say that these three cities held the Harvard, Yale and Princeton of that day.
Saul’s father was a Roman citizen, which Paul claimed one time when he was in trouble. He was also a Jew and a Pharisee. So Saul was following in his father’s footsteps. But before we look at Saul’s education and rise to become a Pharisee, we need to note that he took up a trade like most lads growing up in the Jewish tradition. One of the very large industries in Tarsus at the time was tent-making, which we know he did after his conversion and provided income for him and his missionary journeys. Now, let us turn our attention to what brings Saul to this point in the story of the early church.
At the age of approximately 13, no doubt, Saul was packed off to Jerusalem. The Jewish heritage was motivation enough for him to have good Jewish training. So he was off to Jerusalem, and he sat under a great teacher by the name of Gamaliel. Gamaliel was called "the beauty of the law" because of his marvelous ability to teach. Gamaliel was also so revered that when he died, the people said that the reverence for the law died with Gamaliel. And so Saul studied under this brilliant man.
As part of his education, he had to memorize great portions of the Old Testament. So Saul became very familiar with the history and theology of the Jews. Therefore, after his study, he returned home to his hometown of Tarsus, where he perhaps became a master teacher in the synagogue.
This is probably how we get introduced to Saul in the book of Acts. He was a part of one of those synagogues mentioned in Acts seven who were in debate with Stephen. He and his colleagues could not stand toe to toe with Stephen’s wisdom, so they stoned him and Saul approved it. He continued to persecute the church and here in our text we see his zealousness for his job. In fact, he was so gong ho at stamping out Christianity that he was willing to travel 150 miles to do it. This is why he was going to Damascus.
Damascus was the ancient capital of Syria and had a large Jewish population. This is evidenced by the massacre of some ten to twenty thousand Jews in A. D. 66. But I need you to know that Christianity in its original context, stayed within the framework of the synagogue. Even though Jews were getting saved, they did not necessarily leave the synagogue. So through the persecution of the church, many Christians fled to this town for refuge, but Saul was hot on their trails with the authority to bring them back to Jerusalem.
He was chasing the people of the Way. This was a title for the early Christians probably taken from the words of Jesus when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). They took this title to represent their way of life. This is now their bent on how they view things with a Christian outlook.
So in looking at this person, no one in the first century probably thought that Saul was the kind of person God would save. How many of us have ever done that? Have you ever stereotyped a person as someone that God cannot save? Be honest? I think we all have from time to time. We have put certain people beyond the grace of God, even though we may never state it publicly. In fact, in reading scripture, we are all undeserving of grace.
So Saul is a man who is threatened by Christianity and is all about bringing it to extinction. It would be humiliating for him to admit his wrong and support something he has fought against. It would be like Molly Yard becoming pro-life and doing rescues. Or Madelyn Murray O’Hair believing in Jesus and pushing public prayer. Or Saddam Hussein getting converted and becoming a Christian missionary to Muslims in Saudi Arabia.
So God shows us in these verses that even the most unlikely characters to experience his grace can experience it. God’s grace can go out to the worst of the worse and make them good. I am just thankful that God’s grace is sufficient enough to save anybody. So we have witnessed the man of the conversion. Next,
THE MANNER OF THE CONVERSION – 3-9
Luke says that Saul was on his way to Damascus to bring back Christians to Jerusalem for punishment. He was so ruthless that he brought men and women back. So here he is going to bind Christians when God showed up. Isn’t that like God to do the impossible, to show up at the most inopportune times and to appear to the most unlikely characters?
Luke recounts for us the events of that day, when God brought about the conversion of Saul. This conversion came out of the blue. Saul and God had a conversation about his lifestyle. In other words, God was convicting saw of sin, righteousness, and judgment. I see the sovereign hand of God in this conversion. I stated, last week, that God’s sovereign hand in all conversions. Christianity is not about the natural man pursuing God, but God pursuing natural man.
This is what makes Christianity so different from all the other religions of the world because God takes the initiative in salvation. He knew man would fall and he made provisions for the reconciliation of man. He sent his perfect, sinless Son to redeem mankind from his wrath and their fate that awaited them for offending a Holy God. And here you have God pursuing a vile persecutor of the church and is about to offer him grace. Folks, we must never limit on who can receive God’s grace. In fact, I am thankful that God’s grace saved me.
So God pursued Saul by getting him to see his sin. I believe that Saul thought he was doing the Lord’s work in bringing these Christians into Jerusalem. There are many who believe that Saul had a guilty conscience because of the stoning of Stephen. But that is not what Paul tells us about his own experience. When he tells his own story in Galatians 1:13–14, he simply says that he was extremely zealous for the traditions of his fathers and that he was advancing in Judaism beyond all his contemporaries. And when he tells his testimony in Acts 23, he says that he had lived in good conscience up to that day.
So Saul was not pursuing Christianity on that day. In fact, just the opposite was true. He set out to destroy it, but God’s grace intervened. Folks, we need never give up on an individual who show no signs of being prepared for conversion. Our problem is that we have a tendency to think that God ought to answer our prayer within the next hour or by the end of the day or even by the end of the week. Remember that God’s work on the heart of an individual can be painfully slow for us.
Folks, I remind you that the manner in which God saves any of us is quite different. I am certain that most of us have not had a conversion experience like Saul. Some of us have been saved by God’s grace when he took us off a dead end street that was going to destroy our lives. Some of us have been saved by God’s grace when our parents or some other family member led us to the Lord. Some of us have been saved when God spoke to us through a sermon or VBS or Sunday School. Some of us have been saved when God prompted a friend to tell us about Jesus. You see all of us have been saved in some manner or another.
But I want to say this, that we all have this in common: God chose us. Paul said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing, even when he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph. 1:3-4).
Notice that there are no conditions placed on us by God to be chosen. Paul didn’t say that he chose us because of some merit or value that we have within us. No, God chose us because of his rich mercy, his great love for us. He chose us and saved us by grace. Otherwise, we would have something to boast about and Paul clearly dispels that idea by telling us salvation is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not a result of work, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 2:8-9). So we have seen the man of the conversion and the manner of the conversion. Next,
THE MEANING OF THE CONVERSION – 10-19
In these verses, I see the purpose for Saul’s conversion. But before we look at the purpose, Luke tells how God spoke to a disciple about Saul’s conversion. The man’s name is Ananias. We do not know much about Ananias, except that he was a devout man according to the law (22:12). He was given a vision about Saul’s location and what’s Saul’s situation is at the time: praying. Also, he was given instruction of what to do when he met Saul.
But Ananias puts up a brief objection for going to see Saul. Word had come from Jerusalem about Saul and the evil he did to the saints in Jerusalem. He was warned by someone of the letters that Paul got from the hand of the chief priests and what he intended to do with the believers in Damascus.
Folks, wouldn’t we be a little like Ananias to be a little leery about a man who was so vile and violent against the saints. We probably would have raised the same questions that Ananias raised. Yet, God answered Ananias objection in verses 15-16. He tells him Saul’s purpose for conversion. Saul was going to be a missionary to the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.
Isn’t this what Saul did. He took three missionary journeys to share the good news. He always went to the synagogue first to preach Christ to the Jews. Then he went to the Gentiles because usually he was thrown out of the synagogues. He preached to all types of people among the Gentiles from rulers to common folks. He was imprisoned and sent to Rome later in life where he had a hearing among kings and the Roman guard. He fulfilled all that God asked of him.
Also, he suffered greatly for the cause of Christ. Listen to Paul’s sufferings in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27: 23 Are they bservants of Christ? cI am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, dfar more imprisonments, ewith countless beatings, and foften near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the gforty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was hbeaten with rods. iOnce I was stoned. Three times I jwas shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, kdanger from my own people, ldanger from Gentiles, mdanger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 nin toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, oin hunger and thirst, often without food,1 in cold and exposure.
Folks, what I see in these verses is that God has a specific call on each of our lives after salvation. He didn’t call us to sit around and wait for glory. He has given us a purpose for our conversion. Paul said, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before hand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).
So you see God desires for you to use your gift to bring glory to him in his Kingdom. What are you doing for God? Are you using your gifts? Are you serving your purpose, like David served his purpose in his generation? If not, repent and get busy to the work that God has called you to as a result of your conversion.
Who knows you may be an Ananias with a Saul waiting around the corner for you to minister to in the name of the Lord. Ananias is one of those forgotten heroes. In fact, to be realistic most of us are like Ananias, obscure heroes in the faith. How many remember the name of the man who led D. L. Moody to the Lord? Or Jim Elliot to the Way? Or Billy Graham to Christ? Only God knows and that is all that matters. So be faithful in fulfilling your purpose in the generation in which you lived because God has given you many good works to walk in. Put on your walking shoes and get to work.
So the miracle of a conversion is about the man or woman that God knows all about and calls anyways, the manner in which God calls is different for everyone, and the meaning for God’s calling because he desires to use you if only you will let him.