Acts 9:1-19 - Dragons and Scaredy-Cats

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. And today we are in Acts chapter 9, Acts chapter 9, and we've been journeying through the book of Acts. We saw how Jesus sent it up to heaven.

He commissioned his apostles, his disciples, that they would receive the Holy Spirit, that they would be witnesses first in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. We've seen how that's kind of progressed.

We've seen what they did in Jerusalem. We saw then the persecution that came after the death of the first, one of the first deacons, Stephen, and he died, and so then they were scattered everywhere.

And we saw several of them, several of the disciples went to Judea.

We saw two weeks or two days ago, how Philip, another deacon from that early church, went to Samaria and brought the gospel and then invited down Peter and John to see what God was doing, how God brought the Holy Spirit to the Samaritans and kind of

bridged some gaps there. We saw yesterday how kind of to the uttermost part of the earth that Philip brings the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch who was the treasurer of the kingdom of the Ethiopians.

Now, one thing that showed up at the beginning of chapter 8 at the death of Stephen was a specific character named Saul. And we saw Saul as one that persecuted the church.

The very beginning of that chapter said, Saul approved of their killing of Stephen. He was one that held the coats. That was kind of a, hey, I am standing by and I am approving of this action officially as a Pharisee.

I am approving of this. And he says in Acts 8 and verse, the end of verse one, on that day, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.

Verse three, Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.

So now we come to chapter nine and verse number one, and we see kind of a similar description of Saul as we learned about a few days ago when in Stephen's sermon, he in his defense before the Sanhedrin, before the leaders, the religious leaders of

that day, he tells them that he sees Jesus, the son of man from Daniel seven, the one that dismantles and destroys the kingdoms of this world. He saw Jesus high and lifted up, standing next to God the Father there, a direct claim of divinity being

put on Jesus, which was a deep affront to the Sanhedrin. And we saw Saul as an instrument of those nations, here the nation of Israel, and how they were persecuting Christ and his people. So Paul, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Saul is being described as like one of those monsters that you read about in Daniel seven, an amalgamation of a bunch of different animals.

He is, the Old Testament would often refer to things like a dragon, not quite a dragon, as we would think of it today. More times than not, it was like a sea dragon. You can read about those a lot.

In ancient mythology, it was normally identified with the sea.

I will probably link in here a video from the Bible Project about the chaos dragon theme in scripture, but I'll suffice it to say at this moment that Saul is acting on behalf of the governments, the ideologies, the powers of this world.

He is, in a sense, being kind of animated by Satan, that Satan wants the church destroyed, and Saul is accomplishing that goal.

And to kind of draw out that specific comparison in verse number one of chapter nine, Luke says this, Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, like a dragon breathing out fire.

He's still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples.

He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the way, the way, so now we might say Christianity, then they said the way.

If he finds anyone worshiping the way, Jesus, the way, the truth and the life, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord? Lord, Saul asked.

It's kind of a question, not necessarily of actually who are you. It's a what is your command? What is your authority for me?

He's asking, what do you want from me? What is my relation to you in this moment? He says, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

He replied, now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do. The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless. They heard the sound, but did not see anyone.

Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days, he was blind and did not eat or drink anything.

He had literally just had an encounter with the risen Christ on the road who told him everything you have devoted your life to up until this moment is actually fighting against the God that you say that you love.

What a startling shock that would have been to him.

This is, for many people, their interaction as they realize that maybe they've grown up in church, maybe they have spent all of their life in religion, whether Christianity or maybe something like Catholicism or Mormonism or Seventh-day Adventism or

the Jehovah's Witnesses or maybe Mormonism or Islam, and they realize, oh, I am not actually serving the one true God. Maybe I've been doing things, maybe I've been worshiping things, but it hasn't been God. What a shock that would have been.

So he's not eating or drinking anything, you can't see anything after seeing Jesus. In Damascus, verse 10, there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, Ananias.

Yes, Lord, he answered. The Lord told him, go to the house of Judas on Street Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision, he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.

Lord, Ananias answered, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priest to arrest all who call on your name.

I wonder what Ananias was kind of thinking here. He wasn't giving God new information. Like God already knew about all of that.

He knew exactly who Saul was. He knew what he had done. And he didn't ask Ananias to give a report on who Saul was or what he had done with his past.

He said, I have a mission for you. Go accomplish the mission. So he gives this, hey, God, do you know who this is?

But the Lord said to Ananias, go. This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer from my name.

Here I think it's so cool, number one, that God wasn't done with Paul, with Saul, just because of the bad things that he had done. Our sins do not negate us from God's goodness and God's grace. That doesn't mean that we continue in our sin.

God didn't just have Saul here, continuing to attack and persecute and assent to the deaths of God's people. But instead, he is bringing him now to a place of repentance. And he says, I will show him how much he must suffer from my name.

Here, it wasn't even that Paul was getting away with his sin. But, hello, hi Evelyn. I will bring Evelyn on just for you all.

Come here. Say hi. So, he tells Paul, the Lord tells Ananias, go.

Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord, the Lord, I love you. Be a good girl.

Night night. Brother Saul, the Lord, Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here, has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes and he could see again. He got up and was baptized and after taking some food, he regained his strength. That's so cool there.

In verse number 17, the very first thing that Ananias, the very first things that Ananias does, is he lays hands on Paul. It's an expression of brotherhood, of love, of commissioning.

He lays hands on him and he says, Brother Saul, that the animosity that had been there, the fear that Ananias had felt knowing that this was a man who had done terrible things to Christians, but that God had made him brand new, so that who was an

enemy, who was a persecutor, who was in opposition, was now a brother, together in the family of God. He says, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here, has sent me so that you may see again and be filled

with the Holy Spirit. And then I love in verse number 18, in connection with all of the chaos dragon, sea serpent type things that Luke has been dropping through here, that he's like, hey, the works of the nations of this world, Saul is carrying them

out. He's breathing out the fire of murderous threats against the disciples. Now he says something like scales fell from Saul's eyes. That the person that was a dragon, that was a monster, that was against the church is now a saint, forgiven by God.

What an incredible thought. For us today, there is no one outside of the realm of God's love and God's forgiveness, outside of his power to save. Even those that are murderers can be saved because it's not based on what we can do.

It's based on what Christ has done. And that's accepting, God, you are the only righteous one. I can't do enough righteousness in order to get to you.

I have to rely on you. I think as we look at the life of Ananias, that Ananias was one that he had to decide, do I want to rely on my own wisdom as I walk through the Christian life, or am I going to rely on what God has said?

And for many of us, we can be scared of what it might mean to follow God. We can be nervous about the cost that it will bring to us if we do what God has laid on our heart.

But as we can see here in the chapter, whenever God tells us to do something, we can have faith, we can follow, we can choose to love and to trust and to forgive, because that's what God has done for us, that he loved us, that he adopted you.

If you have accepted Christ, he has adopted you into his family, that he has forgiven you, that he has commissioned you to bring his name to other people, that he has a trust in you, that you will accomplish that goal, because of the Holy Spirit that

he's placed inside of your life. If God has done that for you, can't you do that for others?

Many times we are like that unfaithful servant in Jesus' parable that was forgiven for a debt of 14 million dollars, and went and tried to throw someone that owed us 20 bucks into prison.

And when we have been forgiven for every wrong that we have ever done by God, we ought to extend forgiveness and love to other people who they may have done bad things to us, or said bad things about us, or not been a great person, but we can still

extend love and forgiveness. It's been modeled for us in Jesus. We're not flying blind. We can't say, oh, I have no idea what that forgiveness might look like.

Look at how Christ has treated you. That's how we are to forgive others. It doesn't mean that we don't call people to repentance.

Here, it's not simply that God blinded Saul and then said, okay, but keep doing everything that you were doing before. No, no, there was a repentance.

There was a change from pursuing Christians to hunt them down, to breathe out murderous threats into immediately after he regains his sight, he is baptized. It says he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

It was so important to him that he would now align with Jesus that he literally said, I'm going to get baptized before I get food. What an incredible testimony that that is.

I think as we continue to see Saul's actions throughout the rest of this book, that we'll see that time and time and time again that Paul had a burning, fervent desire for Jesus above everything else. He was kind of an all-in person.

When he was persecuting Christians, he was all-in. And when he turned to Christ, he was all-in on Jesus. And I think we can be motivated to have that same love, that same heart that says, listen, I'm all-in.

Being a Christian, loving Jesus, it's not just a Sunday thing for me. It's not just a maybe small group or a ministry thing for me. It is an every day thing.

I am all-in on Jesus. I'm gonna treat people like Jesus would treat them. I'm gonna speak to people how Jesus would speak to them.

I'm gonna love them, how Jesus loves them. That ought to be our desire, that we would follow in our Savior's footsteps.

One thing I do want to note that's kind of a common misconception is that Saul had the name Saul, and then after God saved him, then his name changed to Paul. Saul would be the kind of Hebrew name that he would have.

So in the Hebrew language, his name would be Saul. In the Greek language, his name would be Paul. So it's not that God changed his name, it's when he's around Hebrew people, they normally call him Saul.

When he's around Greek speaking people, they normally call him Paul.

So as Saul becomes, I'll give you a little bit of a spoiler, as he becomes a missionary to many of the Greek speaking people in Europe and in Asia Minor, we'll see him referenced more and more and more often as Paul and not Saul as much anymore.

It's not because God changed his name, it's one is his name in one country and in one language, and the other is his name in another language. So growing up, I had a specific nickname because I'm Bryon Jr.

and so I had kind of one acronym as in English, and then in Spanish, it was Behe. And it wasn't that my name changed, that they gave me a special new name. No, it was just in one language, it was one thing, and in another language, it was another.

So many other things could be said about this wonderful passage. Jesus makes a difference in our life. God loves us, he pursues us.

When we are against him, he came and loved us. I think in 1 John where it says that we love him because he first loved us.

There was no person in this entire world that ever goes, oh yeah, I made the first move towards God, and then God responded to me. God has always been the one that reaches out to us, and then we respond to him.

We'll see this passage more as time goes on this specific account. Paul gives his testimony several other times throughout the book of Acts, and we'll see some new little cool details along the way.

But hope this would be an encouragement that we need to obey God, even if we're scared, even if we're fearful. Number two, God can save anyone. He can turn even the fire-breathing dragons.

He can take the scales off of their eyes, and they can become all new, get baptized before they eat again, after they hadn't eaten for three days. It's just such an incredible passage.

Tomorrow, we're gonna look at what Saul does next, and now that he's a Christian, what's he going to do? He's still under orders from the chief priest to go and find those in the way, and we'll see what he does when he finds those people tomorrow.