So we are in a series on the book of Acts and this morning we are in Acts chapter 9
and this is the story of Saul's conversion and Saul's conversion is
probably the most famous conversion experience in all of history. He converts
as a Pharisee to Christianity. It's so famous that Christian and non-Christian
alike know this story as the Damascus Road experience, right? And basically that
little phrase means a sudden change, a sudden change in who you are and what
you believe and it's a very famous conversion worldwide. Modern people,
especially contemporary people in the West, a lot of times don't like the idea
of conversion of this change to a different belief system. They don't
like it, they see it oftentimes as primitive, as asking people to believe
in just one truth or something like that, but the Bible is really clear about
this and Christians throughout all the centuries have been really clear about
this idea of conversion, about a deep change from within. Jesus was really
clear about it. Matthew 18.3, he said this, unless you are converted and become
like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. And then in John chapter
3, unless someone is born again from the dead, they cannot enter the kingdom of
God, right? It's the same idea as conversion. So the question often arises
with this passage is should every single person that is a Christian, that
is a believer in Christ, should they be converted or have a conversion
experience like this one that we read about in Acts chapter 9? And the answer
that's been really consistent throughout history is no. That there are tons of
other conversions, the ways people come to believe in Jesus in the Bible that
aren't as dramatic as this one, that aren't exactly like Saul's experience on
the Damascus Road. But in 1 Timothy 1, 15 to 16, Paul, Saul, who is also Paul, and
I'll probably use those names completely interchangeably the whole time without
thinking about it. So I'm talking about the same person, Saul also called Paul.
He says that his conversion, his story, was given to the people of God, anybody
that would come to believe in later generations as an encouragement. So
that's one way to look at it. But another way to look at it is that in
Christian theologians throughout all of history have been doing this, that they
talk about there's a difference in circumstances of conversion and the
elements of conversion. Circumstances, circumstances are individual, circumstances
just an experience. There's no universal circumstance for a conversion
experience. But what you can do with this passage is you can look through Paul's
circumstances, Saul's circumstances on the Damascus Road and derive some of the
elements of conversion. Some of the elements that are true, that are
universal no matter whose experience it is. And so I think there are four
elements that we can pull from this passage this morning. The first is
conversion is for dead people. Secondly, conversion is a crash encounter with the
light. Thirdly, conversion is plunging into darkness. And finally, conversion is a
transformation that includes an embrace. Okay, so first conversion is for dead
people. If you look at verse one of this passage it starts off with a
contrast, but Saul. But Saul was breathing threats and murders against the
disciples. And the reason there's a contrast there is because in the previous
couple of chapters the gospel had been preached and many people were getting
converted, but then Saul along with the other Pharisees in Jerusalem persecuted
the Christians. You remember the stoning of Stephen in Acts chapter 7. And what
happened is that the gospel then left Jerusalem and went all the way as far as
Damascus, which is outside the geographical bounds of Jerusalem. So the
gospel spread, it's fruitful, and it's left Jerusalem. The Christians have gone
to a different land. They're not even in Israel. They're in Damascus. That's in
Syria. But Saul, nevertheless, Saul, he's still breathing threats and the
literal word there is breathing slaughter against the Christians no
matter where they've gone. So much so that he goes and gets permission to hunt
them down. Now this guy Saul, we were introduced to him in Acts chapter 7.
He's a Pharisee and he's very zealous for the works of the law. He's very well
educated. He knew classic rhetoric. He knew Greek. He was extremely well
educated, but he's incredibly hungry. He's on the hunt here to basically destroy
what was called the Way, the early Christian movement. And it makes sense
because the way he views religion is that religion is basically Old Testament
or Torah, Genesis to Deuteronomy, law observance. And these Christians were
going around and preaching a gospel saying a man was crucified on a tree and
at his resurrection he declared that nobody has to is under the obligations of
the Old Covenant of the Torah anymore, Genesis to Deuteronomy. And this was
totally antithetical to the way Paul viewed religion, which is completely
about Torah observance, obeying the law of God. So you can understand that he
thinks these people are the enemies of God. And so he's on the hunt. This little
word for breathing threats here and the little word underneath the verb
breathing, the Greek word, it's typically reserved for animals in classical
Greek. It's reserved to describe an animal that's like a rabid dog. That's
what John Calvin, when he's looking at this passage, he describes Saul as a
rabid wolf. Maybe you've had an experience like this, probably most of you
haven't, if you're from the city, but you've at least seen one on TV probably
where somebody goes into an alleyway or into the woods or something and all of
a sudden there it is, a wolf, a dog, a bear, whatever, picture, wild animal. And
it stops and you stop and you're face to face, right? And what do you think,
you're wondering what's it gonna do, right? And all of a sudden it hunches its
shoulders up, its ears perk, the lip lowers, the teeth become exposed, and
slobber foams start to come out of the mouth, right? And what do you know? And
that moment, what do you know? You know that that rabid wolf is getting ready,
preparing to attack you. A slow walk begins to ensue towards you, right? That
verb breathing threats, that's the way the word is typically used in Greek, okay?
That's the picture that we're being given. Saul is a rabid wolf prone to attack on
the Damascus road. I mean, he's going down the road as a general, going to
war against the enemies of God. That's the picture that's being painted here.
In chapter 8 verse 3 it said that he had already begun to destroy the church,
literally rip its foundations out from underneath it. These are strong verbs,
okay, in other words. These are really strong verbs. He has a deep hatred for
these people. He has a very deep, deep-seated hatred for the way, the
Christian movement. And what that means is that Saul appears to be the most
unlikely convert that has ever lived in human history. And you know the rest of
the story. He changes. He is changed. And what that means is that no human being,
no matter how much they hate God, no matter what they have done, is without
the hope of the radically free grace of Jesus Christ. No human being, no matter
what they've done. And that means that there is no such thing as a likely or
an unlikely convert to Christianity. There's no such thing as people who are
likely or unlikely. It's a category mistake. That's not what that... You can see
this in... As Paul is writing the rest, most of the books of the New Testament,
and he's reflecting on what happened to him, you can see this actually come out
in his own theology. Just listen to what he says about who he was and who
people are. All have sinned, all have fallen short of the glory of God. No one
is good, no one is righteous, no one seeks after God, everyone follows their own
way. God has revealed himself to every single human being and all suppress the
truth and unrighteousness. Every single person seeks after idols. Every single
person suppresses the truth by exchanging the image of the Creator for
the image of a creature. All human beings are dead in their trespasses and sins.
So that's his reflection on who he was. And that's why in John 644, Jesus
puts it like this, no one can come to the Father unless the Father calls. Or in
John 15-16, Jesus says, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and
appointed you to go and bear fruit for me. And so John started when he's looking
at this passage, he puts it like this, one thing is certain in Paul's conversion,
human beings do not initially seek after God unless God first comes to us and
seeks after us. The Bible says that in our natural state no one seeks after God
and that this is categorical. In other words, Paul's conversion means that
nobody is too far gone to receive the grace of Christ. And what that means is
that the first element in conversion experience is that conversion is for
dead people. Conversion is for people who are dead. Conversion is always
counter to our human will, our human hearts. So that's the first
element, conversion is for dead people. Now there are three more elements and I'm
just going to give them to you right now in one sentence. Okay, and then we'll
break each down briefly. Alright, so here's the sentence. Conversion is a crash
encounter with the light that plunges you into darkness and ends in
transformation. Okay, so the first aspect is that conversion is a crash
encounter with the light. Now in verse 3 you'll see that Saul encounters the
light or actually the light encounters Saul, the little Greek word verb there
is actually that the light in circles Saul and we learn in another passage
that that light was brighter than the midday sun and what happens to him? It
says that it knocks him down and a man of his elite stature in society he's
probably riding a horse and so it probably knocks him off of his horse
onto the ground. Why? Well in one sense it's the physical power of the light
itself. He probably is thinking about this when he writes 1st Timothy 616, God
dwells in inapproachable light. He had to be reflecting on this experience, but I
don't think it's mainly a physical aspect here that the light knocks him to
the ground physically. I think what's happening here is that he's having an
encounter with the truth. He's having an encounter with the truth. In other words
what's happening to him physically manifest a spiritual reality, an
invisible reality that's happening underneath. In other words conversion is
when you encounter a God that you never expected. When you encounter a God who is
beyond anything that you could have possibly constructed, no mere idol. You
see typically if you go out in a city like Edinburgh or London or New York or
something like that and you ask your average person, modern people in the
West, if you ask them what they don't like about Christianity they're not
typically going to say that they don't like Christianity because it preaches a
message that says God radically forgives people completely contrary to what
they've done. The aspect of Christianity that says God is God of love, God
radically forgives people in the West like that. Everybody on the streets
likes that about Christianity. Nobody has a problem with that. What do people in
the modern West typically not like about the Christian message? That's
at the very same time as the Christians preach a God of love, a God who will
forgive radically even despite what you've done. We also preach a God who has
divine justice and will send people to hell and punish and that's precisely
what modern Westerners don't like. Now if you go to eastern parts of the world
and this is not true of everyone but typically if you go to eastern parts of
the world and you ask the average person what is it that you don't like about
Christianity, you'll get something actually completely opposite. They have
no problem typically with a God who inflicts wrath or sends people to hell
or punishes. No problem with the idea of divine justice because it makes sense.
If you've done something wrong and you appear before a courtroom you deserve to
be punished. I mean that's normal to that culture and so they don't have a
problem with it. What they do have a problem with oftentimes is a God who
would radically forgive when you don't deserve it. When you haven't done anything
to earn it. It's completely opposite picture you see of problems from the
East and the West. You know what that means. That means because of our cultural
situation, because of us as individuals in specific cultures, we are prone to
construct a God that fits our own personal desires of who we want God to be.
We're prone to make a God that looks exactly like us. Here's conversion.
It's encountering a God you could not have possibly created. In other words it's
being knocked off your horse by a God that is no mere idol that you couldn't
have constructed. You see God has to be something that is greater than who you
are, greater than your heart and if the God that you concoct in your head just
looks exactly like what you want God to look like then he wouldn't be greater
than you. He wouldn't be beyond your heart, greater than your heart and a God
that's not greater than your heart can't be a God that's greater than you.
The first thing here about conversion is that we need a God who we
don't expect and that means that when we come to the Bible we need to see a God
in the Bible actually that tells us things that we don't like about
ourselves and maybe even sometimes tells us things that we don't like to hear
about God. One of the marks then of conversion of being a person who's been
changed by God is that you're willing to come to the Bible, the place that God
has revealed himself and let the word actually confront you instead of you
confronting and judging it. You see that's one of the ways that you know that
you're encountering a real God, a God that's truly revealed himself as he is
because that's the second element. The third element, third of four, not only
is conversion a crash encounter with the light, the truth, it's entering into
darkness. It's being plunged into darkness. Now there are two aspects here to
that idea and the first is this, he's encountered by the light, Saul is, and
then all of a sudden out of the light there's a voice, the light speaks, right,
and the light says, Saul why are you persecuting me? And this question is
exactly the question that Saul did not expect in any way, shape or form. This is
the total opposite of what he thought he was going to hear from God. It's the
exact opposite because when he hears this God say, Saul why are you
persecuting me? What that means is that God is identifying so much with the
people that Saul had been attacking that the total opposite of what was
happening is the case in Saul's mind. In other words, Saul thought that he was on
the hunt to destroy the enemies of God, you see, and when he's approached by the
divine light and the divine light says to him, why are you persecuting me? He
realizes that God is so identified with the people he's been trying to slaughter
that he's actually the enemy of God. You see, it's complete reversal. He's, in
other words, in that moment he's plunging into darkness and that darkness is that
he's wrestling, he's having, he's being told, you thought you were a good person,
you thought you were doing the work of the Lord and actually you are the enemy
of God. You're the sinner, you're the one that said enmity with God, you're the one
that's in deep rebellion. In other words, he's realizing I am the guy who
slaughters the people that God has declared to be good. I'm an enemy of God.
So this is the first way that you plunge into darkness in conversion, but the
second, there's a second aspect and it's not simply that Saul crashes into the
light and it plunges him into the darkness of who he is as a sinner, as
an enemy of God. It's that it not only envelopes the spiritual darkness, but
that the light literally makes him blind. Okay, so you see that in verse 8, the
light literally causes him to be blind and it doesn't just cause him to be
blind, but it says in verse 8 and 9 that he did not take food or water for three
days. He fasted, in other words. Now a lot of people will look at this passage
and they'll say that when Saul goes into this three-day fast, this is him
responding to God. He's been encountered by the divine light and now he's
responding to the divine light out of reverence. He would have fasted thousands
of times in Judaism. They fasted every single week, in fact, and he's just
responding faithfully to the God that's revealed himself. Actually though, I think
that that's a bit of a thin way of looking at what's happening here. You see,
the accent in the passage is completely on the passive. It's not at all about
what Saul does. It's completely about everything that's happening to Saul. He
was blinded. He was encountered by the light. In other words, he's being
forced. He's being forced into a fast. He's being forced into a situation where
he can't eat or drink, into a situation of lifelessness. In verse 8,
after he's made blind, after he can't see anything, the text says that the only
way that he could get to Damascus was by somebody holding his hand. In other words,
just remember what Jesus said in Matthew 18, if you want to be a
citizen of the kingdom of God, you must be converted and you must become like a
helpless child. The only way that Saul could possibly get to Damascus was to
have his hand held, like a little child. He had to be led down the road to
Damascus. He had to be treated like a child. So, I think a
thicker way of looking at what's happening to him is this. Saul's view of
the Messiah was that the Messiah was going to be strong. The Messiah that had
been promised in the Old Testament was going to be a conqueror, was going to be
somebody who came into Jerusalem, conquered the Roman Empire, and re-established
Israel as the true people of God, the center of the nations in the Promised
Land. And the people that were going to be vindicated and pronounced just in
that moment when the strong Messiah came were the people that observed the law,
that obeyed the Torah, Genesis Deuteronomy, that followed every aspect of
the law, every jot and tittle. That's his view of the Messiah. And so, when Jesus
Christ comes to the world, when Jesus Christ comes in the world, he literally
is the total opposite of what Saul thought the Messiah was going to look
like. I mean, he doesn't look anything like what Saul thinks a Messiah should
look like. He's not strong at all. He manifests himself in total weakness. And
even more than that, Saul, knowing his Torah, Genesis to Deuteronomy really
well, he would have constantly reflected on Deuteronomy chapter 21 verse 13. And
Deuteronomy chapter 21 verse 13, it says that anybody who hangs on a tree is a
man that is cursed. Anybody who hangs on a tree is a man that's cursed. In other
words, Saul's picture of the Messiah or the claim of the way that Jesus would
have been the Messiah would be, no way, this man has been cursed. And nobody
that claims to be the Messiah would be cursed by God. That's a weakness. That's
not strength. That's not who the Messiah could possibly be. But then, on the road
to Damascus, the light encounters him. My podium's falling. And the light says, I
am Jesus, the one who you're persecuting. And when the light encounters him, it
leaves him in utter darkness, completely blinded. Not only does the
light leave him in utter darkness, it throws him into a condition of
lifelessness. He cannot eat. He cannot drink. And for how long did you catch it?
How long? Three days, you see? Three days. Three days of blindness. Three days of
being plunged into the darkness. Three days of lifelessness with no food, with
no water. In other words, Saul encounters the light that is Jesus Christ. And what
happens? Jesus throws him into a three-day-long grave. It's completely
passive. He can't help it. He can't eat. He can't drink. He's lifeless. He's
helpless. He's blind. He's in darkness. And it's Jesus that threw him into that
grave. Why? Why? Why is it that Christ does this to him? Why does Jesus do this to
him? And I think it's this. So Saul could look at his body. He could look at his own
physical condition in that three-day grave. And he could see that his identity
was now completely wrapped up into the man that went into the grave for three
days for him. You see, he doesn't need to go any farther but to look at his own
physical condition to realize that the man that went into the grave for three
days, the man he put in the grave that he helped send to the grave in
Jerusalem, is identifying with him. And he with Jesus, he's reliving Christ's
experience in order to show him that he is now one with the man that he
crucified. You see, in other words, Saul had always thought that by the work of the
law he would be justified before God. And as soon as God encounters him in the
light, the only thing that Saul's good works got him was death, was being thrown
down into the pit, into the grave, into the condition of lifelessness. And you
know, you can only imagine that in those three days he's blind, he can't eat, he
can't drink anything, he would have had an immense amount of time simply to think.
To think about what his body was like and what the man on the cross in the
grave was like. You know, he knew the Old Testament backwards and
forwards. He would have gone back to the Old Testament in his mind and thought
about Isaiah's suffering servant songs, about the man that was crushed, about the
promise of the one who would be bruised and broken for our iniquities. He would
have gone back to Leviticus and thought about the sacrificial system and
realized the blood of bulls and goats can't possibly save us. Right? He would
have gone back in his mind and reread the entire Old Testament because he had
heard it preached that way by Stephen and woken up to one idea. It wasn't
simply that this Messiah was cursed and put on a tree because he was weak. The
Messiah was put, was cursed and put on a tree because he chose to be. And
substitution. You see, this is the moment where Saul is awakening to the idea of
substitution. In other words, he would have said something like this, Jesus chose
to die for me not because he's a weak Messiah, but because of a radical
substitutionary love. The meeting of divine justice and divine mercy, the
great exchange, him for me, me for him. And his own physical body in a three-day
grave would have pointed him nowhere else. You see? In other words, the third
element, conversion. Conversion is where God says to you, your identity is
completely wrapped up in Jesus' identity. What's true of him has now become true of
you. That's what's happening to you in conversion. In other words, the outward
change is something like this. You know that a mark of conversion, you don't
simply say, Jesus died on the cross, I believe that. You say something more like,
I crucified him. It's when it becomes personal. I crucified him. He was for me,
and I was with him. So that's the third element. Now, fourthly and finally, and
very briefly, not only is conversion a crash encounter with the light, not only
is it plunging down into the depths of darkness, but it's a transformation.
And this one's really simple. Down in verse 18, it says that his scales fall off
of his eyes physically. He regains life. He takes food. He drinks water. He's
baptized. In other words, the image that we're being given is he's coming back
from the dead. You see? He went into a three-day grave, and now he's regaining
life again. And in verse 20, which is one verse beyond what we read this morning,
it says that he goes into the synagogue, and he only says one thing. Jesus Christ
is the Son of God. Now, this is a radical transformation. John Calvin puts it like
this, the rabid wolf has now become the great sheep. The rabid wolf has now
become the great sheep. This is the transformation. You see, it's a
resurrection. His physical body has come back to life, but the point is that
inwardly his spirit has been completely resurrected in Christ by sharing with
Christ. In other words, one of the marks of conversion, you change your mind
about Jesus, and Jesus changes your heart about Jesus. You love him.
It's that simple, really. You love him. And not only is it an outward
transformation, but it includes an embrace. So we haven't really looked at this
section of the passage, but Ananias, Ananias in verse 13, he's in Damascus, and
he's called by God. And God basically says, I want you to go see Saul. He's
going to be my apostle to the Gentiles. And his basic response is, whoa, whoa,
wait a minute. This guy is the guy that's come to kill me. There's no way I can go
to him and do what you're asking. He's come to kill me, but he goes anyway. And
when he goes, the thing that he says to Saul, one word, he says, brother, brother.
And the reason he says this is because in that little word that he utters, what
Ananias says of Paul, he calls him brother, it's true because it means
that God has embraced him as a son. And that means the community of the church
has embraced him as a brother, that he is now the brother of many brothers and
sisters, that he's the brother of Christ, that he's the son. Why? Because the gospel
says that no matter what you've done, no matter what you've done in the past, when
Jesus becomes your Messiah, when Christ changes you, you're adopted into the
family. And so here's conversion. Here's the elements of conversion from this
passage. You crash into the true God. You plunge into the darkness of your own
sin. You enter into the darkness of Christ's death for you and you come out
transformed, resurrected from the inside out. Those are the elements of
conversion. And so just to close, there's no citizen of the kingdom of God, Jesus
says, that is not converted. That has not changed from the inside out. There's not
a single person that is a citizen of the kingdom of God that is not converted,
Matthew 18.3. So that means the question is obvious. Are you converted? Are you a
citizen of the kingdom of God? And if God does the work, how can you be? If it's
God that's truly the agent, the actor. And just a brief couple things here.
First, there are clear marks in the Bible that give you ways to know
assurances that you are a child of God. This has happened to you and here's a
couple of them. Do you have intimacy at all with God the Father? Do you
have any intimacy with God at all? Do you desire God at all? And even when you feel
like Jesus is absent from you, does that make you sad? Do you want him back? These
are marks that this has happened to you, that you've been converted by God.
But there are also actions with conversion, outward actions. You say,
how can I be converted? If you're saying that it's God that does all the work,
Peter puts it this way in a sermon in Acts 2, you crucified Jesus Christ
because of your sin. Now repent and believe. And here's the promise, if you
repent, if you confess Jesus Christ as Lord, you will be saved. That's the
promise. At the very same time as it's completely true that you cannot be saved
unless God does the work on you at the, at simultaneously, he says, but repent and
believe on Christ and you will be saved. You see? And both are true at the very
same time. Repentance, repentance is when you acknowledge that you don't have the
resources within yourself to be justified by God, to be righteous before
him, that you don't have those resources. And so it's simply turning to something
outside yourself, the cross. It's like a weary traveler coming to the end of their
journey and they're so tired that they simply fling their arms over someone
else saying, just hold me up. That's the image of faith. It's entering into rest.
And that's what you're called to. That's conversion. So conversion to the light,
the true light, that's what human beings need because it addresses the biggest
problem in all of our lives. And we'll just close with this. In 1962, there was
only been two theologians in all of history that have made the cover of Time
Magazine. The first one was in 1962 and it was a guy named Karl Bart. He's a bit
of a controversial German theologian, but on the cover of Time Magazine, they
printed one of his quotes and this is what he said, the goal of humanity is
not death but resurrection. That's simple. The goal of humanity is not death but
resurrection. Every human being's ultimate problem is death and it's a death that
they deserve because of their sin. And the greatest need above all else in life
is resurrection. You need resurrection more than you need anything else in this
world. And it has been offered and it has been purchased and there is a way and
it can be yours. Repent and believe. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you did
not leave us to ourselves but that you gave us a way to be changed and so we
ask that you would break our hearts and show us repentance and faith. And we
ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.